I would agree with some of the statements Mr Ritt has made. Margins are almost pathetic in this business - ever notice how the guys selling you parts or working on your car probably drive a beater. It's not pretty and shops/retailers pop up and go down left and right.

His comments about testing etc are also right on the button. The disparity between testing/validation etc. of aftermarket vs OEM is most definitely scary. I've worked for both and I quit the aftermarket company because I had zero respect for it. Maybe I'm naive - but I like cars and car people too much to make/sell suspect product and if that doesn't get me anywhere then so be it. At least ST offers some seemingly real data on their stuff. There are much worse out there.

Remember APC? They have a lot of nerve putting American in their name.

 

Go to our white papers and read them all. http://www.stoptech.com/tech_info/te...e_papers.shtml
Then check out our FAQ:
http://www.stoptech.com/tech_info/faqs.shtml

Then go visit any other manufacturer's website...check out http://racetechnologies.com/ ...the North American distributor for Brembo.
Then call our competitors and ask them some tough questions. Then let me know if you still feel the same way.

Prices are similar, but value for the price quotient is higher. Factor in the whole picture, and you get much more for your money...including product itself, support, etc.

Elite level drivers tell us our product is the best they've ever driven...and no they're not paid to do so! Check out the quotes in this press release: http://www.stoptech.com/company_info...n_wrapup.shtml

This is not actually the case with most of our competitors. They have racing components that cost huge $, and what the pros are using is not the same as what they sell to end-users. We only manufacture one line of product that everyone uses. This is a big distinction.

Thank you...I try to keep things in perspective the more I do this. I understand what you're saying, but put yourself in my shoes. I see someone talking about taking a file to a caliper bracket to make it look cooler? My alarm goes off when i see that! A lot of thought needs to go into how the parts integrate and work together with eachother, and the stock vehicle systems. Let me give you an example. We had a recent experience with the new Ford Mustang...extremely sensitive ABS. During testing we had to downsize the pistons on the front caliper from where we expected based on the math involved. At the anticipated size, the ABS went into a frenzy...and really went bezerk based on the pad used. Sometimes things like this can only be found out through proper testing. Sometimes work on paper doesn't tell the whole story.

Read the tech pages. Talk to people that have tried our brakes and our competitors. We do publish many graphs, etc. on our site that show a condensed version of the actual data. We can't possibly show every piece of data from every test session. Also, we can't hand all of our hard work over to our competitors! Don't you think it would be nice if one of our competitors could conveniently get their hands on all of our piston sizing and replicate it in their kits?

I understand what you're saying, and I'm not trying to scare anyone. I've been pointing out the risks of not being informed properly. As I said before, a lot of information in this post has been off-base, wrong, or just not complete. It's to some extent a responsibility. If you had knowledge that your neighbor's dog had an obsession with biting off hands...and then you watched a little kid walk up to it and didn't warn him about it...wouldn't you feel at least somewhat responsible to lay it out on the table to the kid? Obviously this is a much more extreme example, but you get the idea. Just because I work for a company doesn't mean I can check my concious at the door when I go into a public forum. I'm not cramming product down anyone's throat, and I never go into a hard-sell mode on anyone. Not end-users, not OE's.

When I see someone talk about MacGyvering a bracket with hand tools, candle wax, and a ball of yarn (okay, now I'm really exaggerating ) I get nervous that they don't quite understand everything that's involved. You get the idea though. Reread my posts from the beginning. I was encouraging the discussion until I started to see some concerning comments. Then I felt the need to interject.

Thanks for the level-headed discussion Gringott. I don't agree with everything you say either, but I appreciate your approach.

Now I really, really need to get some work done. Do your homework like you've been doing, but make sure you are confident in the quality of the information that you are given. That's the best advice I can give. Good luck.

