BaronVonBigmeat

www.zmibrakes.com

Has anyone heard of these? I did a search for "ZMI" and didn't turn up any threads. They make titanium rotors and calipers.

For some reason, their "applications" link only points to the NSX section, although it should be showing all the other cars they make kits for:

http://www.zmibrakes.com/products/applications.html

Up to 41 lbs. (!) (18.6 Kg) of unsprung weight savings off just the front end alone, anyone? Of course, the only thing more startling would be the price--about $8k for the full kit. indeed. Unless you have one of those trees in the backyard that grows titanium (or is it money?) like cortc.

With a full brake kit, lighter exhaust, flywheel, pullies, battery, forged wheels, Ti bolts and studs, etc...I imagine you could shed enough weight to get the overall car weight in RX-7 territory. If you were starting with a base model that is, with no sunroof, which is...2940 lbs. right? And a good hunk of that weight would be unsprung/rotational weight, the worst kind. Then with a high flow cat and a little tuning you could get maybe 255~265...again in RX-7 territory. It wouldn't be cheap, but then again the last RX-7 was in Corvette price range.

SuPerHerO::tOnY

ey look im the first!

shelleys_man_06

Titanium rotors? Is that really necessary? The design is quite unique, but I'm still kind of skeptical about overall performance, especially on the street. Also, there seems to be only one application, the NSX.

BaronVonBigmeat

^^^ Something's wrong with their website, when I first bookmarked it, they had the full listing of all applications--Corvette, Porsche, etc. There should be other pages similar to the NSX page.

shelleys_man_06

Hmm. After Google searching, I found that ZMI has the applications you mentioned. I don't see an RX-8 app, though. I don't blame them. There isn't much of a market for unobtanium brake kits.

cortc

I can see making the brake caliper pistons out of titanium but for the hats and the calipers aluminum would be lighter and a better material...

shelleys_man_06

Why aluminum for the rotor hats and calipers?

cortc

It has better thermo properties and is lighter than titanium...

shelleys_man_06

It's been a long time since my thermodynamics class. :o

Materials science is coming up.

Ole Spiff

I know the SR-71 was made primarily of titanium because of the metal's ability to withstand high temps and cooling repeatedly which actually strengthened the metal. It's light-weight and strength as well as resisting deformation under high temp changes was key to the plane's high-speed/high-altitude success.

Depending on the composition, aluminum will warp and deform under high heat. Titanium makes sense for the rotor since it can handle very high heat, cool off, and not warp or distort. The metal will handle this repeatedly and actually get stronger over time.

I'm also not sure how well the aluminum would stand up to frictional wear...titanium should be long-lasting.

$8,000 for a full set of these brakes isn't exactly cheap though. But boy they DO look nice.

Nemesis8

iTrader: (3)

Whatever happened to these calipers?? Were they for the RX8?

https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...speed+calipers

cortc

The rotors are not titanium even in this set they are iron... I was refering to the hats and calipers and for this application aluminum is lighter and disipates heat better...

Ole Spiff

Which rotors were you referring to Cortc? According to their website, the ZMI rotors are in fact titanium:

"ZMI uses aerospace titanium for the rotor because of its strength, heat dispersion properties and lightweight. In order to build the ultimate rotor we didn't stop there. A patented design is then water-jetted into the titanium creating a slotted blade rotor. This design allows the titanium to expand in such a way that it turbulates the air creating an "active cooling" effect to speed up heat dissipation and prevent brake fade. Also, after the rotor is cut, a patented "chemical etching" process takes place which hardens the titanium and helps increase titanium's coefficient of friction to the other materials i.e. your brake pads to ensure maximum stopping power."

This easily explains the considerable weight reduction their system offers over a stock system with iron rotors.