I just bought rl calipers and was wondering, what year and make do I need to buy for rotors and do I have to do or add anything to them to make them work? I will be buying fast brakes brackets as Paul is not making them any longer.

 

Aw, Paul's not making them anymore? Now where will I get items that only half work and half my money back?

 

you need 350Z w/brembo rotors

 

we on acurazine have came up with the math and proved that RL calipers ARENT an upgrade.

proceed if you want to.

 

I know everyone says the 350z w/ brembo rotors...but I personally installed a set on an 05 tsx. I used the fastbrakes bracket. the 12.8" brembo rotors did NOT fit, the offset was too high, and it wouldnt allow the pad to fit in. Believe me I tried for a long time, it wont fit. Only after getting the 12.6 non brembo rotors, it finally fits. I compared the rotor depth and the 12.6" has a shorter depth by a couple mm so it worked.

I know some ppl say the 12.8 must be used, but my experience was the opposite. I concluded that the only possibility is the difference in brackets. Perhaps each company brackets are slightly off by a few mm which made it impossible in my case.

 

I wonder if I'll have the same issue.

 

Could you please point me out to the thread. I would like to read on the findings.

 

there are a lot of factors that go into a good braking system. a big caliper isnt anywhere on top of the list

 

more specifically the master cylinder has to match piston size, etc, etc.

let me search for the thread.

edit*

this is comparing an RL to a brembo equipped TL.

if you compare it to an automatic TL with regular calipers, the upset will be even greater.

 

these two kits from stoptech have actual R&D put into them and will stop your car shorter than your automatic brakes.

StopTech Big Brake Kit - Excelerate Performance - Japanese and European Performance Specialists!!

XLR8 Touring Big Brake Kit by STOPTECH ACURA - Excelerate Performance - Japanese and European Performance Specialists!!

 

I'm curious- it says it will upset bias- does that mean that more braking will be done with the front wheels over the rear? Isn't that what you would want? I mean, the front wheels do the majority of the stopping anyway.

Would it be possible to pair the RL calipers with the RL brake master cylinder? Or is it not compatible with the TL?

 

well, the master cylinder has a set ratio of fluid for front and rear brakes. changing the caliper wont affect the ratio, but will decrease the efficiency because the piston sizes may not be ideal.
Also, you say "majority" of the stopping, which is true, but more importantly, how much? you dont want to just put a huge caliper in the front and let it do everything. your front tires only have so much traction, and thats going to be your bottleneck.
if you ever tried pulling the ebrake hard when you are driving, you will notice that the car doesnt squat forward, it actually squats backwards. This might seem contradictory at first but upon further thinking you will understand. The rear brakes act as a pivoting point. I wish I could go further into detail but I dont have enough physics classes under my belt to do that. But my point is this, with a good balance of front and rear, you can make both front and rear suspension compress downwards and maximize traction for quick stopping distances

and regarding your master cylinder comment, I know a lot of civics use the TL-S master cylinder when doing the tls brembo or tsx brake swap so their brake pedal doesnt sink so far down. RL may be a bit different, but I could be wrong.

 

no replies?

 

I am still confused over which big brakes I can put on my tl,base.

I have +20 offset xxr530. I will need a brake job very soon and want to "upgrade" my front calipers to something better.

Does the rear need to be changed also? it would just be new front calipers, rotors, and pads correct?

 

I can't really comment as I have never physically dealt with different calipers.

One thing though- you mentioned the car doesn't squat forwards when applying the ebrake, but that has zero to do with brake balance. When you pull the ebrake, only the rear brakes engage- there is no force on the front of the car being applied to make it dive. It does make sense that the rear squats a bit though.

To take this a step further, Spoon offers caliper upgrades for civics, integral, s2000s, etc. I'm pretty sure those do not change anything besides the front calipers, which do increase stopping power. Doesn't seem to harm those cars braking abilities at all. I don't know what the piston sizing is, but I'd find it hard to believe that 4 pistons are the same surface area as a stock caliper, which has 1 I believe. Those would be some tiny tiny pistons. Something doesn't add up...

 

have you seen the piston sizes on a brembo caliper?...they arent much more than 1" in diameter.

the single piston base calipers are at least 2" and keep in mind, surface area increase exponentially as radius increases. (pi*r^2)

 

Why don't big brake kits come with master cylinders. If they are that important? All kits that I see just give you the calipers and rotors and never have I seen any comments about the master cylinder.

