I am thinking about purchasing a big brake kit for my 04 VR 8 and I wanted to get some opinions from someone who has purchased them previously? Which is best? Fitment? E-Brake functionality? Anything is helpful! Thanks!

 

Most kits for the 8 are front rotor only..the rear integrated E-brake is difficult to work around

 

Yeah I've only seen a few front and rear sets...I figured I would just get some upgraded rear rotors?

 

dont have first hand experience with it. .yet but i will eventually be getting a racing brake 4 piston front kit and the upgraded 2 piece rear rotors

 

Wilwood makes a rear caliper. Do a search for Wilwood, there is a thread on here somewhere about them.

Why do you need big brakes?

 

here's the work around for completing my RacingBrake package, but it requires custom adaptor brackets and cables

http://www.hispecbrake.co.uk/ultralite_2.htm



figure that it will save another 8 - 10 lbs ...



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That's cool......

Duh...helps to follow the link

About $260 ea side + bracket......

 

Racing Brake is very good quality. I have their BBK, and several other members here do also. Do a search, and you will find some positive reviews.

There is a used Racing Brake BBK for sale on the forum if you search.

 

As the only Wilwood dealer to have produced a complete kit for the car (there is no Wilwood factory kit) I had experimented with the use of their "combo" caliper at one point also. The problems with that were two fold; first the stock e-brake cables would not transfer thus making it a necessity to have custom cables produced, and secondly that it remains a single piston sliding caliper which had less appeal to the more hard core users who were after four pot track applications. Not that it 'needed' the four pot assemblies so much as the pad options were greater and the response improved. In the end we settle for the larger rotor/stock caliper set up only.

 

Todd I have always loved your kit, because to me it is the only complete kit available for the rx8. I believe if we dont address the rear brakes/bias, overall braking improvments are limited. However, I like teamrx8's rear brake project, lighter weight calipers with the e=brake. Aren't those 2 piston calipers, not 1 piston sliding calipers?

I still cant decide if I want to take the finacial plung and go with a BBK. The stock system works pretty well with racing pads and rotors. IDK, take a look at my procharger build and tell me if you would like to see your kit on my ride

 

Nice part, no argument there at all. Wilwood has a four pot of this similar design available but it's through a European distributor only. I cannot get it here in the US no matter how hard I try...

Piston qty is not so much of an issue; the above being two pot opposed vs the Wilwood 'comb' caliper being a single slider. They (may) both have equal piston area as "area" is defined as one half the caliper body. For example if both had 38mm pistons but one a fixed opposed, the other a single slider- they do the same job and provide the same clamping force.

 

I have the stopTech BBk front 4 piston calipers, front 2 piece rotors, rear StopTech rotors, all StopTech pads, and StopTech steel braided brake lines.

Let me tell you I would buy them for the looks alone. But the stoping efficiency is a thousand times better. Brake fade disappears almost completely. The car stops more evenly, EX: doesn't pull to left or right. And I can say from 120mph to 50 the stoping distance is shorter, and feels safer stoping quickly.

 

That caliper has to be ordered from England too and they've been very resistant to providing it for a US purchase although they claim otherwise. Maybe it's just poor salesmanship ... but now that I moved away from the shop location it's much harder to make the brackets and e-cable adaptors. They kept dragging their feet and I ran out of time trying to the current STX class configuration completed before the move. It almost wiped me out physically and mentally as it was.


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What circumstances are you driving under? I can not fade the stock brakes with good fluid and decent pads on a road course and i brake hard and late every time.