Has GRM done a high end Brake comparison?

I was thinking they take JGs zo6. And test some of the household names in brake kits. Brembo, Willwood and Baer are obvious choices to me but there are others and at least one of the lesser known ones should also be included. 

Test with manufacturers recommended rotor and a quality pad (same pad on all manufacturers stuff). Then test with the mfgrs recommended pad.  Try and keep the price points of the brake kits similar (may not be possible) but we don’t want to test carbon fiber rotors against cast iron. Specific tests could include.   

test fade

stopping distances averaged over three consecutive 0-60-0 runs

lap times??

Then the subjective ones would be feel and DD use  

Love it - seems a significant portion of those upgrades are cosmetic only for 99.999% of all cars.

Would also love to see them try the ghetto big brake kit - Front rotors/calipers all the way around on the C5.  Its a bolt on if you lose the parking brake, bolt-on-ish using C6Z51 rear rotors if you machine the caliper mounts.  

There may be an issue with them being advertisers and as such that could put the “brakes” on this idea.  

Just to be difficult, "high end" and grassroots are tricky to make happen together. It can be done, but often isn't. 

I'd rather see a way to get 80% of the performance for 40% of the money. That was what drew me to the magazine 20 years ago. I see it less and less. 

It's all about the tires

DrBoost said:

I'd rather see a way to get 80% of the performance for 40% of the money. That was what drew me to the magazine 20 years ago. I see it less and less. 

If you keep saying that you're going to get in trouble and someone will accuse you of making it personal

Suprf1y said:

DrBoost said:

I'd rather see a way to get 80% of the performance for 40% of the money. That was what drew me to the magazine 20 years ago. I see it less and less. 

If you keep saying that you're going to get in trouble and someone will accuse you of making it personal

Uh Oh. Did I miss something? What happened this time?

Just some relentless trolling

Marjorie Suddard said:

Just some relentless trolling

Ahhh. 

I've trolled before, but I'm too lazy to be relentless. 

That made me lol

I can assure you, I was not trolling then and I am not trolling now.

Look, I’m sorry I disagreed with you, and defended my position like an actual human being who cares about what they do and helped create. I understand this originally dates back years ago to an interaction I frankly don’t remember, but perhaps we can move on. Read the magazine, don’t, like me, don’t... but please stop.

Margie

Well, that would explain your response to what I thought was a legitimate question.

I promise you, nothing of the sort is occurring on my end.

Dam this went sideways in a hurry. 

eh, dude’s one of those rare “cranky” Canuckistani’s and well if you look at his posts, he’s Mr. Wet Blanket more often than not.

I think he needs to get some socialized meds to help balance his mood.

Ahhhh. Needs a Snickers kind of thing going on here. I get it. 

93gsxturbo said:

Love it - seems a significant portion of those upgrades are cosmetic only for 99.999% of all cars.

 

Would also love to see them try the ghetto big brake kit - Front rotors/calipers all the way around on the C5.  Its a bolt on if you lose the parking brake, bolt-on-ish using C6Z51 rear rotors if you machine the caliper mounts.  

That is a great point. Obviously we would want a base line on stock added in to the mix to see what the upgrades get you. 

AngryCorvair said:

It's all about the tires

That may be an issue in the testing as well. I was thinking that with the Z06 being on the heavy side and having wider tires it would be a good test platform for this kind of thing. 

You can stuff some fatty meats under a C5, so should be able to get to the threshold of reasonable braking.  Besides, this would be excellent to see which companies did their homework and which companies made stuff that looks great but in reality only helps you with style points.  Would also be interesting to try a C5 and a stock C6 Z51 with the exact same wheels and tires and see which one can stop faster, since some folks will upgrade C5s to C6 Z51 spec brakes.  

I would love this comparo.  The C5 is often regarded as under-braked since its old school tech compared to the bad boy Brembos on the CTS-V and AMG offerings.  Is that true, or did the GM engineers do their homework and the big bad Brembos are 90% marketing and gee-whiz factor?

Would also be great to see the differences between an early (97-00) and late (01-04) C5 with identical brake and wheel upgrades, since the early cars used a standard proportioning valve and the later cars used an active proportioning valve as part of the ABS.  In theory, the later cars should always stop about the same regardless of what brake hardware is installed (holding tire grip constant) , the only thing you are buying yourself with a brake upgrade is fade resistance and feel.    

Trivia time:  All C5s use the same calipers, but the Z06 has red ones.  Red makes you stop faster.  

I would think a Corvette would gain far more through proper selection of pads, than it would through upgraded hardware 

Now, if you were to do the same to an Integra, or Focus or something cheap with less than perfect brakes, you might have an interesting story.  Do all the testing on tires large enough to clear the largest brake package, and use the same pad compound with all calipers.

dean1484 said:

There may be an issue with them being advertisers and as such that could put the “brakes” on this idea.  

Actually, GRM did a Miata brake test a couple of decades ago and, well, it didn't end well for our product. Long stopping distances due to bias problems. And they said so. That impressed me.

Now, if they tested our current offerings, I think they'd be pretty happy  

You can't do a test like this on single stop distance, though. As Angry said, that's just tires. All the brakes can do is fail to take advantage, and with modern ABS and EBC it's pretty hard to screw that up. What would be useful would be some sort of instrumented data on a cold stop - showing how long it takes for the brakes to start to work - and a controlled test of heat management on track. That's where you'll start to see the pads separating themselves from each other.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Pad separation is why I wouldn't suggest testing EBC offerings. 

It's a valid idea, but one that is hard to do fairly.

So say we test 5 different kits.....do we use the same car to keep things "fair?"   Well then, we'd have to do five complete braking system changes, making this a multi-day proposition.    Also, the temps of the track are important, as we don't live in a vacuum, so if we were changing brake packages, we'd have to be sure the ambient temps were the same, the moisture the same, and that the tires hadn't worn during the previous testing.......which means 5 sets of tires...... on identical wheels.   

As you can see, while  this is a worthwhile test to undertake, there are so many variables, it's extremely hard to come up with real, scientific data.   We aren't afraid of letting you know how awesome, or unawesome these packages are, regardless of advertising........but we do want to be sure that every competitor gets a totally even shake----- and that's very hard to do with so many variables.    

captdownshift said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Pad separation is why I wouldn't suggest testing EBC offerings. 

 

I believe Mr. Tanner was referencing Electronic Braking Control, not EBC the brake component manufacturer (who has long since solved the brief manufacturing issue with their brake pads, but that's neither here nor there).

Yeah, sorry - should have been EBD (electronic brake distribution). I don't know anything about EBC pads.