 

OK... you're killing me here... Who talked about making a bracket cooler looking with a file??... You already referrenced this statement... I thought I already addressed this. Are you talking about:

If this is what you were referring to, I'll say again what I said before... I was referring to possible reasons why kit builders might be choosing that shape as opposed to a simple rectangular design. I was simply stating that maybe they, as in kit builders, might want the bracket to look more specialized to justify it being part of their expensive kit. I was not saying this is what should be done for any reason... Please read the posts and I'm sorry if anyone didn't get this fact. All I've talked about is milling and brainstorming about how simple the design of the bracket could be...

and as far as not cramming stoptech down people’s throats, I think you might be coming across as such because in every post you back every statement up with Stoptech… if you made your justifications more authoritative and general, I think people would put it together… plus it wouldn’t sound so much like puffing. I worked in 100% commission sales for 6 years and I can tell you a little bit goes a long way… I like having folks such as yourself chiming in and contributing… I was hoping for that.

 

Let me jump in here, since I wrote that page several years ago. Here's the link, just so folks don't have to scroll back to figure out what we are talking about: http://www.zeckhausen.com/Testing_Brakes.htm

The purpose of my page was to demonstrate what StopTech goes through on every platform for each kit they design. I was invited to participate and wrote up a "diary" of my day with them. It was very educational. Their 4-wheel kit didn't "fail" the test. StopTech simply ran out of daylight and energy. They knew there was only enough time for one set of runs. So rather than start with the caliper sizings that engineering calculated, they tried to guess which ones would be the best, based on their observations from the other kits. They guessed wrong. More track time was rented and several variants of caliper piston sizing were tested until they converged on a design that worked well. I wasn't there to write about the later test, so my article ended with an incomplete story. I should probably write an "epilogue" so the story is complete.

Track testing is not used by StopTech as a "pass/fail" judgment on each kit. It's an integral part of the design process. Engineering calculations are done to make a best guess on piston sizing and then track testing is done to fine tune the kit to the real world. Sometimes the calculated piston sizing works great on the first try. Other times interactions with modern brake control systems, like dynamic stability control, can complicate a kit design. The only way to know for sure is to take it to the track and make careful, controlled, repeatable measurements.

The first pass on all kit sizings (rotor diameter and piston area) are based on the brake torque values of the stock brakes. Sometimes a car manufacturer will leave stopping distance on the table and it's possible to design a kit with slightly different bias that works better than stock. Other times, it's a challenge not to make the brake kit produce longer stopping distances than stock. The new Mustang platform, for example, took days of testing for StopTech to get right. I was at the SEMA show last month and learned that they were able to take that kit design to three of the top Mustang tuners and displace incumbent suppliers to win contracts with Saleen, Rousch, and Steeda. Since the other brake companies don't do performance testing as part of the design process, this particular kit stood out above the others, given the complexity of the new Mustang's ABS and DSC. All BBKs with Saleen, Rousch, or Steeda printed on them are now made by StopTech.

 

Someone asked something about the brackets from the official Wilwood kits. The sales reps at Wilwood still don’t have the part numbers in their computers so nothing is available as far as pricing… but all the individual parts of the kit will be available individually according to Wilwood. They were very confident, however, that the parts would be the same price as similar parts that are currently available. My thought is the only difference will be that other components that have been on the market for a while won't be a special order for distributors and so the actual price will probably be a lot lower than list. For instance, Wilwood lists some rotor hats for $90 but if you price shop a little, you see them closer to $50-$60. Their catalog shows kit part numbers for the front kit and the rear kit but nothing has shipped out to any distributors. I am interested in their rear rotor hats being that they’re designed to use the factory e-brake. But as stoptech states, you may not need upgraded rear brakes if your fronts are proper…

When I’ve talked with kit builders that use Wilwood parts, if they were willing to sell the brackets separately as a replacement for a customer that bought their kit originally… the brackets as replacement parts are $300 - $500 a pair. I bet many wouldn’t be willing to sell them separately if you didn’t buy a kit. But that wouldn’t really matter because a lot of the kits have proprietary rotor hats and due to offset, if you wanted to use their brackets, you’d have to also use their rotors.

You can check out wilwood's kt catalog here:
Wilwood Kit Catalog

Page 14 and 40 are the kits for the Z.

