No! He's the good guy!

He's informing people for the greater good! The Greater Good.

He's saving me money! And possibly my life!

Thank you IHC and 94eg!

 

You just told me it was a waste of money, gtfo.

 

Sloth mad.

 

 

Now the question is...

Would a rear brembos (evo, G) be better suited to be paired with the RL calipers then our stock brembos. From a bias perspective.

Or at that point do you just buy BBK kits!

 

 

A larger rear brake kit "could" be benificial from a bias stand point. But the major problem in adapting a brembo 2 or 4 piston caliper would be the thickness of the rear rotors. All cars with rear brembos have ventilated rear rotors. These are over twice as thick (9mm vs 20mm). Try to adapt that to a solid disc Honda rotor and you might just drop the pads out of the caliper as they wear down.

So then you might think, lets step to a ventilated rear rotor. Again now the theory of performance comes into play. A vented rotor is gonna be a bit heavier. And as we all know, un-sprung rotating mass is the ultimate enemy of performance. Plus, the rear brakes do so little work on a FWD, it's kinda pointless to begin with.

Honestly, I would still like to see someone put in the effort to put STI rear calipers onto one of these. BTW: The 04-08 Sti caliper is really the best option. The piston is slightly smaller than the TL's rear piston, which makes the prospect of a larger rear rotor more practical.

04-08 TL Rear caliper & Rotor



04-07 STI rear caliper & Rotor



Interestingly, the 2G CRV has a rotor roughly the same diameter as the STI, with the same hub-register, bolt patern and similar install height as the TL. Perhaps if the internal drum is the same diameter as the TL (170mm), these might work on the TL with caliper adapter bracket.



There I've spilled the beans on the info I've been saving in my back pocket. Now all you nerds with more money than sense can go make it happen. :\

 

:gheylaugh:

In before Justin gets jealous.

 

BTW: I suggest you guys consider unbolting the two halves of the brembo 2-piston rear caliper, and have a machine shop machine out the necessary 10mm to adapt it to the thinner Honda rotor. They will need to cut grooves for the seals, but that shouldn't be a big deal.

EXAMPLE

 

Very interesting. How much would it cost to make custom rear bracket plus the 2 piston rear caliper? Less than 1k?

 

Contact a local machine shop and ask. Who knows, they may bolt directly to the TL rear hub without any modification or custom parts.

Calipers can't be that much if you can get re-man'd ones from Centric. Of course you won't get your core back on those though if you don't return the same caliper.

 

A rear BBK or even just a stock sized vented rotor with a 2 piston caliper would be very nice. My rears fade before my fronts. It was hard to notice at first but basically stopping distances start getting noticeably longer even though ABS is pulsing on the fronts. I didn't know exactly why at first until I saw the rears smoking and the temp gun showed over 1,000F.

 

There are a few here who have g35 brembos on the rear. Those are two pot correct? I wonder what rotors they are using.

 

I have run into the same thing at the track. I have had the rears start fading before the front. Not having ABS made it easier for me to figure out after a few hot laps. I ended up running a more aggressive pad in the rear. Id love to see a vented larger rotor as well. Those installing bbks should get a brake bias adjuster to porportion the system properly

 

I would be skeptical of the bias adjuster mixed with the ABS/VSA system. W/O the entire ABS/VSA electronics & hardware it should be fine.

Oh BTW, the TL's prop valve is an electronically controlled system (called EBD) that is somehow controlled by the load on the rear suspension. Perhaps you can find a way to manipulate that.

 

Who? Can you show the link?

 

You just commented one... Lol

 

Geez... I'm speechless and shock at the moment. I guess caliper is going on sale soon.

 

I've never been able to get a perfectly clear answer to the EBFD but I bought enough white papers to halfway understand the Honda system. Here's how I interpret it...

I'm typing from the phone so I'm probably going to leave out details that I will clear up tomorrow. When braking easy its as if there's no prop valve and the rears get full line pressure. Due to less piston area and the smaller diameter rotor the rears naturally do less braking but they do more work than in traditional mechanically proportioned rears. Having the rears do more work under normal braking can make the car feel more stable under braking. My rears run hotter than the fronts normally.

