vc123

does anyone knows if stoptech's BBK fits the 04-06 TL's stock rim ?

fan_bo

yes it does .. i have the stoptech kit and i test fited the stock rims before i put my rims on.

vc123

hey fan_bo, i realized that u also live in toronto. Do u mind telling me where u got the kit and where u had it installed?

Allout

How much is the Stoptech kit?

94eg!

I think the msrp is around $1700 - $1900 for the front setup, and it's only available for the "NON brembo" 3G TL models (no 6MT or TL-S). I think this is the best brake kit on the market too. Wish they made them to fit small civic wheels...

vc123

1700-1900 usd? or canadian ???

94eg!

First one, then the other...

Excelerate

iTrader: (1)

Stoptech has a few options for their BBK's. Drilled or slotted rotors (drilled are extra), and they offer a zinc coating. From their site:

The coating benefits customers who live in cold climates where snow and road salt are commonly encountered, and customers who would prefer to not have visible surface rust on the vanes and outer circumference of their rotors. Zinc coating does not have a negative environmental impact like other coatings. Gold

If anyone needs a Stoptech kit PM me. I have a special going on on them.

BustedJack

^ I almost bought stoptech but I went with your Rotora.

Excelerate

iTrader: (1)

ROTORA is excellent also. I like both. It just depends on what the customer wants.

vc123

what's the differences between rotora's bbk and stoptech's ???

94eg!

Stoptechs kits are specifically balanced to each individual year/make/model of vehicle. This is done my custom tailoring piston size of the calipers. What this does is slightly shift brake balance rearward making the car stop in less distance by getting the rear tires to reach their full potential. Plus thir kits have floating rotors (like the brembo GT kit) that keep the rotors from belling outward under extream temperatures.

Hands down best kit on the market. I don't even understand why people consider Rotora...

Excelerate

iTrader: (1)

While I do think that Stoptech is a great company and their product is excellent, let's not tarnish the reputation of ROTORA. ROTORA too has a floating 2 pc disc. They offer a 1 pc disc for economical reasons. But since ROTORA's kits are "specifically balanced" please calculate for us why that isn't so:

Rotora 4-piston caliper for Acura TL/TSX/CL piston size: 38.18X42.85mm

Disc=330mmx30mm 2-piece float disc (1-piece disc is optional)

Oem caliper for Acura TL/TSX/CL piston size: 57mm single piston sliding type

Oem disc=300x28mm

Please calculate for us the balance of ROTORA's BBK.

94eg!

Well based simply on the piston sizes, Rotora has already screwed up.

OEM caliper:
57mm diameter = 8016.586 mm/sq

Rotora caliper:
38.18mm diameter = 3596.761 mm/sq
42.85mm diameter = 4530.451 mm/sq
Total piston area: 3596.761 + 4530.451 = 8127.212 mm/sq

Now comparing the before & after: The rotora kit is INCREASING front brake torque with their caliper alone due to the larger piston area. And this does NOT even include the larger rotor diameter which further increases front brake torque. This in turn increases stopping distance because it results in the front brakes locking up sooner than normal. Can you say "confused ABS computer"... Rotora is for looks, plain & simple. I would NEVER put their junk on any of my cars (not that I could afford a BBK anyways)...

Here is some good reading material for anybody interested:

Brake Bias (why it matters): http://www.stoptech.com/tech_info/wp...formance.shtml

Big brakes, ABS, and you: http://www.stoptech.com/tech_info/wp...rakekits.shtml

Rear brakes (is bigger better): http://www.stoptech.com/tech_info/wp...upgrades.shtml

Excelerate

iTrader: (1)

Let me ask you, what is the front to rear brake bias on ROTORA's, Stoptech's, and even Brembo's BBK?

94eg!

I don't know how to express "balance" in a tangable form. I only know how to calculate & compare piston area. This helps us figure out if the manufacturer was at least attempting to "balance" their kit. If you can get me the piston sizes of those kits, we could go from there. In the mean time, I can at least comment on these kits based on what I've seen/read:

Well, we now know for sure that Rotora pushes brake bias forward from stock based on the combined piston area as well as the increased rotor size.

Brembo GT kits have also been shown to be detrimental to stopping distances. I read an install on the 350z (base model) where the GT front kit basically ruined the stopping distance of the car. Of course the fade resistance was increased, but that's not the only important aspect of your brake system.

Wilwood even goes as to clearly state that brake bias is effected with the install of all their kits. They recommend that adjustable proportioning valves be used in conjunction will all their big brake kits...

Stoptech "advertises" increased rearward bias from stock via smaller combined piston area for shorter stopping distance. Their system starts by calculating proper piston size vs rotor diameter to maintain the same brake bias.