 

Thanks for the input... I have read, and enjoyed, the information on zeckhausen.com. Very well written articles I must say.

 

Thanks for your input J Ritt. I, for one, think its great to have people in the brake business contributing to the convo, whether or not they have an agenda... knowledge is knowledge and from research on this board and hearing from people who have the kit, I'm confident that stoptech makes a superior product, hype or not. Yes, I would like to see more facts... although stoptech does seem to provide the most.

Would it be out of the question to ask for a group buy on your 13" front kit. It was shown to stop better w/ stock rears that the factory brembos and is your least expensive kit. Maybe if some of these other guys are interested and we could get a few hundred knocked off w/ a certain number of purchases then you could make it happen? Just a thought, it would add to our "options"...althought I'm poor until after christmas...

 

There's a fundamental assumption here that I think is incorrect, and I haven't seen anyone address it yet. The assumption is being made that Wilwood calipers are well suited to the 350Z. While Wilwood does make calipers that are used in NASCAR (but not in the top 10), those calipers are very different than the ones we are discussing in this thread. They are trick billet pieces that cost about $3,000 each. If you follow road racing, you don't see Wilwood calipers on any of the top 20 teams in any venue. For example, GrandAm and SPEED World Challenge are dominated by the likes of Alcon, AP, Brembo and StopTech.

Where you do see the Wilwood Superlite calipers is on dirt track racing where the brakes are barely used - primarily to go into the pits. And the top teams will throw away the calipers after two or three races and install new ones. These are not the appropriate calipers to be using on a powerful road car like the 350Z. In terms of strength and stiffness, Wilwoods are known affectionately as the "wet noodles" of the caliper world.

Here's a caliper deflection chart that StopTech put together a while back. If they had the ***** to print the competing manufacturers by name, it would be more clear, but I can tell you it's a safe bet that "Company W" is Wilwood.



There's a direct correlation between the weight and amount of material in the caliper and the stiffness. (There's also a correlation between weight and cost!) Wilwood calipers are ultra light because they (the ones you are considering for this home-brew kit) are designed for a less demanding application. I won't get into the differences between StopTech, who specifically designed their caliper to be as stiff as possible, and their competitors like Brembo and Alcon. But Wilwood is in an entirely different ballpark than the others in terms of stiffness.

If you're going to go through with this project, at least use something with more mass and strength.

Another assumption that someone mentioned a few pages back is that any bias problems can be corrected with a proportioning valve. A proportioning valve is very poorly named. A better name would be a pressure limiting valve. When one of these things is inserted into a brake circuit, it has no effect at lower pressures. It's as if it was not there at all. When the pressure reaches a specific point (adjustable by the **** on top), the slope of the output pressure suddenly changes to a much flatter angle. An increase in pressure at the input will result in very little increase in pressure at the output.

This works well when used in the rear circuit. You can design a brake system so that the rear brakes do plenty of work in relation to the front brakes under light braking. When the driver nails the brakes and the pressure spikes, you can assume there's a dramatic forward weight shift and the rear brakes, if unchecked, could lock up. The pressure limiting valve now limits the additional pressure to the rear brakes and allows the front brakes to do more of the work. It's a clever design, although modern cars no longer use mechanical proportioning valves.

If you stick one of these devices into the front brake circuit to attempt to compensate for a heavily front biased brake kit, you have a recipe for disaster. Suddenly, when the driver is in a panic stop and tries to press hard on the brake pedal, he/she does not get a corresponding increase in pressure at the front calipers. The overall response of the brake system becomes dangerously non-linear and the car becomes unstable. Bottom line - do not try to fix a broken design by inserting a proportioning valve. Make sure you get the balance right to begin with via careful selection of piston sizing and testing at the track.

 

Dave Zeckhausen:
Thanks for the clairification.

 

Hate to say it, but I sold the Stoptechs and all the mods off my car to buy the Diasio. Now I miss having decent brakes on the Z. Looking for a cheaper alternative. I of course was not refering to you fabulous people at Stoptech in my previous post. ;-) BTW, I worked at Circon Surgitek, a medical devices manufacturer, for many years till they got taken over by a mad man in a sash! I know all about manufacturing headaches. And talk about liability concerns. If you think brakes are dangerous, try bringing a stent or laparoscope to market!?