It's only after a certain line pressure is reached that the rears begin to get reduced pressure to prevent premature lockup. There is evidence the system learns and adjusts bias when you brake hard enough for the rears to slip via the ABS wheel speed sensors.

My rear rotor temps went up during normal driving when I installed the Stoptech balanced BBK. The Rotora kit caused rear rotor temps to go down, showing it increased front bias which is bad for stopping distances. The big thing about both of these is temps changed and stayed there. This tells me that bias is not electronically altered below threshold braking.

On a side note the Stoptech calipers and even the rotors to a lesser degree run drastically cooler than the Rotoras. Many times after the drive home from work the calipers are just a few degrees hotter than ambient. This means heat is not being transferred into the fluid nearly as much as the Rotora kit that would be seriously hot after a normal drive.

I just barely started looking into it but it looks like the 350z, g35, Evo, and WRX use the same rear caliper. The WRX has smaller pistons so at least we have a little selection and hope that they might possibly work depending on the TLs stock piston area and what size rotors we end up with.

Nevermind, I see EG has already done the homework. So it looks like STi calipers are the way to go if we do a larger diameter rotor. I might seriously do this after I see what diameter rotor it would take to get me to stock or close to stock bias.

 

Also, maybe the RL caliper will work as long as you use one of the rear calipers with more piston area, rotor size can be used to adjust bias as well.

 

It took a while to find it but here's a great brake bias calculator. I am a little surprised at how much of a difference in bias pads can make. This should help a bit because while most of our inputs will not change you can plug in the different piston sizes and rotor diameters. http://www.tceperformanceproducts.com/bias-calculator/

 

I still believe There is no reason the RL caliper wouldnt work or make things worse. Especially if you get a upgraded caliper in the rear. Even so i see no reason that people shouldnt run it, The 2nd tl/cl gen side has been using them for some time, along with the legend 2 piston caliper with much success and better braking

Maybe it needs to be looked into how the RL is running the setup properly without issue

 

See Austin, you just gotta ask the right questions.

 

The problem is people say "it stops on a dime or braking is improved, it stops awesome", etc etc. How many of those people measure stopping distances before and after? We can't go on feelings, this is something that should be measured. You can't sense the difference in 20' of stopping, well some can but many can't. A car with more front end dive will feel like it's braking harder at a given deceleration rate than one with a stiffer suspension. Too many variables making measurement the only way to determine what stops better.

You don't want it to require less pedal effort for a given deceleration rate when you're replacing just the fronts. You want it to require the same pedal effort. People associate less pedal effort with better braking and in our case the opposite is true. We're not trying to make it "easier" to brake by requiring less pedal effort. We're trying to run a stiffer caliper that will give better feel and less deflection along with even application of the brake pads and a larger rotor that will reject heat quicker and no where in the list of benefits of a "better" caliper is less pedal effort.

How many of these guys have measured stopping distances or done controlled back to back stops from high speed to see if there's an improvement in fade resistance? I'm guessing none because my Rotora kit, a kit I consider just for looks added 30' to my stopping distances which is HUGE when you're trying to avoid the car stopped in front of you and they were not "off" as bad as the RL caliper is. I have a feeling if these guys measured before and after stopping distances there would be a lot of hurt feelings.

 

Crap man.... Haven't you been reading this stuff? We aren't making it up.

Yes it may be possible to "make" them work well if you build custom rear brakes too. The problem is that with the larger piston diameters all around, you are going to end up with a softer brake pedal that travels further toward the floor as well as a mis-calibrated ABS system.

At least you can drive around and feel like your pimpin' with several grand in custom brake upgrades that nobody will notice and possibly ruin performance. But whatev'.

 

so i guess am keeping the same AT calipers and just getting 2 piece rotors

Thanks for making it easy for me IHC and 94eg! :thumsbup:

 

Stupid ugly calipers though

 

True....just put some caliper covers on there Austin...its not worth to mess up the brake bias...

plus I love the firm pedal feel which the TL gives me which am not willing to loose....which I will if you upgrade front and rears to BBK....

