Fitted the Porterfield Cryo front brake discs about a month ago, they are Brmebo blanks that they Cryo treat. Fitted the Porterfield R4 race pads the day before going to Rockingham and a refill of DOT5.1. It felt great on the road, massive breaking power. However on track after doing 3/4 laps at a time and leaving it 15/20 to cool or more by the end of the day got them glowing on a 2 hot lap and the pads melting. NO BRAKES AT ALL, and was a bit of a problem as I had just come to the end of the pit lane straight off the banked corner 4 at 120mph though the cones and drifted to a standstill.

 

End of story - I stopped pissing around with standard discs and have ordered the AP racing 330mm discs and pads kit from SE. If you modify past 350(flywheel)bhp do your brakes next or make a will!

 

Yours a briefly very scared 300zx driver pleased to have bought Toyo Proxes that got him round a corner with no brakes at 120mph.

 

Note from the passenger "F*cking Hell why the f*ck did you do that you b*stard you scared the cr*p outta me, you f*cking maniac!"

 

 

[This message has been edited by jvnewcomb1961 (edited 30-09-2002).]

 

[This message has been edited by jvnewcomb1961 (edited 01-10-2002).]

told you so he he.(Joking)

 

Are you upgrading the calipers aswell? John?

AP kit is very nice, I believe hairy had it on his, and it was good, even looked good.

(pity he drove like a girl)

 

What are they costing you?

 

 

[This message has been edited by 300z (edited 30-09-2002).]

No spoke to SE about it and they suggested that I should see how it went with the Nissan ones as they had been serviced recently. £1150 for discs, brackets and pads inc VAT/Carriage. So could have been a lot worse, in terms of money and concrete walls.

 

------------------

Z first and anything else is secondary!

John (Nukem) Newcomb

www.geocities.com/jn300zxtt

Originally posted by jvnewcomb1961:

No spoke to SE about it and they suggested that I should see how it went with the Nissan ones as they had been serviced recently. £1150 for discs, brackets and pads inc VAT/Carriage. So could have been a lot worse, in terms of money and concrete walls.

 

May i ask why you dont go for a skyline upgrade? thats very expensive, and since you are not increasing the size of the caliper or swept area, im sure they will work better but will not give you anywhere as much of an increase as the brembo setup of the skyline?

and thats half the price??

 

Very simple, this is a kit from a reputable source (AP) and it comes complete. A Skyline upgrade maybe cheaper but its made for a Sklyine not a 300 and is something that I know nothing about and means I have to get parts on faith and having done that before and it didn't work so I am not doing it again. This way guarantees me recourse! The discs are as big as I can go for and they are made by AP who are renowned and easy to contact if things are not up to scratch. By retaining the Nissan calipers I save a little money and if necessary can always add on the AP racing calipers later if I still want more braking power. I thought about the R34/R33 route and decided against it on the basis that if something went wrong or was missing or did not work as expected who do I go to for recourse? No one out there is going to say well I say it will work and here you can sue me if it doesn't! With an AP kit, I have someone to shout at and take legal action against should I wish! e.g. SE and AP. Of course if NISMO did one that you could get in the UK from my Nissan dealer then that would be better cos I could buy it from Nissan and complain to them when it went wrong, and everyone knows how worthwhile that would be! What is cheaper is not always better, I have to my expense found that out before and recently so this time I want AP brakes!

 

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Z first and anything else is secondary!

John (Nukem) Newcomb

www.geocities.com/jn300zxtt

you tell em john!!! only jokin

let us no how good they are as i need my brakes upgrading.jay

Under legal advice I can not comment on this matter any further as it may prejudice potential legal proceedings against both the UK supplier (Paul Whiffin, Whifbitz, UK)and US manufacturer (Porterfield Enterprises, California).

 

In this respect I suggest no further comments are added to this thread.

 

Craig/Nico - in the circumstances I strongly recommend that you close this thread immediately in order that you may protect the forum.

 

 

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Z first and anything else is secondary!

John (Nukem) Newcomb

www.geocities.com/jn300zxtt

As Warren says, I had the set-up you're going for. The swept area is actually considerably greater and a further significant benefit of the much larger disc is the increase in cooling.

 

I'm not very kind on brakes but never had a whisper of fade with that setup. That's not to say that bigger calipers wouldn't be even better but I reckon it's the right thing to try it with std calipers first.

