Help me prioritize
08-01-2019, 09:02 AM
#21
Pro
Anthony, very interesting. Would you still recommend running upgraded rotors/pads for intermediate drivers before spending the big money on a kit like AP?
Last edited by Can'tHave2MuchHP; 08-01-2019 at 09:03 AM.
08-01-2019, 09:19 AM
#22
Melting Slicks
Member Since: Jun 2005
Location: Rochester NY
Posts: 2,734
Received 1,678 Likes
on
878 Posts
2018 C6 of Year Finalist
St. Jude Donor '10, '17
Yes, because the stock rotors and pads will fail virtually immediately (unless you are lolly gagging around) and are the worst possible solution of all. I'm an instructor and will no longer sit right seat with anyone coming to the track in a C6Z on a complete OEM setup - as I know it will fail, and likely catastrophically (seen it with my own eyes to devastating effects). So they must be addressed before even dreaming of putting the car on a race track. Ditch the junk pads and rotors and move to DBA and Carbotech with SRF or Motul 600 fluid for occasional track use on R compound tires. It will get you by and suffice - for now - as you learn and develop the car. But if you get serious, track/race regularly, find yourself fretting over your brakes, run slicks or Hoosiers and are pushing the car in abusive, endurance conditions then go right to AP Racing immediately and don't look back. Don't do what I did and try to hack/patch together a short term cheap solution and deal with years of utter worry and stress. It almost took my life, and most certainly took my $$ and patience.
The following users liked this post:
drewz06 (08-06-2019)
08-01-2019, 09:22 AM
#23
Pro
Yes, because the stock rotors and pads will fail virtually immediately (unless you are lolly gagging around) and are the worst possible solution of all. I'm an instructor and will no longer sit right seat with anyone coming to the track in a C6Z on a complete OEM setup - as I know it will fail, and likely catastrophically (seen it with my own eyes to devastating effects). So they must be addressed before even dreaming of putting the car on a race track. Ditch the junk pads and rotors and move to DBA and Carbotech with SRF or Motul 600 fluid for occasional track use on R compound tires. It will get you by and suffice - for now - as you learn and develop the car. But if you get serious, track/race regularly, find yourself fretting over your brakes, run slicks or Hoosiers and are pushing the car in abusive, endurance conditions then go right to AP Racing immediately and don't look back. Don't do what I did and try to hack/patch together a short term cheap solution and deal with years of utter worry and stress. It almost took my life, and most certainly took my $$ and patience.
08-01-2019, 10:25 AM
#25
Safety Car
Have you tried any of those? I have heard a couple complains about these kits not being direct fit and having to fiddle quite a lot to make em right.
Also, do you know if they will fit nicely with 10.5 width rims or will I need to remove them each time I leave the track?
Someone has recommended I run these, especially on low speed tracks like we have here. Does it makes sense to you?
Also, do you know if they will fit nicely with 10.5 width rims or will I need to remove them each time I leave the track?
Someone has recommended I run these, especially on low speed tracks like we have here. Does it makes sense to you?
mine bolted right up.
08-01-2019, 12:24 PM
#26
Former Vendor
Contact forum sponsor TCE Todd. I've raced W2W on just a front set of Wilwood calipers for years. Pads are 150-200 bucks for the front and last a season of W2W racing. He can get you excellent brakes for much less than what you are looking at. I haven't run the uber expensive stuff but I'm sure it is great, however, if you don't have unlimited funds I highly recommend going the Wilwood route and having money to do other things. The Wilwood front calipers will pay for themselves within a year on pad savings.
-Adrian
http://www.tceperformanceproducts.com/
-Adrian
http://www.tceperformanceproducts.com/
Thanks guys.
Yes the Aero6 front (and FNSL4 rear) Caliper Kits have been very successful for many years now. While there are certainly some remaining benefits to "full" big brake kits, be them Wilwood or otherwise, the value for use with these is certainly hard to beat. Both kits are a direct fit to the current spindle and rotor package. *The use of the C6Z06 rear 13.4" rotor requires a minor change we can expedite for a small fee. Your choice of rotors from various local stores or more premium parts from folks like Ken as KNS will meet your needs.
