Best Brakes around
Discussion
To all,
As some of you know, I am lucky enough to love cars and actually be able to indulge in this "expensive" hobby. I have track-dayed or raced quite some machinery and have always found the brakes to be THE determining factor for posting good times and having safe and lasting fun.
I have used Brembos (all of my Porsches including current Techart 996 Turbo with 540 hp), AP Racing (initially on the Cerb, but also the 6 piston setup on my Tuscan racer) and Movit on my Viper GTS and now the Cerb. These are by far and I mean it the best brakes around. The stopping power is unbelievable, and endurance is second to none. I drove my Viper for 12.000 miles mostly fast road and trackdays with no change of discs. More amazingly the famous Sport Auto magazine in Germany has run the 24 hours of the Nürburgring with a NSX last year and Movit brakes, with a top finish. The car is back this year with the same brakes, only the pads being changed!
In any case the guy to contact is André Schroeder on TVR@pt.lu he is the man for Movit.
Here are some pics of my car after fitting the beauties
<a href="http://www.movit.de/htm/tvrc.htm">www.movit.de/htm/tvrc.htm</a>
One of the big differences with AP or Brembo, is that the calipers are CNC machined from one solid block vs casting them. Huge difference in resistance and longevity.
Hope this helps all of those looking for more stopping power.
>>> Edited by gl911 on Friday 9th January 18:16
>>> Edited by gl911 on Saturday 10th January 19:09
As some of you know, I am lucky enough to love cars and actually be able to indulge in this "expensive" hobby. I have track-dayed or raced quite some machinery and have always found the brakes to be THE determining factor for posting good times and having safe and lasting fun.
I have used Brembos (all of my Porsches including current Techart 996 Turbo with 540 hp), AP Racing (initially on the Cerb, but also the 6 piston setup on my Tuscan racer) and Movit on my Viper GTS and now the Cerb. These are by far and I mean it the best brakes around. The stopping power is unbelievable, and endurance is second to none. I drove my Viper for 12.000 miles mostly fast road and trackdays with no change of discs. More amazingly the famous Sport Auto magazine in Germany has run the 24 hours of the Nürburgring with a NSX last year and Movit brakes, with a top finish. The car is back this year with the same brakes, only the pads being changed!
In any case the guy to contact is André Schroeder on TVR@pt.lu he is the man for Movit.
Here are some pics of my car after fitting the beauties
<a href="http://www.movit.de/htm/tvrc.htm">www.movit.de/htm/tvrc.htm</a>
One of the big differences with AP or Brembo, is that the calipers are CNC machined from one solid block vs casting them. Huge difference in resistance and longevity.
Hope this helps all of those looking for more stopping power.
>>> Edited by gl911 on Friday 9th January 18:16
>>> Edited by gl911 on Saturday 10th January 19:09
gl911 said:
That wasn't my point. My point was just that if one is looking for brakes there is a much more viable alternative to AP or Brembo and at a decent cost mmmmmmmmmm.
This becomes ever more important as certain german and italian manufacturers go down the "not yet right" route of ceramic composite brake discs which are all hunky dory if you pootle down the road but fall to bits if you cane the arse off the car or drive them on track.
This advice could be very useful if TVR decide to take the pi$$ out of their customers by supplying cars with components not fit for driving at 100%.
DAZ
I may be mistaken (and I probably am) but those brakes look suspiciously similar to the 'big red' Porker brakes on the 911 turbos.
Are they?? I know there are a couple of firms offering Porker 911 turbo brake conversions for multiple cars. I had a couple of 993 Carreras, and even though they're not Big Red brakes, they were very powerful and consistent on track days (even Snetterton which is a bastard for brakes)
AP may be F1 but they depend on the installation - my Noble had AP but they were shite compared with my 911s, and the Noble was 300 kg lighter.
Perhaps the equipment doesn't matter quite as much as its installation - I'm pretty sure the Griff only uses dodgy Ford brakes, but it feels pretty consistent on track to me.
Are they?? I know there are a couple of firms offering Porker 911 turbo brake conversions for multiple cars. I had a couple of 993 Carreras, and even though they're not Big Red brakes, they were very powerful and consistent on track days (even Snetterton which is a bastard for brakes)
AP may be F1 but they depend on the installation - my Noble had AP but they were shite compared with my 911s, and the Noble was 300 kg lighter.
Perhaps the equipment doesn't matter quite as much as its installation - I'm pretty sure the Griff only uses dodgy Ford brakes, but it feels pretty consistent on track to me.