 

"Yes-man"??? Nope. And I'm too old to play your name calling games.

 

Thank you very much for the great information and feed back.

 

I noticed in the graph that "B" 993 "Big red" tested worse than the 4 piston and 6 piston SL Wilwoods for deflection... So much for those who were imagining having the Porsche “Big Red” Brembo Calipers... geeze... and they're double the price of the stoptechs. Hey at least the Wilwoods we’ve been looking at beat the Brembos!!! Yeeeaaahhaaawww!!!

(**Edit** after I cleared some eye goobs I noticed the brembos beat the wilwoods for deflection... oops. still not bad considering it's 0.0025" behind the brembos.)

I’d like to see some of Wilwood’s high end calipers on the graph too… if it’s going to be “Price” normalized then that would have been interesting to see. There are some pretty slick Wilwoods for the Viper.

I like the graph. Now if the other companies would do the same and post their results we’d really have something to compare…

So some questions (serious ones not to be taken as sarcastic) to DZeckhausen, if you don’t mind:

1. So if the wet noodles are poor in the deflection department… and I guess the Brembos are too (had to blow that pic up to read it, but that's fine)… what caliper brands would you suggest we look at that are significantly lower in price and/or have a lot of competition amongst distributors???

2. If you had to estimate, where would you say the stock non-brembo calipers would place on the graph? Way up off the page? I can make those calipers deflect with my thumb and pinky… stupid floaters.

3. I know you would recommend stoptech, obviously, but what if someone wasn’t tracking their car? What if they had stock non-brembo brakes and they wanted better “Touring” type performance along with a nicer look behind their wheels? I like the stoptechs, but I do wonder if there is a middle market that is being missed. I mean fake caliper covers and caliper paint are selling quite well these days… Don’t you think stoptech has a fair amount of customers that really don’t “Need” the level of caliper they’re purchasing from you? I know it’s better to have overkill than underkill… but I’m way down there with my stockers.

Like I said early on, I don’t think companies like stoptech are making a ton of profit, necessarily… I do wonder how much some of the kit builders that are using Wilwoods OR putting their companies name on Wilwood calipers, are making. And yes, Wilwood will sell a company their calipers and let them put something else on them. Precision Brakes Co will be having their logo on the Wilwood Calipers soon… and I bet that will stir up less thoughts of do it yourself projects in the future. As we also discussed before, a lot of people are buying BBKs more for looks and less for the absolute ultimate in performance.

As far as calipers being replaced every few races… I gotta say that real race cars have their engines rebuilt after every race… maybe every other depending on the budget. I hope you’re not saying that if your calipers were on a formula one car that they’d just keep them bolted on there for three seasons… I’m not saying that if you race your Z you should choose superlite Wilwoods… but there sure are a lot of cars that are in the same class or higher than the Z with superlites on them. I can’t comment on how often they change out calipers, but I know brembos get changed out many times throughout a season of racing. I’ve commented on the fact that I’ve seen dynalites with broken ears before… but not the forged dynalites. I haven’t seen any superlites that have failed, but maybe someone that has had some experience with the superlites could chime in.


I think for me the debate is not so much about would a BBK “Home brewed”… heh… from Wilwood calipers be as good or better than Stoptech. It’s about the fact that I will never be purchasing $3500 brakes. Never… or at least very unlikely. I like them and I want them… but “Value” is when what I’m purchasing is worth more to me than the dollar amount it costs to have them. Obviously value is what made a lot of us choose the Z and not a Lamborghini… I really want one of those… but not all the money, etc that it takes to own one. I think that a reliable well built brake kit that costs around $700 would make a lot of people happy. I even think that there would be a market for kits with single piece larger rotors and wilwood calipers in the sub $600 range. Hell, for that matter, I’m sure there are folks that would buy just a pair of brackets and two wilwood superlites and pads to use with stock rotors. Wouldn’t they still realize some improvement in brake performance? They’d even look better. I don’t find these “Ideas” scary at all… as long as people know what they’re getting and are not deluding themselves into believing they have lambo brakes, and as long as everyone is methodical about what it is they’re doing and realistic. My only point is that nothing is ever one or the other… it’s not just ultimate racing or stock… the best or evil and dangerous for your wife and child to drive. Even if a kit couldn’t outperform stoptech or others… as long as a kit is worth the dollar to performance gains and is safe… I say it’s a good idea. At minimum it’s worth discussing.

