Early miata brake upgrade question

I'm making progress on my GT6, adapting the Miata uprights front and rear. So I thought I should start looking into upgrading the brakes. The Miata parts I'm using are from a 1993. right now I don't want to spend the money on a aftermarket big brake kit. It seems like Miata brakes just get bigger and bigger as the years go on. What are my options for swapping to later Miata parts?

Thanks Jake

P.S. The max hp I foresee will be 350hp. I also plan to us 17" wheels so clearance shouldn't be an issue. The car will be a daily driver with as much track time as I can manage.

Flyn' Miata said: Mazda put three different sizes of brakes on the Miata. All the 1990-93 models shared 9.3” front sand 9.1” rears. 1994-00 models used 10” fronts and 9.9 rears. In 2001 the larger “Sport” brakes were introduced. These brakes became standard in 2003, with 11” discs in front.

The first two use the same calipers with diferent brackets I beleve, and the "sport" brakes use diffrent calipers.

Keith- correct me if I am wrong!

I seem to remember that the 1.8l NA front brakes with the '01-up 10.9" rears and matching prop valve is the hot ticket. That is going by my arguably E36 M3ty memory though, so I could totally be confused.

Yup. Three basic factory options.

1990-93 (aka "1.6")
1994-02 (aka "1.8") - same calipers as the 1.6, just change the brackets, pads and rotors
2001-05 (aka "Sport") - larger pistons in the calipers front and rear. If you want to run these front calipers, you'll need the appropriate brackets, pads and rotors - they can't be run on the brackets for the other front calipers. They require a longer flex line as well. The rear calipers are a straight replacement, so you can run them on any size bracket.

There's a lot of fun to be had with master cylinders and boosters as well.

Keith Tanner wrote: Yup. Three basic factory options. 1990-93 (aka "1.6") 1994-02 (aka "1.8") - same calipers as the 1.6, just change the brackets, pads and rotors 2001-05 (aka "Sport") - larger pistons in the calipers front and rear. If you want to run these front calipers, you'll need the appropriate brackets, pads and rotors - they can't be run on the brackets for the other front calipers. They require a longer flex line as well. The rear calipers are a straight replacement, so you can run them on any size bracket. There's a lot of fun to be had with master cylinders and boosters as well.

Thanks for the info. With all that established, let me make sure I'm on the same page. If I want to upgrade to the 2001-05 brakes I'll need;

In the front:

01-05 rotors

01-05 calipers

01-05 caliper brackets

01-05 pads

In the rear;

01-05 rotors

01-05 calipers

01-05 pads

90-05 caliper brackets

And just to make sure too, the 01-05 caliper brackets will bolt to the 90-93 spindles/uprights?

Yeah, all the uprights and brackets are interchangable.

I wouldn't go for the Sport brakes, pads/rotors are more expensive and if you really need that much brake, I'd buy the full Wilwood setup from any number of vendors and call it a day.

There's no such thing as 90-05 caliper brackets. The bracket determines the diameter of the rotor you can use as well as the pad you'll use. So you can consider the brackets, pads and rotors to be a unit.

Any of the rear calipers can be bolted to any of the rear brackets. The Sport front calipers will only fit the Sport front brackets.

Any bracket can be bolted to any spindle/upright.

That last sentence there is what I meant.

Sounds good. Thanks everyone for all the info.