The price including labor is around 2100 pounds front or rear. This includes new fluid, new stainless lines and performance pads. Having had the experience I have with both Brembo and AP, I believe this to be a very good deal. The work took half a day. This morning I actually took my 996 Turbo out and compared the calipers and workmanship, and there is a huge gap in quality, I guess that is the result of CNC machined vs cast. I am also changing the fronts on the turbo. I also know that these guys are the ones that supply the brakes for people like Putin, Kaddhafi and a bunch of other highly protected gov. dignitaries who drive around in 3 ton limos that need to stop.
that need to stop.Hello Cyberface,
the color is what makes these brakes look like the Brembos fitted on Porsches. These brakes are actually CNC machined from one single block of aluminium of a very different quality. At 80 bar pressure the calipers do not show any noticeable distorsion, while the big calipers on the Porsche GT2 will extend by 1.5 mm. 80 bar is the equivalent of a hard stomp on the brakes.
The disks are specific to Movit, you can actually specifiy the color of your calipers.
I am fairly big into brakes, and a friend of mine is in charge of business dev. for the company that makes the PCCB brakes for Porsche, and I could tell you many horror stories. Suffice to say that the manufacturer is in this case an industrial conglomerate that has just done what Porsche asked for, even though the manufacturer himself knew it was wrong. If anyone is ever interested, I'd be very happy to post more technical details and actually a couple of pics of destroyed PCCB GT2 brakes. But I guess that belongs into the Porsche section.
the color is what makes these brakes look like the Brembos fitted on Porsches. These brakes are actually CNC machined from one single block of aluminium of a very different quality. At 80 bar pressure the calipers do not show any noticeable distorsion, while the big calipers on the Porsche GT2 will extend by 1.5 mm. 80 bar is the equivalent of a hard stomp on the brakes.
The disks are specific to Movit, you can actually specifiy the color of your calipers.
I am fairly big into brakes, and a friend of mine is in charge of business dev. for the company that makes the PCCB brakes for Porsche, and I could tell you many horror stories. Suffice to say that the manufacturer is in this case an industrial conglomerate that has just done what Porsche asked for, even though the manufacturer himself knew it was wrong. If anyone is ever interested, I'd be very happy to post more technical details and actually a couple of pics of destroyed PCCB GT2 brakes. But I guess that belongs into the Porsche section.
Alright then,
First of all Porsche has made subtle change to its marketing on PCCB, check out the last sentence on the following page:
http://content3.eu.porsche.com/prod/911/carrera_models.nsf/usaenglish/safety_aerodynamicspccb
I find it amazing that brakes that are sold for the price of a small car as an option would not be able to cope with trackdays, specially when we are talking Porsche - and trust me I love my Porsche as much as my TVRs.
The first and most important one is that ceramic brakes are mostly a marketing plot. Why charge a lot of money for brakes that add a lot of problems while the std Porsche brakes have been known to be excellent? To make more money - as simple as that.
The PCCB will not work the way they should/could because:
Ceramic is an excellent isolator but it does an extremely poor job at absorbing and dissipating heat. The heat generated during heavy braking is not being taken by the ceramic disc. In addition to this, the ventilation is very poor, because it is currently technically impossible to make really sophisticated and "filigrane" vanes with a large surface to dissapate heat quickly from the ceramic disc. This is due to the extremely complicated maufacturing process for ceramic discs.
Thus the heat stays there and goes through the pads to the specially-isolated pistons and into to the fluid. Brake pedal failure is the consequence, which is what I experienced at Spa in a GT2.
Next, the reason why the ceramic discs are bigger ( 350 mm ) than the stock turbo 996 discs ( 330 mm ) is again only due to temperature. The same holds true for the bigger caliper ( 6-piston ) and the much bigger
pads ( 115 cm² instead of 75.5 cm² ).
The very first pads used with the ceramic disc ( same as the actual 996 turbo 75.5 cm² ) had to be extremely soft because of noise issues, thus the friction coefficient was far too low to achieve good deceleration / friction.
As a result of bigger disks and calipers, the gain in weight that was promised is smaller than anybody thought, also because of the
stainless steel ( v4a ) hats where the ceramic discs are bolted to, which are extremly heavy.
Thus the engineers kept running from one problem to the next, ending up with a system that has no real advantage, except that is if the discs don't brittle and the car is driven in normal conditions, and that is to outlast the life span of the car - but who would drive a GT2 for over 300,000 miles?
If you have friction ( and this is what you want and as much as possible ) you create a lot of heat. The heat has to be dissipated to make it possible to create new heat again, at each stop. Thus, you need a material which is suitable to take and dissipate heat. Today, that is still cast iron.
Cast iron can be manufactured, machined, perfectly balanced and so on for a fraction of the cost of ceramic / silicium or carbon discs.