The kits are sold with "performance street pads" which TCE suggests you retain unless you are building a dedicated track car. Alternate race compounds can be added to your order for a discount if you email me directly and bypass the cart check out option. Yes the SS hose kits are included with the purchase so no need to track them down, no you cannot use the ones on your car now.
All that goodness can be dropped....errr, left on your front porch, stoop, step, office desk or wherever starting at $1676.
Last edited by Todd TCE; 08-01-2019 at 12:25 PM.
The following users liked this post:
NoradIV (08-01-2019)
The following users liked this post:
STANG KILLA SS (08-01-2019)
08-02-2019, 06:11 AM
#28
Supporting Vendor
Hello Jeff, I did my research since the last time I spoke with you. Notice that I went from "LOL you guys are selling overpriced snake oil" to "I would like to buy AP racing brakes but my limited budget means I can't track a whole year". If you guys have a kit that come up on sale, or I can find one used that has everything I need, I'll jump on it.
After reading this(link doesn't work on mobile), there is no question in my mind on which brakes I wanna see on my car. I also spoke with a few guys that ran your brakes here. Most of them didn't have them for long enough to comment on durability. The two that did told me that they needed to swap rings every year. One was a full race subaru WRX and I don't remember the other car.
I am checking at your kits, and I doubt the 325mm will be enough as it is close to the factory size. On the other hand, the 355mm kit is twice the price for both the kit and the consumables. I wouldn't mind for the pads since they are much bigger under the 6 piston caliper and will last longer, but the rings come up at 400$ each. Given that I am not looking for more stopping power, but just more cooling area, I don't really care about the 6 piston caliper. I just want the bigger disk. Maybe wilwood has something like this.
If I had unlimited money, I wouldn't even think about it. Unfortunately, I have to make choices; I am just trying to be an educated consumer, do my homework and give a healthy chance to the competition. Obviously, the spotless reputation of you and the essex brand weigh heavily in your favor and I am willing to shed a few extra dollars for your kits, but if I can find something that works for me for, say, 1000$, I'd be stupid not to jump on it.
I will try to find a comparable wilwood kit, compare the prices of the consumables and make a decision from there.
After reading this(link doesn't work on mobile), there is no question in my mind on which brakes I wanna see on my car. I also spoke with a few guys that ran your brakes here. Most of them didn't have them for long enough to comment on durability. The two that did told me that they needed to swap rings every year. One was a full race subaru WRX and I don't remember the other car.
I am checking at your kits, and I doubt the 325mm will be enough as it is close to the factory size. On the other hand, the 355mm kit is twice the price for both the kit and the consumables. I wouldn't mind for the pads since they are much bigger under the 6 piston caliper and will last longer, but the rings come up at 400$ each. Given that I am not looking for more stopping power, but just more cooling area, I don't really care about the 6 piston caliper. I just want the bigger disk. Maybe wilwood has something like this.
If I had unlimited money, I wouldn't even think about it. Unfortunately, I have to make choices; I am just trying to be an educated consumer, do my homework and give a healthy chance to the competition. Obviously, the spotless reputation of you and the essex brand weigh heavily in your favor and I am willing to shed a few extra dollars for your kits, but if I can find something that works for me for, say, 1000$, I'd be stupid not to jump on it.
I will try to find a comparable wilwood kit, compare the prices of the consumables and make a decision from there.
I'm glad you came around on the idea that we're not over-inflating our claims or trying to push unnecessary, overpriced products on anyone. Keep in mind that myself and our team were enthusiasts first, and got into this business for the love of the sport. I'm in the same boat as everyone else here with my C6 track car: perpetually trying to balance cost, performance, ROI, all while trying to justify my purchases to my wife ("Come'on babe, you want me to be safe don't you?!?!"
).
Given that I am not looking for more stopping power, but just more cooling area, I don't really care about the 6 piston caliper. I just want the bigger disk.