 

As for driving like a girl Warren, may I remind you of 4 girls in a convertible beemer flying past you ? Mind you, massive respect for having the front to capture it on video and showing it to your mates !

A new issue now arises when you fit more powerful brakes to ensure your safety on the road and that works fine but what about the people who are behind you! They don't always have such good brakes and as such run in the f*ckin back of you! For God's sake what next! On A50 this morning and in line of traffic in outside lane doign 50/55mph and the car in front slams on their brakes but not sure why as the cars in front weren't braking at all, I brake and no problem loads of space but the car behind wasn't looking at the road at the time so leaves braking late! Luckily not much damage is all scuff marks in the paintwork as she totally lost it and swerved badly and only caught me a glancing blow on the n/s/r bumper. Also lucky no cars on the inside lane at the time too as she would have sideswiped them a treat. She was mega freaked though as she had a baby in the car with her. So a word of warning be watchful in your rear view mirrors for tailgaters if you have massive brakes, I'm thinking of having a bumper sticker made up "I've got massive brakes and you don't so f*ck off back 100 foot from my car". Trouble is I'll people driving too close in order to read it!

 

------------------

Z first and anything else is secondary!

John (Nukem) Newcomb

www.geocities.com/jn300zxtt

Yeah, I once had an experience similar. I was driving along the m25 last summer infront of me was a 911turbo and behind some kind of maserati, we were cruising along in the fast lane, then all of a sudden all the traffic slams on. All three of us stop real quick, and this dick in a knackered golf gti with a really dodgy kit on it slams into the back of the maser. He just couldn't stop with the big boys.

 

Ben.

 

------------------

'I hope I die peacefully in my sleep like my Grandfather and not like his

passengers....'

Originally posted by ben:

Yeah, I once had an experience similar. I was driving along the m25 last summer infront of me was a 911turbo and behind some kind of maserati, we were cruising along in the fast lane, then all of a sudden all the traffic slams on. All three of us stop real quick, and this dick in a knackered golf gti with a really dodgy kit on it slams into the back of the maser. He just couldn't stop with the big boys.

 

Ben.

 

 

WHAT DISCS AND BRAKE SETUP DO YOU HAVE?

 

 

John just like to point 3 things out!

 

1 Did you know AP don't make their own discs.

 

2 I have had Porterfield pads fitted for over two years,and NEVER have they faded.

 

3 That is very very expensive set up just for a pair of discs and caliper mounts.

 

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KEEP IT SIDEWAYS!

Yeah But Mac you have bigger calipers to go with your pads, John hasn't.

Talked to Stillen in the US last week about brakes, and if u go track racing, you definitly need bigger calipers according to them, they supply either the skyline r32 calipers or AP produced to Stillen spec calipers.

John , talk too Stillen they have race proved experiance with the 300zx, Steve Millen recorded numerous wins with the 300 in the US

SE confirmed that I need big brakes and it is their big brake kit and they said that their 330mm brake discs are good for what need and I don't need to change to 6pot AP calipers. I'm not "racing" the car its for normal road use and occassional trackdays only and they don't allow racing. If you read what I wrote I never blamed the Porterfield pads I blamed the UK supplier for not listening to me and recommending brake discs that were not fit for the job I asked his advice about. Discs got too hot in 2 laps of track, affected new DOT 5.1 brake fluid (correct I didn't put in Motul H600 racing brake fluid either) and brakes faded to nothing, edges of pads melted.

 

[This message has been edited by jvnewcomb1961 (edited 04-10-2002).]

Thats the answer then!!!! Lose interest and then it's bound to fix itself!! John, can you not take objective critisism??? No one is having a go or being a smart ar5e, they are trying to HELP but you don't seem to be able to see that Ho well...

 

CheerZ,

 

Andy

Hairsy - thank you!

MAC - thanks but I'm buying what SE suggested and from them I get discs/brackets/pads and the option to add AP calipers later should I need to. This is exactly what people sugested originally so everyone should be feeling satisfied.

Marc - I'm not racing it so why would I need 6pot calipers.

Duff - shut up you are not adding anything useful to this that someone else can't say better.

 

[This message has been edited by jvnewcomb1961 (edited 04-10-2002).]

Originally posted by marczxt:

Yeah But Mac you have bigger calipers to go with your pads, John hasn't.

US

 

Mark I used to have stock calipers with my big disc set up and it worked fine,Since I changed from stock calipers to R34 ones,It's even better mate

 

 

 

------------------

KEEP IT SIDEWAYS!

