mx5cartalk.com

To cut a long story short, the brakes on my SE are hopeless. My NA was running Bendex pads with slotted rotors, and the brakes in it were fantastic. I'm pretty sure my SE still has original mazda pads (99% of my problem), but I was tossing up with the idea of upgrading the front calipers, using the Willwood kit (Regardless of whether I retain stock calipers or not, I'll be running Hawk blue's). My question goes out to those rare few who have upgraded their calipers (regardless of brand) - What setup were you running before (ie pads and style of disc), and how much better is it with the new calipers.

If its miles better then yes I may consider this, but since the willwood kit only uses 11" discs, and (according to DBA) the standard disc is 10.63", is it really worth the money for the new calipers?...

Why bother with Willwood when you haven't upgraded your pad type or even gone to slotted rotors?

You don't track the car so you definitely don't need to upgrade your callipers as you’ll NEVER get near the braking limit of the standard callipers driving on the road.

Hawk Blues are suitable for the track and not really for the street. They need to be warm to work so if you head off down the street on a cold morning even the Willwood’s won’t pull you up on the first application. Another thing with Blues is that you will be replacing rotors every 7,000 kilometres.

PS the brakes on the SE aren't hopeless, there's plenty of dedicated track SE's that don't have a problem with them.

I'd definitely be trying new pads first. The Willwood kit is complete overkill for the street (unless you're after the bling factor ).

What problem are you finding with the factory brakes?

Post from an earlier thread.

mx52nv wrote:I highly recommend it if you are really pushing some big horsepower (errm say 200 rwkw??? I do not know what is the definition these days ) AND you have reached the limit of your brakes (after using the best pads, rotors & brake fluids). Otherwise, if you have never experienced brake fade, spongy brakes or smoke/fire after continuous hard braking then it probably is not necessary.

However, if it is for 'bling' (as 16bit mentioned) then at least the Goodwin/Wilwood BBK will fit under most 16"x7" wheels. There are other 'bling' brakes out there (i.e. Brembo, Alcons by Trust, Project Mu, Endless do a 6 small piston caliper ) for more money but they are usually fronts only and will require much larger wheels (17" & above) and playing with offsets to clear the brake caliper to wheel spoke issue.

I hope this provides more information to make your decision

hawk blues will chew through expensive rotors very quickly from all accounts. I would have a look at the carbotech range of pads. they are a kevlar based pad much like the oem akebono's from mazda. apparently they last quite a while and are quite rotor friendly. Before my next track day I will be purchasing some of the xp10s for track work only.

either way the carbotechs are available for the willwood and stock calliper.

found at www.949racing.com

Also if you are going to get a big brake kit I would consider waiting for 949racing's kit as they will be using a new version of the dynalite calliper which is forged - not billet which will make it much more rigid and you won't get pad tapper that you can get from the billet version. I personally don't think you will NEED to get a big brake kit but hey you didn't NEED to modify your SE at all so go nuts as far as I am concerned. Cars for enthusiasts are about doing what you want, not what you need.

I have done a tonne of reading on all sorts of big brake kits available for the mx5 and the willwood based kits are the most cost effective (that I have found) if you really want to head down that road. You can go and spend an absolute fortune and get a Biot, Tarox, Endless, AP Racing, Brembo versions but are they that much better? For the road I suspect not. But I stand by that a lot of braking is about the friction so as everyone will tell you make sure your pads and rotors are up to scratch - then fluid - then feel components like lines and master cylinder stoppers - and if after that you are not happy then upgrade callipers. But as I said if you really want to do it then got for gold - at least you are not wasting money on a 400kg stereo.

The Hawk Blues are incredibly abrasive when cold. Also as someone who uses race pads on the car when it's on the street I will warn that they produce an amazing amount of brake dust when cold. It's also not wheel friendly, you DO need to clean it weekly minimum as it will etch into the wheels. The lower level Hawk HP+ already takes a brake to get your full amount of friction, I imagine the blues would be even worse so for the street. My DS3000's were pretty good in this respect though. I'm currently running XP10's front and rear (I broke them in yesterday night) so I'll see how those go. My car primarily for the track though, I don't use it too often on the street.

I'd take the advice of the others and just get an aggressive street pad like a HP+ and put in a lot of RBF600. Then start evaluating where your cars at.

If your bent on a brake upgrade kit though Daniel Deckers is currently making an AP racing kit. You'd have to ask him for the exact details but It was a much beefier caliper/rotor and it was designed primarily for racing.

I think many of us would prefer an AP kit over Wilwood but the cost is a killer.

If someone developed a kit using similar hats/rotors to what Wilwood use then i'm sure we could get a few people to pitch into a group buy.

So who's good with CAD?

We ran STD SE brakes on our race cars for months with no problems. The only reason we went to the Skyline ones was due to pad knock off on the sliding caliper and the cost of decent pads with for the Mazda OEM ones.

Lou's running his SE at Phillip Island this weekend with STD SE brakes and Blue pads. They are a great set up on or off the track so I've got to agree with these guys.... if your SE brakes aren't working there must be a problem with your pads/fluid/rotors.

Keep in mind this sort of mod (caliper and rotor) requires an engineers certificate here in NSW which can run to big $$$$ as you may need a full brake test. Also talk to you insurance company about mods to your brakes - you dont want to find out your not covered after the fact

Whoops posted in the wrong post.


A good set of Pad (Hawk HP or Carbotech) DBA 4000 slotted rotors would be more than enough for a mainly road going SE.

One of the SP replica's which started out as Lou's SE ran at Bathurst FOSC with the above set up and until the last race of the weekend was beating Mania's SP with an AP set up. You don't need to waste the money on a willwood or similar setup unless you want it for show.

Just to give you a guide I'm currently putting an AP set up similar to Mania on my SP race car but you can expect to pay north of $4,000 with pads.

Neil

Unless you're talking about track use I'm buggered if I know what you guys are doing with your brakes to find the factory setup inadequate. Why are you so hard on them? If you want to go fast then flogging your brakes wont help you, they only slow you down after all.

I would never describe the standard NB8B as "hopeless", in actual fact they are the best brakes I've ever had on any of my cars, and the SE uses uprated pads so they should be even better. It sounds to me like you may have a problem with your brakes Fuzzlet. Maybe the pads or rotors are glazed or the caliper pins seized? Perhaps firstly you should optimise what you have already rather than spending the big bucks on new hardware. Unless of course your after bling, in that case go for it. Afterall, there's nothing wrong with bling. I bought some slotted rotors last weekend. I only chose slotted over normal for the bling factor.

Have the brakes ever been bled? Seriously, the OEM stuff tends to go bad with time. I would start with RBF660, check to see if the discs are glazed; try a different set of pads as others have already mentioned. (not that the OEM pads are crap to begin with)

If your still not happy, feel free to dish out $ for bling brakes/rotors/calipers.

Lots of great information here guys, thanks.

The problem I get with my brakes is that when I'm on the brakes hard, it just doesnt have that inital bite is really soft. I'll start out initially with some decent rotors and pads, and progress from there. Car will be eventually hitting the track once I find time to get down there

As Liam has shown, if the NB8B brakes don't have good pads, are well bled, well maintained etc. the difference is chalk and cheese.

I assume the Wilwood set-up at its worst (within reason) should be at least as good as the stock brakes at their best.