 

I have read this and found it very usefull
Car Bibles : The Brake Bible

From what it looks like most BBK is made to use the stock master cylinder, the bigger rotors and pads are used for heat transfer so you don't have brake fade when you are constantly using your brakes. They don't make you stop faster but instead allow your brakes to "work" longer

 

Hmmm yeah that makes sense. So there's basically no purpose in having a big brake kit unless you track the car and abuse the brakes regularly. I have heard that in the past but it's the first time I see a technical justification for it!

 

Don't forget making your car have street cred and not being able to fit stock rims on the car anymore.

 

because most ppl buy bbk's for looks, and dont actually know much about how they work. If you went around a car meet and told ppl that bbk's dont decrease your stopping distances, you will get many ppl disagreeing with you. This is simply because its a common misconception. Ppl automatically think bigger brakes mean better stopping distances.

also, aftermarket bbks are designed to work with stock master cylinders, which stoptech does very well, but same cant be said for wilwood(looks nice though, but thats about it).
this thread is about using the RL caliper, which is designed for a different car completely, and has no relation to the TL. it makes sense that it wouldn't work optimally.

 

Could one think that more surface area covered on the rotor would mean greater surface friction which in turn means stopping faster? Especially since the rotor is getting pressure from both sides of the caliper rather then just one side.

 

But if your Master Cylinder is still pushing the same amount of pressure there will be no change on the amount applied to the rotor from the pads. Bigger rotor means a better heat transfer to allow less brake fading. If you want to stop faster you need to look into tires, suspension, and your brake setup.

 

So a BBK would stop a car faster (say running at 120 mph) then a stock set up but only once you reach the stocks heat limit. Where stock would start to glaze the rotors.

 

^+1 couldnt have said it better myself. good response.

I hope I'm not coming off as some bbk hater, because I'm not. I think they look great and makes the car look way more aggressive, and I acknowledge it'll last longer during repeated stops over and over. But if 1 quick stopping distance is your goal, your money is best spent elsewhere

 

yeah that sounds about right. From 120mph, base brakes might actually get overheated after 1 or 2 stops so a bbk at those speeds can actually help a good amount. For daily driving on the highway at 60mph though, you likely wont see the benefits. Keep in mind kinetic energy also increase exponentially as velocity. KE=(1/2)mv^2. A car moving at 120mph has 4x the energy of a car moving at 60mph, so there's 4x more heat to dissipate

 

OK, thanks alot. I fully understand.

 

Am I limited to these rotors only or can I buy others like stop tech rotors

 

It depends on which route you go with.

The RL calipers, which are proven with math that the Brake MC cant handle can only use the 13 inch G35/350z rotors.

But you dont want the RL calipers because it doesnt provide any performance.

if you want a BBK that does add performance go with the Stoptech BBK from XLR8.

 

XLR8 Big Brake Kits by STOPTECH - Excelerate Performance - Japanese and European Performance Specialists!!

this kit is proven to stop shorter than OEM.



the RL calipers will make you stop LONGER. fact.

 

The best brake upgrade you can do? Tires.

 

Tires and losing weight.

 

I fucking love my Summer tires.

 

i love my michelin pilot super sports!

 

much has been discussed in this thread but answer to the OPs question was not one of them. So can I ask the same question? What else is needed for an RL brake caliper swap besides the FFC bracket and a 350z sized rotor? BTW it will be swapped to a 2nd gen TSX. Thanks!

 

While the Nissan 350Z rotors may fit, they have a different size center hole and wheel stud holes than Honda products. That would make it difficult to center the rotor on the hub accurately.
The RL Caliper is designed for a 28 mm (1.1") rotor thickness. It uses pads that are 2.195" high in the radial dimension. That's bigger than many available rotors can handle. The inner braking surface diameter of the rotor would have to be 2 X 2.195" smaller than the rotor O.D. For a 12.8" rotor, that would be 8.41". I could find no Wilwood 1.1" thick, 2-piece rotor/hat combos that met these size constraints.
The KB1 RL 4-piston Advics Caliper is designed to accept a 10 mm 1.0 thread flare nut rigid steel tubing brake line. The cast hydraulic brake line thread boss does not have a machined surface. So if you attach a TL brake line banjo fitting and bolt to the RL Caliper with stock crush washers, it may leak.
The correct brake line configuration would use a short rigid steel tubing brake line connected to a flexible brake line at a bracket mounted on the steering knuckle. The KB1 RL uses this brake line configuration.
I elected to use Wilwood 4-Piston Ultralite Calipers, Wilwood Caliper Bracket Kit, and Wilwood Caliper bolt Kit with Wilwood 2-piece rotors.