I've been looking at some brake upgrade options to go along with adding boost soon. I'm wondering if and upgrade from '99 base brakes to the sport brakes is going to be worthwhile or if I should wait until I can afford a Wilwood kit (or just forget about it and stay stock until stuff starts to come up short). Budget is pretty tight, Wilwoods would be a ways off. It seems the stock brake upgrade is more common on the NA but haven't seen much talk of it for NB. Car is primarily a DD with plans for occasional AutoX/HPDE use.

Additionally, I'm running an older FM/AGX suspension which the previous owner installed. Would you put higher priority on a brake upgrade or suspension upgrade?

 

Suspension. Get good pads and lines for your current brakes.

 

hold

 

It's unanimous (so far)!

 

Like everything in braking the only right answer is “it depends”. Most of the time I look for the chassis’ behavior to tell me what the braking wants. This time I’m going ask you what you want. Before I get into that lets review there are only 3 ways to increase brake torque, (hydraulic advantage, rotor diameter, pad compound). The sport brakes are an improvement over the 1.8l base brakes. They have a larger rotor, larger pistons (more hydraulic advantage) both will help produce more tq. That being said we have built many spec miata cars to have excellent brakes and superb stopping ability. class rules dictate that the cars need to keep the stock 1.8l brakes. We increase the performance out of those systems by changing out the pad compounds. If you’re looking for better performance the simple answer is yes, get the sport brakes. If you’re having a problem, replacing the system will fix that problem like throwing a hand grenade into a closet to kill a spider. Do keep in mind that pads (compound) make up for a lot. You can spend a ton of money upgrading your system. If you go cheap on pads, you can be installing a worse performing system. The 1.8 and 1.6 brakes all have a wide selection of pad compounds. Those compounds have been proven to work well in racing and street applications. So let me ask you this , are you currently unhappy with your brakes, if yes then why? if you are worried about finding the limitation of you brakes no worries. The factory brakes can take a lot. The time I would step up to a v8 roadsters 11.75” kit is just before you start adding power.

 

Johnny knows whats up!

Like he said, the sport would be a great improvement.

If I were in your shoes I would get the sport brakes, good pads, slot rotors or oem quality, and SS brake lines with higher temp fluid (Whats that blue stuff again?)

In an old civic my ex had, we did just that. New oem rotors, hawk pads, ss lines. Stopped on a dime for a DD.

 

^erm, that's not exactly what he said.

More like switching to Sport brakes at this point is just throwing parts at a problem that OP doesn't fully understand, and that likely good pads will give him the braking power he needs, allowing him to save more for the eventual upgrade to the 11.75" kit.

 

the only problem with sport brakes is pad selection. all the top level race pad manufactures overlook the sport brake sizes.

 

^this. I'm having this problem currently. Selection for pads on the sport brakes is very slim.

 

Yup. Wish i hadn't removed my 1.8 brakes.

 

ah,

I re read the post..

Also was not aware of the limited pad issue.

 

Thanks guys, I kinda figured this was the direction it would go. I'm not unsatisfied with what I have now, I was mostly wondering how adding power is going to influence that. I'm running stoptech pads now and I know there are a few steps up I can make in terms of pad quality to increase performance of my stock system. I wasn't aware of the limited pad availability for the sport brakes so I that's another strike against them.

I suppose I'll see how things perform as is and experiment with pad selection when I feel it's necessary. Then I suppose when/if I feel like I've maxed out the stock system I can look to upgrade to those big beautiful 11.75's.

 

+1, I bought a set of sport brakes, front & rear, calipars, brakets, master, booster and prop. NASA changed the classing before I put them on, they went from no points to three points.
But when I started looking at the available race pads, there were very few, and not the ones I'm currently using on my standard brakes.

As long as you have more brake than tire, (and they don't fade) you have enough brakes.

 

Get good pads, lines, and fluid. Get some front brake ducting going and they will work well for a long time. Save the 11.75's for when you finally know that you need them.

