Prioritizing Brake Upgrades Discussion

[Brick]

HPDE and Autocross Brethren,

I present to you a question that may lead to debate!


How do you prioritize brake upgrades?





I do an HPDE maybe about once a year on average, autocross occasionally and do spirited drives about once a month.



Personally, I think with a stock fiesta and how I roll, my brake upgrades would go something like this.

0) better fluid (30ish dollars)
1) better pads (250ish dollars)
2) brake ducts/ cooling (100ish for the front, 993 deflectors if needed for the back)
3) ss brake lines. (100/150ish) *Honestly, I'm not sure how much of an upgrade this is other than it may lead to better brake feel, but.... can you really tell if you aren't doing track days over and over and over?


Bang for buck, I think that's how it goes in my book. With how little I go out for real track events, I was debating if cooling the front brakes would be more cost efficient than running pads for the track.

What do you guys think?

 

[praecurvo]

Sounds good to me.

 

[Siestarider]

Until someone tests rotor and caliper temps on track, we have no way to know what cooling needs might be. I changed to Motul fluid because my instructor recommended it, not because brake fluid boiled on track. OEM pads work great on track, and my new set came in to local dealership last week, so they must be available again, much less than $250. SS brake lines probably serve more to protect fluid from water vapor than anything else.

If you are successfully braking just shy of ABS threshold, you are limited by tires, not brakes.

 

[WhiteFords]

I have overheated brake fluid on the track in my Mustang and did not want to repeat that experience in my FIST. And since I was flushing out original fluid and bleeding the brakes anyway, I swapped out the flex lines as well. For $100, they will last the life of the car, unlike the stock rubber lines.

I did an open track day at Sonoma Raceway over the weekend with the car. With my friend driving it four twenty-minute sessions, he experienced zero brake issues. And he drives hard. He is a NASA Pro license holder with lots of door-to-door racing experience.

We were pleased with how well the brakes held up with just fluid and line upgrades. How well would the brakes have held up if they were completely stock? I will never know. But for about $130, the fluid and line upgrades were good insurance.

Forgot to add: the ESC was turned off for all the track time.

 

[GAbOS]

I've read that braked based traction control adds unneeded heat. Would swapping to a true lsd and disabling the feature be easily doable and yield brake longevity on longer runs

 

[Siestarider]

I have experienced front brake intervention (traction control, with ESC fully off) under power at corner exit. Installed LSD 2 weeks ago, have Sebring day coming up end of month. Looking forward to it, as when I became competent enough on track to want more traction, adding the LSD seemed the only way to do it.

From what other members have reported, I expect improved inside wheel power, but to my knowledge there is no way to completely disable TC without also disabling ABS. Ford Racing has a module to do this for tracking older fiestas, but I do not know if it works on 2014 and up models.

 

[GAbOS]

Thanks for the info!

 

[rodmoe]

You can disable TC and ESC but torque vectoring (quasi e-diff) will always be on and the brake module from what I've read will not fit the ST as it has a different plug and pin out. I've worn out rear pads but the fronts seem to hold up well. Will see how this plays out this weekend as I will be back at RA where last year I wore out a set of week old rear pads. This year real pads and factory rotors will be tested Carbotech XP10's.

 

[Brick]

You can disable TC and ESC but torque vectoring (quasi e-diff) will always be on and the brake module from what I've read will not fit the ST as it has a different plug and pin out. I've worn out rear pads but the fronts seem to hold up well. Will see how this plays out this weekend as I will be back at RA where last year I wore out a set of week old rear pads. This year real pads and factory rotors will be tested Carbotech XP10's.

worn out rear pads... wow... interesting. Guess that torque vectoring is pretty damn active. Good luck at RA this weekend and be safe, look forward to a report when you get back

 

[rodmoe]

Thanks and I was like da fook !!! Will report back as I can .

 

[Chuckable]

HPDE and Autocross Brethren,

I present to you a question that may lead to debate!


How do you prioritize brake upgrades?





I do an HPDE maybe about once a year on average, autocross occasionally and do spirited drives about once a month.



Personally, I think with a stock fiesta and how I roll, my brake upgrades would go something like this.

0) better fluid (30ish dollars)
1) better pads (250ish dollars)
2) brake ducts/ cooling (100ish for the front, 993 deflectors if needed for the back)
3) ss brake lines. (100/150ish) *Honestly, I'm not sure how much of an upgrade this is other than it may lead to better brake feel, but.... can you really tell if you aren't doing track days over and over and over?


Bang for buck, I think that's how it goes in my book. With how little I go out for real track events, I was debating if cooling the front brakes would be more cost efficient than running pads for the track.

What do you guys think?

I was in the same boat as you, and decided to go with a BBK from Wilwood. You're looking at spending about $500 on pads, ducts, and lines whereas the Wilwood kit is about $900. Sure, $400 is a big difference, but with that you get new calipers and rotors, and the overall weight is less than the factory set-up. Beware, though, that the Wilwood BBK does not come with rear lines, and not everyone likes the Wilwood pads.

