LSX Brake Upgrade

After a much better year running M030 brakes on the race car, they still weren’t where I was comfortable with. I was still getting some brake fade after running them hard, and while they stopping power was ok, it still wasn’t up to my standards, so I wanted to get that addressed.

I found a deal on a lot of brembo calipers on ebay. It just so happened that a full set of GT3 calipers were in there.

GT3 calipers are about $1000 each, and have a limited lifespan due to the ceramic/zircon piston/puck assembly. These caliper pistons have this yellow puck on the end of them to reduce heat transfer. The problem is that after track use, the pucks separate from the piston. Often times guys will be changing the brake pads, and a puck will fall out and hit the ground and crack, so you have to replace the entire piston/puck assembly. To properly rebuild a caliper using the Porsche motorsports parts, you are essentially at the cost of a new caliper, so most people throw them aside and slap on a new set.

This is a piston removed from the caliper, how it should look as one piece.

So I wasn’t going to buy new oe pistons to have them just fall apart again, so I installed a set of stainless steel pistons which eliminate the yellow puck/aluminum piston. The S/S will transfer less heat which means less boiling brake fluid. In the future rebuilding the calipers is as easy a replacing the seals.

New piston installed next to an older piston that has fallen apart.

And one caliper rebuilt.

After going through them all, I got the fronts mounted on 350mm rotors. It was nice having a bunch of spare old stock brake parts laying around!

Since I had upgraded the front suspension to late offset last year, I decided it was time to convert the rear as well, which meant all new wheel bearings, etc. I did find play in one bearing that could have contributed to some of the braking issues as the pistons get pushed back into the caliper as the rotor has a slight wobble.

And the longer stub axles and hubs for late offset.

And the rear calipers mounted up on 350mm rear rotors.

At the end of the season, I was getting a little clunking in the rear when taking off from a stop, so I figured the transmission mount was moving around excessively. I installed a solid transmission mount to help take care of that.

Old rubber mount allows too much play for a track car.