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So....considering the upgrade. Have a tech inspection on Friday, which will result in new pads up front for COTA, and perhaps the rear as well. If the pucks are cracked, may bite the bullet.
My car is not a track only toy, and I do drive it to work a few days a week, to keep everything lubed up, etc. Is a mix of OEM/Radi-CAL deemed acceptable? If I go all 4 corners, how is this going to behave on the street (after bedding, etc?)
TIA
Our kits are designed for off-road use only. That said, there are a whole bunch of people using them in different manners and environments. I'll let others chime in on that topic. You can also check out our blog to see lots of owner feedback on our kits: https://www.essexparts.com/news-blog
In terms of what to expect with our kit overall in terms of 'livability'...The calipers are designed to take brake pads from many different manufacturers. That's part of the beauty of them. You can find many flavors of pads that will work in them (although most stick with our Ferodo recommendation). Since all pad manufacturers make the 'same' shape to slightly different tolerances, some pads will fit tight in the calipers and others will be looser. That means the pads can sometimes move a tiny bit end to end. That would manifest itself as a clunk when you switch from forward to reverse and back. We have a spring clip installed in the bridge of the caliper to combat vertical pad movement, so that's not an issue. Our discs have little springs on every other hardware stack, so even though they are floating they do not rattle or make noise. The J Hook slots on the disc face are designed to create more leading edges for the pads to bite into, which is awesome on track. They do make some slight whirring noises however. One can hear those when driving near a wall, when the sound is bouncing back to your ear. Squeal is really dependent on pad choice, but pads like the Ferodo DS2500 offer near-silent operation.
In terms of front-only vs. front/rear, either way works. The brake torque output on our front kit is extremely close to stock, which means the front-only kit can be integrated seamlessly with the OEM rears. In other words, the car won't know that anything has changed, and it will behave as it normally would. We've had several Corvette customers in particular do our front-only kit on their Z06 or ZR1 with carbon ceramic brakes. The fronts on those cars always wear out far sooner than the rears, so they installed our front kit when they were toast and left the OEM carbon ceramics on the rear until they wore out at a later date. There's nothing wrong with that strategy.
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'09 Carrera 2S, '08 Boxster LE (orange), '91 Acura NSX, Tesla Model 3 Performance, Fiesta ST
Jeff Ritter
Mgr. High Performance Division, Essex Parts Services Essex Designed AP Racing Radi-CAL Competition Brake Kits & 2-piece J Hook Discs Ferodo Racing Brake Pads Spiegler Stainless Steel Brake Lines
704-824-6030 jeff.ritter@essexparts.com
Thanks for the reply, Jeff. Hopefully someone will chime in.
I’m very familiar with the acoustics of the rotors, I think I have had J hooks for almost 4 years now. Sounds more like a rattle to me, though.
Just concerned that the ultra efficient cooling factor is going to make ‘street’ braking non existent. Don’t want to jack anything up just running errands.
Thanks for the reply, Jeff. Hopefully someone will chime in.
I’m very familiar with the acoustics of the rotors, I think I have had J hooks for almost 4 years now. Sounds more like a rattle to me, though.
Just concerned that the ultra efficient cooling factor is going to make ‘street’ braking non existent. Don’t want to jack anything up just running errands.
First, thank you very much for the purchase on the discs! Terms I've had people call the J Hook noise: Whir, scrape, thump, rattle, buzz...along with all sorts of noise imitations I can't spell.
The primary determinant of street braking is going to be your pad choice. The pads dictate the level of 'cold bite' your brakes have. The Ferodo DS2500 is a fantastic sport pad with great cold bite, and can even perform light track duty. With the proper pads installed, there definitely shouldn't be any concern about them running too cool to be effective.
FYI...One of our e92 M3 customers just wrote a lengthy long-term update on our Competition Brake Kit. He's been using it for five years and 55,000 miles. This particular owner also has a GT3RS, and I believe he may be here on Rennlist as well. I pasted his review below, and you can see the original on the m3post at this link: https://www.m3post.com/forums/showpo...&postcount=322
From "FogCityM3" on m3post.com
Long term update on the Endurance BBK:
55,000 miles and 20 track days later, I finally had to swap the rotors in my Essex BBK. While there were only very tiny heat cracks on the rotors, pretty sizable pad grooves had made a ridge in the rotor, making some parts of it pretty thin, so I decided to swap rotors in abundance of caution (realistically could have had probably 2 more track days on the rotors). I was one of the original purchasers of the V1 Essex/AP Racing Endurance BBK and have been super satisfied with it over the past 5 years. I’ve talked a lot before about the stopping power, which is amazing but these brakes are also very durable. A few of the key things that I’ve noticed about the kit that have been awesome in owning this kit:
No need for piston dust boots: Notice that people say you should have the rubber dust boots at the pistons for street use. After 55k miles, numerous fluid flushes and track use, and the street use involved canyon driving in wooded and coastal areas with lots of dust, sand, tree leaves/debris, puddles, etc and nothing ever got stuck in a piston. Dust boots will melt on the track and the pistons already have silicon seals from the inside so nothing will get stuck in the piston. Worrying about the kit not having boots on the street is a non-factor.
Extremely Durable: Twice at the track, I under estimated how much pad wear I actually had after few sessions and had metal to metal contact where I had to do a pad swap. In spite of my mistake, the rotors were actually fine (was caught early but still..was was a little surprised that the rotor was pristine)!