 

Ooops... the graph's a little small... looks like the big reds were a little better than the wilwoods. still not bad considering the price difference...

Thanks for the info... Very cool because I enjoy testing. Did Stoptech use instron machines? What methodology did your company go through... I'm not challenging the testing, I used to head up materials testing when I was an undergraduate in engineering so I'm always interested to hear what processes companies are using. The best testing equipment can often cost more than the manufacturing equipment... I've also seen companies using hydraulic pistons and trying to measure flexure after plastic deformation via eye ball... that always makes me laugh.

 

If we are discussing production-based race cars, such as the SPEED World Challenge Touring & GT racing classes, they do not rebuild motors after every race. They have a primary and spare engine. After every race, they do a leakdown test and, if they find anything suspicious, they go in and fix it. Even in the powerful GT category, the engine in the tube frame Corvette C6 of Lou Gigliotti gets a careful exam after every race, but does not get completely torn down. It makes no sense to talk about Formula 1 in the context of a brake kit for a production sports car. (As much as my wife and I are rabid fans of F1 and would normally love to talk about all things FIA over lunch!)

Last year, the Turner Motorsports E46 M3 won the championship in 10 races with a set of StopTech brakes. The same calipers were used the entire season of racing, qualifying, and practice and they are being used this season too. Every five races, the piston pressure seals were replaced. At the end of the season, new pistons and seals were installed. The caliper itself is not discarded and will probably last as long as the race car, unless it gets damaged in an accident. Some of the other teams in World Challenge are a bit more paranoid and replace the pressure seals after every race. But they do not throw away calipers. This is true for StopTech, Brembo, AP, Performance Friction and Alcon calipers.

 

I'd like to add a tiny bit of history to the "Stiff" vs. "Soft" caliper question. Back when I raced a Spitfire in the early '70's, virtually all British cars ran Girling disk brakes. One of the disk brake inventors. They were twin piston calipers. Most were cast iron, yet they had a few lightweight aluminum calipers. The aluminum calipers saved a few pounds of unsprung weight, but they flexed excessively. Most racers returned to the cast iron STIFF calipers for confidence in their braking.

I applaud Stoptech for designing a caliper that has minimal flex.

Now, if they could design a dust boot that could withstand 1200 degrees and remain flexible............

 

If you've had problems burning up your dust boots, you might want to try the titanium backing plates from StopTech. They drop in behind the pads after you've done a session or two. (They won't fit when the pads are brand new.) StopTech has done instrumented testing on these plates and found up to a 70 degree F temperature gradient across them. It's enough for many of my customers to save their dust boots and it allows the pressure seals to last longer too. It also allows my customers to run the race pads down further without boiling brake fluid. Many race teams discard pads when they are only 50% worn, since the friction material is an excellent thermal insulator. As the pads wear down, the amount of heat transferred through the pad's steel backing plate goes up dramatically. The titanium plates help block this heat.


These titanium plates are also available for the stock 350Z Track (and G35) Brembo front calipers. The rear brakes run much cooler and these are not needed back there.

 

cool part! how much does a set of those set you back?

 

They're $79 for a set of four titanium plates. See: http://www.zeckhausen.com/Nissan/350Z_Track.htm for more details.

 

Do you guys have any new information on the DYI WilWood brake kit or have we given up on the project?

I don't mean to be rude or anything but I thought I'd point out that none of kbiz's questions have been answered yet every other post has a reference of stoptech in it.