ShakeNBake

You have to remove the pistons to install the pucks. It's a giant PITA.

DC640

Shake n bake - how many sets of pads have you gone through? When are people noticing pucks getting messed up? I assume near 20 days?

orthojoe

Pucks get messed up if there is pad tapering. No pad tapering, no cracked pucks

Inrev

So far no tapering on Ferodo DS 11.1 pads. Did brakes this week and pucks were all good.

ShakeNBake

Just put the 8th front set of DS1.11 on.

I see very limited tapering compared to 997.

DC640

Ive been using endless me20. I don't see any tapering. Only on my first set 60% usage.

BGB Motorsports

the Stoptech replacement pistons have made their way into all of our race cars over the past few years, and have proven to be an awesome solution for the cracked pucks without breaking the bank. We are working on getting the kit added to our site, however in the meantime the kit runs $895 shipped to your door (includes replacement pistons, and new seals/dust boots). To help prevent heat from transferring from the pads to the pistons/fluid, we can add Girodisc Titanium pad shields for an additional $180.

RENN GTS

What this man said. Your dealer will appreciate the new brakes too

pkh

My pucks look ok from what I can tell but dust boots are pretty cracked up. Assuming the titanium pucks wouldn't help much in preventing that happening? Are the StopTech pistons more reliable in that way?

RacingBrake

So you are an instructor, have you ever shown and told your student to inspect their brakes before an event, and did you know the brake set up (eg. street or track pad) prior to accepting the duty; and after that "incident" have you ever investigated the root cause, and advise your student & shop prepared the car with your recommendation how to prevent it from happening again.

You should add more detail, fully disclose the story where you get the rotors and pads (track or street pads) from, so other members can learn from your experience and judge if it's a misapplication (avoid making same mistake); or it's a mfg defect (stay away from the same vender) with your supporting evidence.

This can make your case more convincing, and beneficial to Porsche tracking community, and above all make yourself become a more responsible instructor.

Clark-ApexPerformance

Warren you are back.

JRitt@essex

Gents,

Something to keep in mind about our Essex/AP Racing brake kit is residual value. When it's time to sell your car, you'll be able to remove our kit and sell it for about $6-7,000 on the used market (our kits typically bring about 65% of their retail price on the used market). That's a large chunk of your initial investment coming back to you, and your OEM equipment is going to be sitting clean and pretty on your garage shelf. As orthojoe mentioned, you're also not going to be thrashing your OEM calipers. If you rag them out and want the car to look clean at the time of sale, you're most likely going to be laying down a considerable amount of money just to make the brakes presentable. $7k coming back when you sell your car vs. any amount of money going out is a serious delta. If you have to buy even one new caliper ($900) and front and rear pads ($1,000)...you're creeping up on a $10k difference between the two options! Nobody wants to sink money into something that they're about to hand off to someone else.

When you factor in residual value, you'll find that your long-term sunk costs aren't going to be any higher with our kit than they are modifying the stock equipment. The difference is, with our kit you'll get to enjoy all of the performance and convenience benefits, dropping over 30 lbs. of unsprung weight, etc. You'll also have fresh, unmodified OEM parts waiting to go on the car at the time of sale.

We've been through this a million times in other markets. It always goes the same way...After people run our complete system for a while, they don't ever return to OEM calipers for track use if they can possibly avoid it. Too many compromises, too much time wrenching, and too many missed track sessions for anyone to go back.

Thank you all for your continued support!

Yargk

Is there any brake bias difference? That is, what are the piston sizes stock vs. the AP kit, on the front and rear, and what is the pad width and distance from the hub (radius that it seeps). All other things being equal, it seems that it might be very slightly more front biased because of the 390 mm front disc.

TRAKCAR

ShakeNBake

Thanks for the advice. Yes, being in that incident was a series of small mistakes. However, in the end, I only need to ask a student one question. Do you have any racingbrake products on your car? If the answer is yes, I don't get in.

It was a check-ride, from a "Hot" pit situation. I was not the primary instructor. The car was a virtually brand new Turbo S (.1 or .2 generation), with yellow calipers. If I had looked more closely I would have seen PCCB rotors had been replaced. All I asked was my typical new porsche question - are the pads in good condition? - and the owner claimed they were brand new with one or two sessions on them (and I assumed at that point, not being careful, that we were talking about OEM porsche PCCB parts). If I had asked the question, "are the brakes on your 180K car OEM", I would have discovered that they were not. If I had asked "What shop worked on your car", I would have discovered it was not the dealer who did the mandatory inspection, which was signed by both parties. If I had asked "what parts are on the car", I would have learned that "it was the best brakes money could buy that would fit on his PCCB turbo (as pitched by the shop)". All of these questions were asked AFTER the incident, which was my mistake, and potentially a lesson for everyone getting into any car. Every bit of information you don't have that influences your decision to sit in that seat is putting you at risk. I learned that my intuition was wrong that day. Another mistake, now that I am outing mistakes today, was to let the student drive faster than 120mph.
I don't think of myself as an idiot about brakes. I've always worked on my own brakes, from heavy duty trucks to minivans to 24h-lemons/chump cars, to race cars. It's pretty difficult to screw things up if you are using quality components and are careful. But, as it turns out, not everyone uses quality components because they don't know any better. So I guess my advice is for everyone to KNOW BETTER.

Hope that is what you were looking for.


I am sorry to be responding adjacent to the previous enthusiastic fellow. I really appreciate that there is a GT4 fitment, and you make a great case to everyone here. Typically I have found, as you point out, that high quality used components can get anywhere from 60-75% of their original investment, so if this were 2 years ago when my car was new and totally stock, without a doubt, this is the direction I would go for all the reasons you point out, along with both the evidence and reputation that AP products are of the highest quality. At the moment I have OEM sized AP discs (and new spares, and a lot of DS1.11 pads) and calipers that are no good to anyone, so I will be rebuilding them with BGB's kit.