With our kits, the torque output between our four piston CP8350/325mm kit and our CP9660/355mm kit are virtually identical. How is that possible? Rather than using four larger pistons, we use six smaller ones that have roughly the same total piston area, which means they offer the same amount of 'stopping power' or torque output.
In terms of consumables, even though the pads in our CP9668 caliper (as in Mordeth's setup in this thread) cost twice as much as those for the four piston CP8350, you're also getting far more pad volume. Not only is that more material to be burned, it is a larger heat sink to dissipate heat. You can't just look at the numbers and say, "The pads for this caliper are X, and the ones for this caliper are Y, therefore Y will be cheaper." How many miles you actually get out of a pad set or pair of discs dictates your consumable costs. If your initial purchase price for a set of pads is twice is much, but you get four times the number of miles out of them, your long-term running costs are actually far lower than what they are with the cheaper pads. The same goes for discs. If you pay 25% more for a set of discs, but they last twice as long as the cheaper set, your effective cost is still much lower with the more expensive discs. It's all about miles per dollar when you're factoring consumables.
Here's a cool link related to this topic from one of our Subaru BRZ customers. In an attempt to find his brake even point on our kit, he calculated his cost per mile with our brake kit vs. his OEM equipment. He calculated that he was spending $86 per track day on brakes with his OEM setup, and only $29 per track day on brakes with our setup:
https://www.essexparts.com/news-blog...acing-bbk-lots
Anyway, I'll see if we have any used calipers around currently. We did have one set we recently used for testing, but they unfortunately weren't the right piston sizes for the Corvette. I'll talk to our guys and see if we have anything. I appreciate your not giving up on us!
The following users liked this post:
drewz06 (08-06-2019)
08-02-2019, 06:20 AM
#29
Supporting Vendor
I raced for three years on the OEM C6Z calipers with stainless steel lines, DBA rotors and Carbotech XP24 pads with cooling ducts. What a disgusting, horrible setup it was, also of which nearly killed me. Did it stop the car? Yes of course, at least most of the time. But I quite literally was the idiot during lunch time sweating my *** off swapping pads, guestimating when a particular rotor would crack (any minute), worrying over pin bolts backing out, dealing with fading, fighting taper, watching the caliper eat itself etc. I would bring a full set of new rotors and pads to every race weekend and knew at some point I would be replacing, and then again when I got back home (and again and again and again and again). I have done the brakes on my car so many times that I never want to see or touch them again. I was always worrying and fretting over my brakes, not just over lunch time but also during races. It was extremely stressful, time consuming and utterly annoying to the extreme. I also wasted ALOT more $$ on pads and rotors than the final cost of the AP racing setup (making long term costs vastly higher doing what I was doing like an idiot). So it was both a monumental waste of time, energy and $$, in addition to simply being not safe when a C6Z with full aero, full suspension is raced at 10/10ths (or even tracked).
After yet another particularly gruesome failure, I finally manned up and bought AP Racing Radical setup on all 4 corners. My goodness what a difference. I have been to six races this year, multiple HPDE testing (at Watkins Glen - which is so abusive on brakes that it is astounding) and haven't as much as glanced at my setup. I swear they still look brand new. I tried to buy an extra set of rotors from Ritter (as I am used to lugging around multiple spares) and his response was "Why? You won't be needing them anytime soon so I'm not going to sell you them". What the hell!? Sell me another set of rotors, Ritter, so I feel better. Nope, the damn guy refused. And guess what, my rotors look perfect and I have abused this setup to the absolute extreme (sub 2:00 mins at WGI, sub 1:00 at Limerock, NJMP etc etc). The setup is dead-on consistent every single time. It never fades, it never changes, it never gives up. I can go deeper, longer and with far, far more confidence. When I come in, I don't even look at the damn things anymore as they take the abuse easily, as if this is what they were specifically designed for (and apparently they are). And during lunch time I now sit in the shade and drink lemonade, watching all the idiots that used to be me fretting over their brakes in the hot sun.
