Travis - sflraver

The 6 or 8 pot calipers would be fine if you were upgrading both the front and back at the same time.

To answer your question from the top of this post, it is possible that we will come out with something for the Turbos, but the kits at hand are geared towards and only for use with the NA cars. These are not for Turbos. You have comparable brakes to these on the Turbo from the factory.

Throwing a 6 pot caliper on the front of an NA without adjusting the bias or MC would not be a pretty sight. Yes it could be done with smaller cylinders to help reduce the volume of fluid needed but that would negate the point.

Everyone makes stuff for the Turbos. To my knowledge this is the first serious brake upgrade kit for the NA that costs less than $1K to implement. NAs need love too.

Porsche-O-Phile

HEAR HEAR!!!

So are you in fact running this system on the rears also? The earlier posts were unclear about this. Matt says the bolt points for the rear calipers are different than the fronts, although I kinda' thought they were the same. . . Can you get two sets of these and run 4-piston Wellwoods on the front AND rear without bias / balancing issues? Obviously you're going to realize more benefit by upgrading the front than the rear, but I'd prefer to do both due to (1) interchangeability of parts, (2) simplicity, and (3) it wouldn't look stupid.

Geo

Three cheers for Travis!!

Sadly, I am not allowed to partake. But perhaps this may help to spark new interest in developing quality proven parts to improve the performance of the NA.

Matt H

Am I in an alternate universe? All of a sudden, I am a newbie? I realize what you have done, my question was, are you going to be offering a similar 6-8 piston setup for the Turbos at a later time. I realize that EVERYONE makes a kit for the Turbos...maybe it was my nice way of saying I would rather buy from you than EVERYONE.

I didnt need the discussion on using 6 piston calipers on an NA which would be overkill beyond even this (which is also overkill). Simply put, I was asking if you were going to find a way to use the Wilwoods in a Turbo application (apparently, the answer is maybe).

Has anyone noticed that the new Brembo offering is no longer the Big Red setup? It is a much smaller caliper, however, the kit is running almost 2K dollars.

Just to be on topic, what is the advantage to doing this versus just grabbing a set of used 944 Turbo calipers/rotors? I am sure someone is thinking it but they havent asked yet.
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Travis - sflraver

The bolt holes for the rear caliper mount points are wider than the front.
They only look silly until you start going deeper into corners than the Turbos before you have to start braking.
I have seen absolutely no bias problems what so ever running just these in the front with stock to the rear. The bias problems would appear if you went with a larger 6 or 8 pot caliper and tried to keep the rears stock.
The angle with this kit is to get the most "plug and play" braking bang for your buck out of the NA. To stop as good if not better than a Turbo by changing out as few parts as possible. Adding the rears, in my opinion, would be a waste of money. If you just want them for looks then go for it. I will make you some custom adaptors for the rear.

jaje

they did look slightly different...the dyna lites did have a big cotter pin retainer so changing the pads was easy and didn't require removal of the calipers...the dynalites were of good quality so i'm certain these should be great

as someone just mentioned you would be able to make a front & rear kit...i'm not on the market anytime soon but in the future that sounds like a good option (the quick pad changes at the track was a blessing)

Travis - sflraver

Matt O. should drop by later with a better answer to that one. He is in the final stages of such a converstion to the 951 setup on his 89NA / S3.

Serge944

I wasn't aware of this. Is it because the caliper itself is small or because the piston volume is so big, leaving it with a very poor surface to volume ratio and not allowing the brake fluid to cool. I'm sure better fluid would have helped.

Geo

Easy Matt. Nobody is calling you a noob.

However, as Travis and I both said, you really don't want to to putting a 6 or 8 pot set-up on either car without completely redoing the system. You'd have to do the fronts, the rears, and the MC and probably still have to dink around with bias.

Matt H

The cars have adjustable bias with little work. The fronts would clearly overpower the rears, though, I dont see this stopping people from using BRs on the front with stock calipers on the rear. If you get much larger than the stock caliper in the rear you actually run into the OTHER problem, too much rear bias. The stock MC is not that great a setup so lets say you could go to a 8 piston caliper (not at all uncommon in the Japanese car world), run a LW 16" wheel, and add a better than stock MC for less than the cost of a BR upgrade (never mind wheel cost) it would be very worth while.

Long day, ignore my rants, I am raising puppies and trying to finish up some work, just testy this morning.
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Porsche-O-Phile

Thank GOD someone is starting to give the poor, oft-ridiculed n/a cars the love and respect they deserve. They're outstanding cars and could certainly benefit from a few upgrades like this. . .

Matt O.

Travis says this because he has been kind enough to once again answer multiple phone calls from my garage while I'm fighting my way through this conversion.

Let me tell you a few things that might help you make your decision:

1. Changing out front NA brakes with 951 brakes is a PITA. You need calipers, rotors, brakes, and front spindles. With the Rennbay kit you pull off one caliper and install the other. You get new calipers with the same braking area then the turbos, without all this hassle.

2. I would have gone with the Rennbay kit (trust me, talked with Travis on the phone many times about it) but I had already started the process (purchased calipers, rotors, etc) and to ship all that stuff back to the vendors because I "changed my mind" would be a small fortune. So since I was already deep in the process with the car up on jacks and front suspension pulled out I decided to stick it out.

3. After I finish this crap up I still have to take it in and get an alignment because I had to change spindles. That's ANOTHER 100 bucks at least. Pushing me far above the $650 Rennbay sale pricetag.

4. Finally: Cost -- OMG don't get me started.
USED front 951 calipers -- $300
Front rotors -- $150
USED front spindles -- $125
Pagid Black pads (comparable to the E-class Wilwood pads) -- $200
Stainless steel lines (as the Rennbay kits comes with) -- $85
Finally an alignment when you're done -- $100
Cost in bandaids for all the bloody knuckles -- haha.

So for you math whizzes out there that's about $960 for the fronts. And that doesn't even include all the shipping I paid (you will pay, rotors/calipers are heavy). Good luck.

jaje

the wilwood polymatrix pads don't last very long...i ran b compound at track days and Q compound for the street...they were ok but i wound up getting a set of performance friction pads for track days and they made a very noticeable difference in stopping power and fade

fezz

Travis,
I like the new calipers very much!
what other brands make pads that can be used with these 4-piston calipers?

Travis - sflraver

We went with the A class compound over the B, which you used, because of its much greater Cf at tempters under 600ºf. This means the A class pads require no warm up period to work at their full effective rate. Until the B class pads warm up they have a comparable Cf to that of a performance street series like the E class we offer. Greater pad wear is noticeable but no more so than any other racing pad of its level.

For street pads we chose to offer the E class pads. Though they are a little more dusty than the Q pads, they offer a longer pad life with a higher and more even Cf curve.

Here is a comparison chart of the different levels of pads. The top chart is the racing series and the lower one is the mid level (street) series. We offer both the A class pads and the E class pads. They top Cf rated pads in each catagory.