Some people love the factory brakes on the track. Others have said they toasted the pads and melted the dust boots in one or two sessions. I think it more so comes down to how you drive and what type of track you're on, not to mention tires and extent of mods.

 

[Siestarider]

From my experience, the main factor is whether ESC in on, partially on, or fully off. When it is on, or partially on, if you drive aggressively on track, you will be amazed at your car control and you will also be eating your pads, especially rears, without realizing it. The nannies are elegantly subtle.

When ESC is fully off, rear braking does not appear to be used by the nannies, but the front brakes still intervene to prevent wheel spin on power application out of turns. I believe Rodmoe is correct, it is the torque vectoring part of the system that cannot be turned off. I miscalled it TC because that is what it feel like to me.

One caution, when I first turned ESC all the way off at the track, and drove the same line and pace that seemed quick in "sport" mode, I spun 720 in the third turn. Sport mode will protect you from lift-off oversteer under heavy lateral loads, but when its turned off, so is the protection.

I had not realized how dirty a spin into the grass is: dirt in my nose, eyes, had to vacuum the whole car after getting home. Luckily, a "no harm done" lesson in lift-off oversteer. I am still adjusting to driving FWD at limits, definitely different than RWD.

 

[GAbOS]

Trust me. Lift-off oversteer is real in my RWD e30 too.

 

[Siestarider]

Good point, I did not mean to discriminate, that particular incident just surprised me so completely that I attributed part of it, perhaps wrongly, to FWD. My '69 Elan provides a lot more warning on lift-off than the FIST does. But its a softly sprung car with lots of compliance despite the Konis. Since I had it painted French Lagoon Blue metallic its too pretty to track. Plus its electricals are built by Lucas, the company that invented darkness. Lost all my lights once at night during a fast run over the only hillly twisty road around here, nothing for it but brake and spin into a front yard.

 

[PhoenixM3]

.......Plus its electricals are built by Lucas, the company that invented darkness..........

Dying at this quote..... I know the following sentence about you losing lights during a night drive (race?) wasn't funny though....

 

[Siestarider]

I have to laugh too at the remembrance, Dad gets credit for that one, he owned a bugeye Sprite and a Jag 150S in succession, I believe it was while wrestling with Jag electricals he summarized his woes in that opinion to his curious son, me.

That particular front yard is full of trees now, and if I pulled that move today I would be dead. Not much impact protection in a 1340 lb car. Drove the rest of the way home by moonlight, could not get away with that today either. Turned out the plastic microswitch that controlled headlight relays just broke. Still working today after epoxy repair, because of course I could not find a new one.

Never liked driving that car fast at night again, although I recall a great dice with a Sunbeam Tiger running across the state one night later on, but he started it. He also admitted at a stoplight in Lake Wales that he had just put a new solid lifter 289 in it, because I could not believe I could not outrun a Sunbeam, tiger or not.

I hate it when folks loose the main thread and now I am the perp. That was fun.

 

[Brick]

Where are our guys like@raamaudio and [MENTION=283]meFiSTo[/MENTION] with their thoughts?

 

[Siestarider]

Back to business, I just picked up new OEM front and rear pad sets, total retail cost about $200. If you have a connection, wholesale from dealer is about $160.

I already opened up my fake fog light vents to run brake cooling lines, only to find the windshield washer bottle an impassible obstacle on driver side. So just have 2" holes blowing into lower fascia cavity.

I have not contributed data in a while, so I will commit to running temp paint on rotors, pads, and strips on OEM calipers next track day, 8/29. I have SS brake lines not installed yet, so will leave OEM lines on for this test, then switch to SS for next track day 9/5 and run same tests, see if there is any difference.

 

[meFiSTo]

Hello...been dealing with a little food poisoning here (did this to myself by eating leftover smoked turkey that was in the refrigerator a little too long). Anyway, my input is really kind of the low end of the spectrum. I've not added much power to my car, so it's pretty close to stock. There is the LSD in there now and it sits on coilovers with a very mild camber setup. With that in mind, your short list looks good to me. I'd personally rank the teflon brake lines higher than ducts since I have personally found them to be much more consistent for track day purposes. I'd do the brake ducts last. My ducts approach was simple, although probably less direct than some other kinds of ducting setups. Fluid, pads, brake lines kind of all go together. If you're going to do one, might as well do all. YMMV.

 

[Brick]

Back to business, I just picked up new OEM front and rear pad sets, total retail cost about $200. If you have a connection, wholesale from dealer is about $160.

I already opened up my fake fog light vents to run brake cooling lines, only to find the windshield washer bottle an impassible obstacle on driver side. So just have 2" holes blowing into lower fascia cavity.

I have not contributed data in a while, so I will commit to running temp paint on rotors, pads, and strips on OEM calipers next track day, 8/29. I have SS brake lines not installed yet, so will leave OEM lines on for this test, then switch to SS for next track day 9/5 and run same tests, see if there is any difference.

any updates?