Then the pistons are shrunk even further to help reduce front end brake bias to the point shorter stopping distance can be achieved without reducing braking stability. This can only be done via on-car testing:

Excelerate

iTrader: (1)

Your assertion is that Stoptech is balanced and has a floating disc and therefore is superior to ROTORA and Brembo. But how do you come to this conclusion other than reproducing graphs and #'s. How do you calculate balance and what makes a kit balanced?

Since you vehemently assert that ROTORA is "junk", you should be able to prove this very easily.

94eg!

I already explained how it's "balanced". If your so concerned, find the piston size of the other kits. I don't need to do that for you. I say Stoptech IS properly balanced because of the fact that they explain what it means and how to do it. I therefore trust that they would apply this theory to their kits (they do go through all the trouble of explaining it). If I were to buy a kit from them, I would certainly get more details like piston sizes. The fact is that I believe in their design philosophy.

I already proved how the Rotora's kit is improperly sized for ALL the applications you've listed. I don't know what else you want. I would gladly prove/disprove the same thing with any other kits if you care to take the time to come up with the piston sizes.

csmeance

one question, does stoptech make a rear BBK for the TL? On their site it only listed a front one...

94eg!

No they don't (because there are no performance benifites for FWD). Personally I would just paint the rear calipers to match and be done with it, but I know some people prefer the look of the BBK on both front & rear...

Allout

Calculation of Piston displacement and using that as a determination of brake bias is very narrow thinkking. There are many other factors to consider. Pad material, pad surface area, rotor swept area are just a few.

The Rotora 1 piece kit is an adequate kit for street and light track. The 1 piece kit is affordable. Repalacement rotors are not outrageous either. And to say that they are just for looks is just rediculous.

Stoptech does a good job explaining their philosophy through their white papers. I've spoken with the People at Rotora and Stoptech many times. Rotora's piston sizing is designed to work as a package with a stock master cylinder. The whole kit was designed as a unified kit to produce the desired effect. In my opinion, it does what they set out to accomplish.

lookinco

I guess it was very stupid for me to have 4pot Rotora BBK on both front and rear of my TL then.

Allout

LOL - If you wanna go fast, you better be able to stop fast

Did you go with 2 piece rotors all the way around?

CleanCL

iTrader: (4)

i'm running 4piston front rotoras 2 piece and 2piston rear rotoras 2 piece, my car stops on a dime.

i'm not understanding your argument. it seems you are basing it on 2 things:
1) surface area
2) brake bias

1) surface area - you are discrediting rotora BBK because they have MORE braking area than stock? this confuses me. please elaborate.

2) brake bias -
a) rotora designs their kits to be using with the stock master cylinder. i'm not sure what kind of serious brake bias one would experience on the street. also you said a rear BBK is pointless, but wouldn't this even out brake bias. i ran a front BBK for about 8 months, then added a rear BBK, and i felt the car's braking was much more responsive. mainly when braking during high speeds and into corners. i felt i had more control.

i use these kits, you cannot even afford one. what's your argument again? graphs and numbers?

94eg!

You guys misunderstand me. I say a rear BBK isn't necessary as long as you have a properly designed front BBK. If your front BBK pushes brake balance forward, your simply overworking the front tires. Then to counteract this, you need to have a rear BBK installed. And furthermore, most people don't even bother with any real before & after testing. Therefore they would NEVER know if their BBK stopped sooner or not. These are the people that think Rotora's front BBK is the sh!t...

Perhaps it wasn't the cheapest route for lookinco & CleanCL to get performance brakes, but it was their only option if they wanted Rotoras. He could have paid half that for a Stoptech kit since he wouldn't have needed the rears. I don't think it was "stupid", I just think it's unnecessary cost that only nets looks and not performance.

This isn't rocket science guys. Perhaps you "think" my viewpoint is narrow, but the fact is it's still spot on for the front BBKs I'm talking about...

Larger front caliper piston area = more forward bias
Larger front rotor diameter = more forward bias
Even lowering the car = more forward bias
More forward bias = longer stopping distance

And don't think for a second (allout) that Rotora uses less sticky pads to reduce front bias in their system. That would just be a dumb idea to start with (bad initial bite) that would result in many unhappy customers right out of the box. And pad surface are has NOTHING to do with brake balance (duh)...

BTW: The brake master cylinder isn't even part of the proportioning system unless you have a dual master cylinder (and Honda's don't). And just based on the fact that the Rotora kit has MORE piston area than stock proves that it was NOT designed with OEM master cylinder in mind. Larger piston area = more pedal travel.

Stoptech: Only need a front kit because it's been properly designed!
Rotora: Need both front & rear kits because their front kit is NOT properly designed!

94eg!