 

Yes but let me clarify.
brake fade is a red flag that something is wrong, broken, or about to become a crash. Most of the time with new drivers the fade comes from exceeding the operating temperate of the pads. new track day participants get a helmet but forget about adding race pads. they head out on track with a street pad from "O'auto parts" that has a MAX operating temperature of 600*. for the riggers of road racing you need a pad that has a MAX operating temp in excess of 1000*. any race pad (hawk, padgid, PFC, so on so no..) should be able to obtain this minimum.
you will know when you've overheated out a set of pads because they will never operate at the same Mu (coefficient of friction)



there is also fade from fluid, and rotors.
I got the opportunity to test out the Exomotive XP-5 car. this is basically a LS3 powered buggy. This particular chassis was outfitted with Flyin miata’s Little-Big Brake Kit. Going into the hard braking zones I was getting fade from the rotors (EBC brand). In the motorsports world fade is also called “long pedal”. Going into the all of the braking zones the first ½ of the stop everything seemed fine. The 2nd ½ of the stop the pedal would drift to the floor. That’s why I wasn’t attacking the corners ( enter my best race car drivers excuse). When a rotor gets hot it will deform. Dependent on how it was engineered it will grow. That growth or thermal expansion will result in a deformed rotor. “deformation” comes when the brakes are in a dynamic state. there are many forms of deformation, the first form of deformation it will look like a cone. Brake guys we call this “coning” and it’s a huge source of brake drag in the system. The 2nd form of deformation it will start to look like a cowboy hat


the image listed here is considered a 3nd form of deformation.


Depending on how a rotor is engineered to resist deformation dictates at what temperature it will deform. The rotor listed above was from an autocross. It’s on a jaguar XK. as you can see this rotor has curved vanes but still deformed AT AUTOCROSS TEMPERATURES.

IMO i am not a fan of Wilwood or EBC rotors. they all seam to be built to a price, and not to performance. If they come out with something new i will give it a look but nothing on the market has impressed me.

Boiling brake fluid can create a Long pedal too, fluid boils when it gets hot. Most race fluids have a average boiling point of 450-550* . Generic DOT4 from “advanced AutoZone” will boil around 300-350*. Most of the time when a fluid boiled with a OEM caliper it heated from trapping superheated air coming from the rotor. Vehicles like the Charger, Challenger, 370z, g37 are notorious for the calipers heating up. Generally speaking In a Motorsports caliper the heat will enter the fluid by traveling through the piston. so solve this we ether run a higher tq race pad, or install piston insulators.

We knew the xp5 was having rotor issues because the long pedal would go away, and return. If it was a pad overheating the friction produced by that pad would steadily decrease. When fluid boils the performance will come back faster than cooked pads. With heated fluid the performance of the pedal will stay long to a point. The bubbles from boiling will stay in the system. The pedal will continue to stay long until you purge all the bubbles.

 

i'm going to share this into the "does anyone have any brake questions" thread

 

Thanks Johnny for dropping some serious knowledge!

 

i do my best to help.

 

My setup: Sport fronts, 1.8 rears, Carbotech XP10 front, XP8 rear. 2-1/4" brake ducts in front. Car is purely a track car, 145-150whp, 2200lbs, street tires and r comps a few times a year. Lap times are typically very near or below miata challenge lap records at most tracks. Most track days are 80-105 ambient temperatures.

100's of laps with this setup and i have never experienced any fade... and I don't mean like, never experienced significant fade... Not once has the engagement point ever moved any perceivable amount. Grab point has been the same each and every time I go for the brakes.

I get about 50-70 sessions per set of pads (12-14 track days) and about 3k street miles out of a set of fronts. Double that for rears. I don't use the brakes often but when I do, I use them like a man. I experience some pad taper but not enough to justify switching to an aftermarket caliper.

YMMV I suppose. I venture I could throw another 50hp at these pads and not see very different results on top of what I see now. I will most likely find out soon enough.

 

when you do notice "fade" where is it.. in relation to the braking event? also where on track are you? is it late in a session, at the end of a long straight, after multiple rapid braking events?
oh and please put your answers into this thread. i dont want to mud up the forum. https://www.miataturbo.net/general-m...estions-81577/