In addition cast iron allows for the use of aluminium hats vs the heavy hats used for ceramic brakes. Cast iron brakes stop, they last and they are much more quiet than carbon or ceramic compounds.
By the way the carbon discs are also only suitable for light race cars, never for heavy street cars. No friction under cold conditions, high wear under extremly hot conditions which is needed to make the carbon brakes work.
The little weight advantage ( who of us actually feels 2-3 kg ) is not worth the problems and trouble that the other solutions provide.
Finally, after reading this who actually still believes that the ceramic brakes were put in because they were so much better than a std. system? I don't, and after trying them and talking with someone who is on the inside of the braking industry, I certainly think that it is a clever way to disguise a partial engineering failure with a clever marketing positioning and a high price.
I love the Porsche brand, but they should treat their customers fairly. (This by the way reminds me of the discussion on actual power output on the 4.5 AJP engine
I have some pics of the damaged disks for anyone interested in knowing what it looks like when close to 5.000 quid go up in dust.
gl911
First of all Porsche has made subtle change to its marketing on PCCB, check out the last sentence on the following page:
http://content3.eu.porsche.com/prod/911/carrera_models.nsf/usaenglish/safety_aerodynamicspccb
I find it amazing that brakes that are sold for the price of a small car as an option would not be able to cope with trackdays, specially when we are talking Porsche - and trust me I love my Porsche as much as my TVRs.
The first and most important one is that ceramic brakes are mostly a marketing plot. Why charge a lot of money for brakes that add a lot of problems while the std Porsche brakes have been known to be excellent? To make more money - as simple as that.
The PCCB will not work the way they should/could because:
Ceramic is an excellent isolator but it does an extremely poor job at absorbing and dissipating heat. The heat generated during heavy braking is not being taken by the ceramic disc. In addition to this, the ventilation is very poor, because it is currently technically impossible to make really sophisticated and "filigrane" vanes with a large surface to dissapate heat quickly from the ceramic disc. This is due to the extremely complicated maufacturing process for ceramic discs.
Thus the heat stays there and goes through the pads to the specially-isolated pistons and into to the fluid. Brake pedal failure is the consequence, which is what I experienced at Spa in a GT2.
Next, the reason why the ceramic discs are bigger ( 350 mm ) than the stock turbo 996 discs ( 330 mm ) is again only due to temperature. The same holds true for the bigger caliper ( 6-piston ) and the much bigger
pads ( 115 cm² instead of 75.5 cm² ).
The very first pads used with the ceramic disc ( same as the actual 996 turbo 75.5 cm² ) had to be extremely soft because of noise issues, thus the friction coefficient was far too low to achieve good deceleration / friction.
As a result of bigger disks and calipers, the gain in weight that was promised is smaller than anybody thought, also because of the
stainless steel ( v4a ) hats where the ceramic discs are bolted to, which are extremly heavy.
Thus the engineers kept running from one problem to the next, ending up with a system that has no real advantage, except that is if the discs don't brittle and the car is driven in normal conditions, and that is to outlast the life span of the car - but who would drive a GT2 for over 300,000 miles?
If you have friction ( and this is what you want and as much as possible ) you create a lot of heat. The heat has to be dissipated to make it possible to create new heat again, at each stop. Thus, you need a material which is suitable to take and dissipate heat. Today, that is still cast iron.
Cast iron can be manufactured, machined, perfectly balanced and so on for a fraction of the cost of ceramic / silicium or carbon discs.
In addition cast iron allows for the use of aluminium hats vs the heavy hats used for ceramic brakes. Cast iron brakes stop, they last and they are much more quiet than carbon or ceramic compounds.
By the way the carbon discs are also only suitable for light race cars, never for heavy street cars. No friction under cold conditions, high wear under extremly hot conditions which is needed to make the carbon brakes work.
The little weight advantage ( who of us actually feels 2-3 kg ) is not worth the problems and trouble that the other solutions provide.
Finally, after reading this who actually still believes that the ceramic brakes were put in because they were so much better than a std. system? I don't, and after trying them and talking with someone who is on the inside of the braking industry, I certainly think that it is a clever way to disguise a partial engineering failure with a clever marketing positioning and a high price.
I love the Porsche brand, but they should treat their customers fairly. (This by the way reminds me of the discussion on actual power output on the 4.5 AJP engine
I have some pics of the damaged disks for anyone interested in knowing what it looks like when close to 5.000 quid go up in dust.
gl911
The Movit brakes were Porsche/Brembo calipers for some cars specially those using the 322 mm setup (I remember getting them in 2001). now, this has changed, the calipers as well as the disks are an own dev. and the difference is very visible, again one is cast the other that is Movit is CNC machined.
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