Run much cooler: My friends and all track E9x and F8x M3s. A few times at the track, I brought in an IR surface temperature gun and we compared temperatures among my car with the Essex endurance kit, my friends E92 with stock rotors and Pagid pads and my friend’s F80 with stock rotors and Pagid Pads. Coming off the track, my rotor surface temperatures were about 40% lower than the other two setups (about 350-400 degrees vs 580-700 degrees). That is crazy!
Brake noise: The brakes make a little more noise than stock (pads rattling, making groaning sound when you first back up especially after the rotors have been wet in the rain), but honestly after having experienced cars with stock BBKs right out of the box (brakes on GT350R or 911GT3 RS) this kit is no noisier than these stock brake kits. The rear pads now come with clips and inserting these clips really cuts down the pad rattle.
Super satisfied with the kit and given my car now has 100k miles, will probably be the last set of fronts that I’ll need as won’t be tracking the car as much as my last set and plan to drive this car for another 50k-60k miles. I recently got a 911 GT3RS and plan to replace the PCCB with the Essex/AP racing rotors while keeping the stock Brembo calipers. Also, I used to have a GT350R and the race versions of the car the FP350S and Shelby Mustang GT4, cars that consistently some of the fastest in their race series, both carry Essex-designed AP racing rotor kits. While the stock brakes of the 350R were fantastic (I told Essex they should make a rotor only solution while keeping the stock caliper), they did run extremely hot and I think just used size as a way to dissipate heat.
Awesome job, Essex/AP Racing. Thx for 55,000 blissful miles
Hi Sean in Texas, I am running the same AP/Essex setup on my GT4, which I drive primarily on the track, and occasionally on the street. The kit has performed superbly on the track, and I have not had any problems driving it on the street. As Jeff mentioned, Essex sells the kit with spring clips that keep the pads from clunking up and down, so that type of noise is not an issue at all. In my opinion it is fine to run this setup on the street as long as you are willing to visually inspect your pads from time to time (the kit is not compatible with the OE pad wear sensors), and you are able to keep the car away from salt and heavy road grime. The calipers do not run dust boots, so in theory some road grime could get on the exposed edges of the pistons, but I don't think that would be problem unless you push the crud into the piston bores when you are changing pads. That should not be difficult to avoid though, as you just need to wipe off any dirt from the sides of the pistons before pushing the pistons back in to make room for the new (thicker) pads. I would add that if you plan to run race pads on the street, they may be quite noisy, depending on the pad. I run Ferodo DS 1.11 on my car and they are noisy as hell on the street. The good news is you can swap to street pads very easily and quickly without removing the calipers. If you do plan to swap pads back and forth, just be sure that both the street pads and the race pads are from the same manufacturer, so you don't end up with pad deposits on the rotor.
Hi Sean in Texas, I am running the same AP/Essex setup on my GT4, which I drive primarily on the track, and occasionally on the street. The kit has performed superbly on the track, and I have not had any problems driving it on the street. As Jeff mentioned, Essex sells the kit with spring clips that keep the pads from clunking up and down, so that type of noise is not an issue at all. In my opinion it is fine to run this setup on the street as long as you are willing to visually inspect your pads from time to time (the kit is not compatible with the OE pad wear sensors), and you are able to keep the car away from salt and heavy road grime. The calipers do not run dust boots, so in theory some road grime could get on the exposed edges of the pistons, but I don't think that would be problem unless you push the crud into the piston bores when you are changing pads. That should not be difficult to avoid though, as you just need to wipe off any dirt from the sides of the pistons before pushing the pistons back in to make room for the new (thicker) pads. I would add that if you plan to run race pads on the street, they may be quite noisy, depending on the pad. I run Ferodo DS 1.11 on my car and they are noisy as hell on the street. The good news is you can swap to street pads very easily and quickly without removing the calipers. If you do plan to swap pads back and forth, just be sure that both the street pads and the race pads are from the same manufacturer, so you don't end up with pad deposits on the rotor.
Thanks for the feedback Mr. S! Glad everything is going well for you.
Thanks for all the orders gents. Our brake kits have been flying out the door over the past couple months! We had a great customer report on disc longevity the other day, which I'm hoping he will share here soon.
Below are a couple more customer cars that were just up-fitted with our Essex Designed AP Racing Radi-CAL system. Feel free to share pics, video, and track reports if you have them gents.
Thanks for all the orders gents. Our brake kits have been flying out the door over the past couple months! We had a great customer report on disc longevity the other day, which I'm hoping he will share here soon.
Below are a couple more customer cars that were just up-fitted with our Essex Designed AP Racing Radi-CAL system. Feel free to share pics, video, and track reports if you have them gents.
Porsche | Audi | Ferrari | Lamborghini | McLaren
Performance Tuning | Motorsport | Factory Service
Pirelli World Challege Race Team GT/GTA/GTS/TC
Pirelli GT3 Cup Trophy USA
Porsche Motorsport — Audi Sport Customer Racing — Lamborghini Super Trofeo Series
Thanks for all the orders gents. Our brake kits have been flying out the door over the past couple months! We had a great customer report on disc longevity the other day, which I'm hoping he will share here soon.
Below are a couple more customer cars that were just up-fitted with our Essex Designed AP Racing Radi-CAL system. Feel free to share pics, video, and track reports if you have them gents.
GMG's Project GT3RS shop car
TPC Racing customer car
Beauties! How much weight savings is there when compared to stock calipers and rotors?
Beauties! How much weight savings is there when compared to stock calipers and rotors?
Thanks! Our system saves 33 unsprung lbs. vs. the OEM iron brakes. That's considerably more weight savings than the Weissach Package, for a lot less money.
05-14-2019, 09:55 AM