MAC I thought that your front brakes were from SE and were the AP Racing setup?

Originally posted by jvnewcomb1961:

MAC I thought that your front brakes were from SE and were the AP Racing setup?

 

 

No mate my discs are 330x35mm cost a mere £568 inc alloy bells,They were inspected by a guy that has had 20 years experiance in saloon car racing,Same guy said he killed a set of AP discs in one track day,If you want to speak to him about any brake questions, this is his website.

cheerZ

Iain http://www.sykoracing.com/

 

 

------------------

KEEP IT SIDEWAYS!

John you're confusing the hell out of me mate!

 

You keep saying that you're not racing the car so you don't need the calipers?

 

But you are into dragging, 1/4 miling and track days?!?!?!?!? I'd say you need bigger calipers! LOL

 

I don't intend to take my car on a track and I have the Stillen kit fitted front and rear with Metal Matrix pads and performance fluid running through steel lines.

 

Great on the road and a great improvement over stock disks and pads but I hold no misconception that if I took them round a track they wouldn't take long to toast!

 

 

 

------------------

"Life sucks. Get a F**king helmet, okay?"

Denis Leary

P.S. road going 300ZX's were never designed to go around a race track and as someone else pointed out somewhere else this week they are a GT car! So if you wanna take the lardy beast onto a track and nail it I would say you need as much stopping power as you can possibly get.

 

IMO

 

 

 

------------------

"Life sucks. Get a F**king helmet, okay?"

Denis Leary

Ditto to your comments Timmy

John

Couple of points, I thought new pads n discs needed a couple of hundred gentle miles to bed in. Could that have helped lead to premature failure on the track?

 

Also maybe you are just a tad heavy on them? After all seems that you are braking for corners that the car will go round without brakes - you say so yourself!

 

"Yours a briefly very scared 300zx driver pleased to have bought Toyo Proxes that got him round a corner with no brakes at 120mph."

 

I know that even big brakes will cook if you use them hard enough. Obviously the safety margin will be much bigger though. But like others mention the Z is a heavyweight and some tracks test them to the limits

Willie

Even a full set of AP's don't guarantee a trouble free trackday. I have seen AP's on a Supra billowing smoke after two hard laps of Ben****ers.

Can I just add that there are AP brakes and AP brakes. Unless things have changed (and it's some time now since I bought my SE brake kit), I believe that the ones which John is going for were initially the ones used on AP equipped GT class cars at Le Mans (prior to them going carbon). That was pretty good testing and although the cars were lighter than a 300zx, I doubt that many of us could punish the brakes as hard as those guys !

 

These are not the same as what AP might sell you for your Nova - or even your 300zx - it's a kit put together by SE.

 

Also, a major part of the expense (a few hundred) is on the other hardware (bells, allen bolts which hold the disk on, brackets to remount the calipers, etc). I spoke to Pete about the cost of his conversion and he said that he could match the price of other similar kits if he wanted to but that he is not prepared to cut corners on hardware.

 

I am not saying the kit is what anyone does or doesn't need. Just that, as with most things ... you get what you pay for.

 

Dave

Originally posted by Hairsy:

Can I just add that there are AP brakes and AP brakes. Unless things have changed (and it's some time now since I bought my SE brake kit), I believe that the ones which John is going for were initially the ones used on AP equipped GT class cars at Le Mans (prior to them going carbon). That was pretty good testing and although the cars were lighter than a 300zx, I doubt that many of us could punish the brakes as hard as those guys !

 

These are not the same as what AP might sell you for your Nova - or even your 300zx - it's a kit put together by SE.

 

Also, a major part of the expense (a few hundred) is on the other hardware (bells, allen bolts which hold the disk on, brackets to remount the calipers, etc). I spoke to Pete about the cost of his conversion and he said that he could match the price of other similar kits if he wanted to but that he is not prepared to cut corners on hardware.

 

I am not saying the kit is what anyone does or doesn't need. Just that, as with most things ... you get what you pay for.

 

Dave

 

HAIRY the difference is huge, a disc designed to stop a car weighing 900kgs and one weighing almost double that are huge.

I mean guys have put an F40 brake kit on the 300's and have found them not to last that long.

At the end of the day though, youd gain far more form a larger caliper and swept area than you would from a big disc and stock caliper.

 

Friction and resistence is what its about and if you keep the stock caliper, are you breaking any better? i doubt it? youll gain from heat resistence ect ect and fade but not stopping distance.