I did manage to convince Ritter to sell me a spare set of front pads (for piece of mind), and guess what? They are sitting at the bottom of a toolbox somewhere collecting dust. Why I didn't do this three years ago is beyond my comprehension. I regret waiting and I paid the price for it. Some guys on here know what happened to me, and it wasn't pretty.
So my advice is to do it right, do it once and for all, and never worry again. A no-brainer, so easily understood once you have been through it.
After yet another particularly gruesome failure, I finally manned up and bought AP Racing Radical setup on all 4 corners. My goodness what a difference. I have been to six races this year, multiple HPDE testing (at Watkins Glen - which is so abusive on brakes that it is astounding) and haven't as much as glanced at my setup. I swear they still look brand new. I tried to buy an extra set of rotors from Ritter (as I am used to lugging around multiple spares) and his response was "Why? You won't be needing them anytime soon so I'm not going to sell you them". What the hell!? Sell me another set of rotors, Ritter, so I feel better. Nope, the damn guy refused. And guess what, my rotors look perfect and I have abused this setup to the absolute extreme (sub 2:00 mins at WGI, sub 1:00 at Limerock, NJMP etc etc). The setup is dead-on consistent every single time. It never fades, it never changes, it never gives up. I can go deeper, longer and with far, far more confidence. When I come in, I don't even look at the damn things anymore as they take the abuse easily, as if this is what they were specifically designed for (and apparently they are). And during lunch time I now sit in the shade and drink lemonade, watching all the idiots that used to be me fretting over their brakes in the hot sun.
I did manage to convince Ritter to sell me a spare set of front pads (for piece of mind), and guess what? They are sitting at the bottom of a toolbox somewhere collecting dust. Why I didn't do this three years ago is beyond my comprehension. I regret waiting and I paid the price for it. Some guys on here know what happened to me, and it wasn't pretty.
So my advice is to do it right, do it once and for all, and never worry again. A no-brainer, so easily understood once you have been through it.
Just make sure you look at the inside your discs once in a while to check for cracks (per this article I wrote)!When Should I Replace My Iron Brake Discs?
Last edited by JRitt@essex; 08-02-2019 at 06:21 AM.
08-02-2019, 04:16 PM
#30
Safety Car
NoradIV, with your budget
I'd go with Tods setup (wilwood) get a set of wilwood A pads for the front'
Brake ducts , Quantum is good for the money
then replace the bushings with poly bushings cheap if you can install them yourself.
Go from there, after you have more seat time.
I'd go with Tods setup (wilwood) get a set of wilwood A pads for the front'
Brake ducts , Quantum is good for the money
then replace the bushings with poly bushings cheap if you can install them yourself.
Go from there, after you have more seat time.
Last edited by ErnieN85; 08-02-2019 at 04:17 PM.
08-02-2019, 04:44 PM
#31
Former Vendor
Not to draw this out too much farther but I need to point out that some of the earlier posts and my own were related to the use of the Aero6 and FNSL4 CALIPER KITS for oe spec rotors.
The question arose about buying 2pc hats and rotors to use with those kits. Of course it can be done but from a value standpoint it's not so great. The added costs will exceed that of simply purchasing the FULL BBK format Aero6 14.25" Front Kit and matching rear. *Or for those who want larger: the 15" front kit.
That of course bumps your price point up from about $1000 to about $1800 but given the cost of most 2pc hat/rotor combos and one stop shopping, personally I think that makes more sense.
Carry on and have a great weekend! Me, I'm loading up for next weekends race and hoping I have all my fueling issues resolved....
The question arose about buying 2pc hats and rotors to use with those kits. Of course it can be done but from a value standpoint it's not so great. The added costs will exceed that of simply purchasing the FULL BBK format Aero6 14.25" Front Kit and matching rear. *Or for those who want larger: the 15" front kit.
That of course bumps your price point up from about $1000 to about $1800 but given the cost of most 2pc hat/rotor combos and one stop shopping, personally I think that makes more sense.
Carry on and have a great weekend! Me, I'm loading up for next weekends race and hoping I have all my fueling issues resolved....