 

^He's already running RDX covers. They look great. He's just being a fruitcake.

 

Yep

 

I have with the Legend calipers (when i had them on, one needed a rebuild after a lapping day so i put the stocks back on) they gave much better pedal feel, especially under repeated heavy braking and did slow it faster with less effort.

When you had the rotora on did you try different pads? Pads can and do make a huge difference as well. I know when i ran the Axxis Ultimates (by far the worst pad i have EVER owned) there was a huge difference in stopping, especially once hot. To the point of after 3 laps i pulled i the pits and pulled them off because they were dangerous. I have run EBC greenstuff pads with glowing red rotors and on fire that had more bite while braking than them.

 

Is this known for sure, or a Possibly have softer pedal and travel further to the floor? My buddy with a C5 vette upgraded to a 4 wheel BBK (that he tracks) and has no ill effects from softer pedal or mis calibrated abs

Which is why i said there should be no reason not to make it work, especially with custom rears as well. I dont know how the 3rd gen abs works, but in relation to what i have driven in the 2g and other cars on the track with BBKs, i havent experienced a reduction in braking performance but have seen improvements (though i should add that on the track where far stickier tires are used and weight transfer is even more a little less bias is some times wanted) . Also like i said, the RL is running them without the negative side effects you are pointing out. It looks as though they are running a slotted rear rotor (with the same parking brake drum built into the brake hub setup) and maybe something you guys can look into. Also as a possibility changing out the booster or master cyl to compensate for the added piston volume (i have change them out in the past on other hondas ive raced to allow for the larger calipers)







And, Im not disagreeing with you, yes BBKs can really mess up the braking if the purporting is way off, and SHOULD be considered. But more work and testing (by members willing to try) needs to be done before scaring everyone off

 

As long as you get a BBK that retains bias, pedal feel can actually be better. The Stoptech kit retains stock bias with a larger rotor. To do this means less piston area than stock which by itslf will mean slightly less pedal travel. Coupled with the stiffer caliper and no slider mechanism you will get better pedal feel over stock. The Excelerate Stoptech BBK kit is one of the cheapest I've seen at just over a grand.

 

The RL likely has more piston area front and back which is fine. It also has different weight distribution.

The real problem is quantifying an improvement without measurements. With my front bias heavy Rotora kit the ABS felt more aggressive most of the time. There were some pretty hard pulses and screeches but what I noticed after a while is there were some long periods of release as well. So yeah, you get what feels like more aggressive abs but I'm the end stopping distances are longer because the abs gets all screwed up. Sometimes mine would go nearly half a second with no brake application because h apply and release characteristics were totally different. If you get a kit that retains bias you don't need to swap master cylinders and such.

I did run the H2 street and H6 race pads on th Rotora kit. I did think braking was improved because it felt like it was. In the first measured tests they were promising but when I took it to the same piece of road I did the stock brake tests I was in for a shock.

 

Which is why i mentioned that it it should be looked into. It may work out well, it may not. One wont know till its tried

Just had to ask (about the pads as ive seen so many have issues with brakes thinking it was the rotors or calipers causing the issue when it was the pads)

 

"You don't want it to require less pedal effort for a given deceleration rate when you're replacing just the fronts. You want it to require the same pedal effort. People associate less pedal effort with better braking and in our case the opposite is true. We're not trying to make it "easier" to brake by requiring less pedal effort."



Oh fuck.... that what I am afraid. I knew that I have huge bias in the front with my 14" rotora and with the stock rear. But your description is concerning me more.

So the question is if I get the 4 pot wilwood or the heeltoe custom bbk in the rear will it get even out since I have the 14" rotora?

 

You can use that calculator I posted. You don't need all of the info, just rotor diameter, pad friction coefficient, and piston size/area in order to compare to the stock system or with larger aftermarket rear calipers.

 

Surprise surprise...

TL uses a 13/16" Master cylinder.


RL uses a 7/8" Master cylinder

 

Never realized it but the 2000 TL uses a 1"

 

Who is talking about a 2000 TL?