Here is further proof that a front BBK (not front & rear kit) should have less piston area to maintain balance:

Automatic TL 11.1" rotors = 57mm front piston (8016.56 mm/sq)
Manual TL 12.2" rotors = 38mm & 42mm front piston (7915.42 mm/sq)

Both systems use the same brake master cylinder (46100-SDB-A11)...

Excelerate: Stoptech doesn't give out their brake systems piston sizes (I tried).

CleanCL

iTrader: (4)

why would a larger braking surface area result in front bias causing longer stopping distances? more surface area to bite down on means less pedal force needed to stop the car.

i think everyone that has rotora BBK on the front only can vouch their stopping distance has improved.

the whole idea behind increasing the number of pistons from 1 to more is not how much space it covers. so the rotora kit does cover a slightly more space than stock, but i don't think that matters. what it's doing is distributing the braking force more evenly across the rotor. rather than focusing all in one spot, its spread out. it makes sense to me, hence the reason tons of guys on the 2G CL forums warp their stock rotors.

94eg!

When you say "larger braking surface", your dealing with a very generic term. Brake torque has to do with only 4 things: pad coefficient of friction, rotor diameter, caliper piston size & fluid pressure. The rotor is the moment arm that generates the torque leverage. larger rotor = longer arm = more torque. The piston area, pad friction & fluid pressure are what put the pressure on that moment arm. More piston area = more force for a given fluid pressure.

As for the stopping distance part, that is explained below (again)...

I'm sorry, but I didn't see anybody come forward with some actual measured before & after braking distances. I would wager that people only think their distances are better as a placebo effect (or they weren't using their stock brakes to their full potential). And since I personally know their pistons are too big for the application I can confidently recommend that people stay away from their product...

As I said before (10 times or so), larger piston area creates more brake torque. More brake torque on the front overworks the front tires (compared to the rear). This causes the front tires to loose traction (locking the front brakes) earlier than before leaving the rear tires underworked. Since stopping distance is a matter of getting all 4 tires to do as much work as possible, the result is a longer stopping distances...

The only reason for increasing the number of pistons, is to even out the wear characteristics of the pads. Because the leading edge of the pad stays cooler than the trailing edge, the pad wears unevenly across it's surface. Putting more pressure on one end than the other creates more even wear. And since you have more pistons, you can use a larger pad which gives longer wear and has less initial thermal shock on the pad material itself (like you said it spreads it out). Also moving to a large fixed caliper design reduces caliper flex resulting better pedal pressure & easier modulation.

An interesting note is that no 6 piston (or more) caliper is stiffer than a 4 piston one. The only reason they use them in racing is to get a larger pad that will last longer...

On the subject of warped rotors: The reason most people "warp" their rotors is simply because of the pad compound their using. Rotors don't actually warp. The vibration is caused by an uneven deposit of pad material on the rotors surface. This happens when the pad material is overheated and becomes sticky. The deposits build up on certain areas of the disc causing a "runout" problem (especially if you stop the car with hot pads/rotors). To fix this it requires the rotors be machined, or at least re-bed with a more aggressive pad compound. The reason it becomes a chronic problem is because most people reinstall the same pad compound after the rotors are cut/replaced. Of course the problem just comes back if they continue their aggressive braking habits.

A more aggressive street pad, typically keeps the problem from coming back.

CleanCL

iTrader: (4)

go over to the 2G CL-S forums and search warped rotors, it goes far beyond the what you are talking about.

Excelerate

iTrader: (1)

Interesting contradiction. And yet Stoptech is balanced b/c they say it is, but ROTORA says the same thing and they are not balanced according to 94eg!.

Then (Originally Posted by csmeance
one question, does stoptech make a rear BBK for the TL? On their site it only listed a front one...)

94eg!'s response:

Interestingly, he modifies his statement again:

Hmm.. Oh what's that? Stoptech makes rear Big Brake Kits too, even for the Acura TSX. What is wrong with them? 94eg! has clearly told us all out of his extensive knowledge that rear BBK's have no performance benefits yet Stoptech makes those too.

I will tell you now 94eg! so I don't have to check this thread everyday to see what else you copied from Stoptech's site. ROTORA's BBK's typically always have a larger piston over stock. Why? B/c ppl don't want to spend $2,000 to have the same feel as stock. Stoptech typically matches piston size to OEM or slightly decreases it. Now, some ppl like that. Some ppl want a BBK w/ an enlarged rotor with less brake fade and better pads but not with a more aggressive pedal. But other ppl want that more aggressive feeling. And you know what? Neither are wrong. Stoptech adheres to one theory and ROTORA another. And neither are wrong and neither is out of balance.