08-05-2019, 09:01 AM
#32
Racer
Thread Starter
Not to draw this out too much farther but I need to point out that some of the earlier posts and my own were related to the use of the Aero6 and FNSL4 CALIPER KITS for oe spec rotors.
The question arose about buying 2pc hats and rotors to use with those kits. Of course it can be done but from a value standpoint it's not so great. The added costs will exceed that of simply purchasing the FULL BBK format Aero6 14.25" Front Kit and matching rear. *Or for those who want larger: the 15" front kit.
That of course bumps your price point up from about $1000 to about $1800 but given the cost of most 2pc hat/rotor combos and one stop shopping, personally I think that makes more sense.
Carry on and have a great weekend! Me, I'm loading up for next weekends race and hoping I have all my fueling issues resolved....
The question arose about buying 2pc hats and rotors to use with those kits. Of course it can be done but from a value standpoint it's not so great. The added costs will exceed that of simply purchasing the FULL BBK format Aero6 14.25" Front Kit and matching rear. *Or for those who want larger: the 15" front kit.
That of course bumps your price point up from about $1000 to about $1800 but given the cost of most 2pc hat/rotor combos and one stop shopping, personally I think that makes more sense.
Carry on and have a great weekend! Me, I'm loading up for next weekends race and hoping I have all my fueling issues resolved....
08-05-2019, 09:39 AM
#33
Former Vendor
It can be done, but at a premium cost vs the purchase of a 'complete' kit up front. It just doesn't make much financial sense is the primary difference.
08-05-2019, 11:03 AM
#34
Safety Car
i still run the Aero6 calipers with 1 piece rotors. you just CANT beat that combo for value and stoping confidence.
one day ill jump to 2 peice when im serious about weight loss.
fun fact
KNS/DBA 1 piece front rotors $200 a pair
Girodisc 2 peice front rotors $1800 a pair, and replacement rotors are $600 a pair
(C6Z)
one day ill jump to 2 peice when im serious about weight loss.
fun fact
KNS/DBA 1 piece front rotors $200 a pair
Girodisc 2 peice front rotors $1800 a pair, and replacement rotors are $600 a pair
(C6Z)
Last edited by STANG KILLA SS; 08-05-2019 at 11:06 AM.
08-05-2019, 11:38 AM
#35
Racer
Thread Starter
i still run the Aero6 calipers with 1 piece rotors. you just CANT beat that combo for value and stoping confidence.
one day ill jump to 2 peice when im serious about weight loss.
fun fact
KNS/DBA 1 piece front rotors $200 a pair
Girodisc 2 peice front rotors $1800 a pair, and replacement rotors are $600 a pair
(C6Z)
one day ill jump to 2 peice when im serious about weight loss.
fun fact
KNS/DBA 1 piece front rotors $200 a pair
Girodisc 2 peice front rotors $1800 a pair, and replacement rotors are $600 a pair
(C6Z)
08-07-2019, 03:39 PM
#36
FWIW, I went with a stoptech St-60 + St-40 kit because it was just a hair under $5k for all four corners. I don't race my C5 so the price/performance ratio seems about right for me, and I wanted top-loading calipers in the rear to make pad swaps a little easier.
Two track days so far, 7 x 30 minute sessions and 6 x 20. Rotors still look new, lots of meat still on the pads.
Car brakes well enough that after I gave my friend / teammate a ride for one session he went four-off on his next lap in our Mustang, and said that riding in my car made him think he should brake harder in that car. Turns out, that was not the case.
Two track days so far, 7 x 30 minute sessions and 6 x 20. Rotors still look new, lots of meat still on the pads.
Car brakes well enough that after I gave my friend / teammate a ride for one session he went four-off on his next lap in our Mustang, and said that riding in my car made him think he should brake harder in that car. Turns out, that was not the case.
The following users liked this post:
NoradIV (08-09-2019)
08-14-2019, 10:14 AM
#37
Racer
Thread Starter
but dont forget REAL cooling! this is as important as the brakes calipers/pads.
https://advancedautofab.com/p/aaf-c5c6-brake-duct/
I'll should be able to go test those next week.