Case in point: The H2 Hummer. ROTORA has a 405MM disc w/ a choice of 8 or 12 piston caliper setup for the H2. It is slightly larger than OEM and stopping distances have been improved. Stoptech was also making a BBK for the H2 Hummer. Do you know why it isn't out? B/c they couldn't improve upon braking w/ smaller or same size piston size and so they eliminated that project. Ppl aren't going to pay for BBK's only to get a stock pedal feel (despite the improved pedal feel of the SS brake lines) and worse braking.

I will do this too for you. I have a customer with a E46 M3 that I did ROTORA 6 piston front BBK and 4 piston rear BBK, both 355MM discs. This car stops on a dime. I didn't do a before and after test but I did do braking before and after and ROTORA's kit has much more leverage over stock brakes, and a much mor aggressive pedal. I am doing Stoptech Front and rear BBK's on a E36 3 series next week. I will let you know the difference. I am going to bet that the Stoptech will feel simlar to stock and will brake well, but it won't feel like the ROTORA BBK's. And as I said before, that is alright b/c ROTORA and Stoptech have different philosophies on BBK's. It's like asking you what qualities you think a good woman should have. Well you may say she must be pretty, kind, and independent. I would say beautiful, industrious, humble, and a good homemaker. And neither would be wrong.

Allout

Well said Excellerate.

I'm more into real world results and not reguritation of information from Stoptechs white papers.

This thread reminds me of the magazine racing that people do over in street encounters. Information from printed material but lacking real world experience.

lookinco

Okay so I just went out and did some test with my TL. I tried to put it on video but it turns out you can't really see much, or maybe the camera man (my friend) sucks!

Here is the current setup on my car:
Front 330mm rotor cross drilled and slotted one piece rotor. 4 piston caliper.
Rear 330mm rotor cross drilled and slotted two piece floating rotor. 4 piston caliper with E brake.
Front and rear stainless break lines. Pads are the ones that came with the BBK from rotora.

So I did a few runs from 50km/h-0, 80km/h-0, and 120km/h-0 with both TCS on and off. Basically my impression is that the brakes performed very well. Car is very stable with no sign of sliding or fish tailing. Steering control was excellent. I was able to steer my car while hard braking (similar to what they teach as to do before racing on the race track). It was very hard to tell if the front or the rear brakes locked up first as the ABS came on and the car came to a very quick stop.

All in all, I do not know if Stoptech or Rotora is better. But I sure know that I can depend on my Rotora if I need to stop my car.

I hate cars

I'll dig this one up from the dead. Found it in my search for Rotora's brake bias and a rear BBK. I have two questions but I think one has been answered already. 94eg! I couldn't agree more with everything you've stated.

I have a 13" Rotora BBK on the way soon. My stock auto brakes have plenty of pad left at 85,000 miles but the rotors are blue and starting to crack from heavy use. I was wondering if the 13" kit tried to match the factory brake force to keep brake bias the same as stock but it looks like they may not.

The other question is does the TSX rear BBK fit the TL? I found a kit that's just rotors and a stock caliper relocations bracket which is all I need. Rotors are 12.2". This will obviously shift balance toward the rear a little with the larger rotor and the same caliper. However I have a good 100lbs of subs in the rear and the liklihood of the Rotoras increasing front bias so I doubt I'm going to have any issues with premature rear lockup. I guess the only way to tell for sure is to try it out.

So I guess the main question is will the rear TSX BBK work on the TL. After that I'll try the Rotoras first with the ABS fuse pulled and then install the rear BBK after I have the results of the front by itself. I could so easily end up with longer stopping distances than stock if the balance gets screwed up.

CSWBiggs

come drive my car fool....


-Jason

wasupdog

iTrader: (2)

the problem with the 3G tl for rear aftermarket bbk applications is that the e-brake is integrated into the caliper jig somehow. that's why there are so few rear bbk options and why they're all expensive...and why i would guess that tsx rear bbk's probably won't work for our cars. or i would say that they would have already been advertised as compatible with tsx's and tl's if they were since that would be way less work for the bbk companies.

CSWBiggs

you are sadly mistaken my friend...we do have drum ebrakes...and standard single piston floating rear calipers...

do your homework before one speaks...

thanks buh bye

-Jason

I hate cars

I'll meet you at Willow.

wasupdog

iTrader: (2)

eh my bad. i just remember seeing that our ebrake set up makes it more complicated to put a rear bbk in there? there was some reason there's only 1 option (rotora) and that the rear kit is more expensive than the fronts.

CSWBiggs

you have to remember...

that rotora's parent company manufactures for most of the OEM automotive companies...they have all of the specs for just about every car in their database...hence that's why rotora does indeed have the largest aftermarket application guide of any brake company...

-Jason

I hate cars

That's good info. Coming from the Domestic world I had never heard of them. But Wilwoods are everywhere albeit mostly in drag racing.