Big Brakes on a not-so-big Budget? YEP
- Thread starter Zack
- Start date
Black Terror
Contributing Member
Best Mod I did to my Marauder. A great piece of work.
Black Terror
Contributing Member
I got one of the original kits made.
fastblackmerc
Everything Marauder, LEDs & HI
Hands down the BEST BIG BRAKE KIT!!!
https://www.tceperformanceproducts.com/marauder/kits-17/
No searching for parts, no waiting for someone to call you, etc.
blazen71
I'm Your Huckleberry
You're comparing apple to oranges. Of course a 6-piston fixed caliper is going to be better than a 2-piston floating caliper. This post is about a budget friendly big brake upgrade.
jonmac21
New member
Me too! Any luck?
fastblackmerc
Everything Marauder, LEDs & HI
If you can't source the parts.........................
BLACKMARAUDER04
Member
I agree. This is a $$ friendly upgrade of the front brakes. I’ve done this upgrade on both of my Marauders. On silver, I spent about $300 total for the upgrade. I was lucky and won a pair of ZR1 calipers for $51 total.
This is the best upgrade on any Marauder that doesn’t want to spend 3K for a brake upgrade.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This is the best upgrade on any Marauder that doesn’t want to spend 3K for a brake upgrade.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
RubberCtyRauder
Weißbirke Plünderer
Member Jerry, lji372 makes the brackets..he is busy at his business and most don't frequent here so much..all went to Marauder page on Facebook
jonmac21
New member
Hey thank you so much! I did not know this, I thought Zack made them. Appreciate it!
MyBlackBeasts
T242 - Ricer ricer
Zach & Jerry teamed up to design and Jerry fabs in his shop
jonmac21
New member
Thanks guys!!
daniel.drives
Member
Sweet. Did this job last week, took it out for a track day weekend, and HOLY **** THAT'S GOOD.
Breakdown is C5 calipers from Rockauto, 18FR1853/4, $234 for the pair. Specified no logo, came with the corvette logo, ground it off with an 80 grit flap disc and under paint, you literally cant tell.
GT500 rotors from Summit, got the raybestos 680497PER, $181 for the pair
TCE Zack kit, $194. Need to double check my front line routing now that they've been used for a bit, but the lines are nice and came with all the hardware. On the front brackets, the ones that hold the junction of the hardline to softline, the holes for the bolt and the guidepin weren't very precise, I'd advise re-bending, grinding, or drilling before you take the old line off and have brake fluid dripping everywhere while trying to make it fit.
I went with expensiver race pads from Hawk, HB247S.575 for $264. If you're not tracking your car, go with a street compound from a normal company. These are expensive and loud, but holy cow do they stop hard, and I haven't experienced even a hint of brake fade yet.
And of course, the brackets from Gerald Irwin, who is easiest to find on Facebook. $170 got me a pair of very nice looking brackets, anodized, with appropriate hardware for attaching the corvette caliper. You'll need to grind a little of the spindle ears, I just made sure I could get a piece of paper between the spindle and the bracket.
So for a total of $1043 and a few hours of work, it feels like I've increased the stopping power of the car by at least 60%. More importantly for my 20-25 minute track sessions, I've increased the heat capacity of the system and no longer need to take a chill lap in the middle. And it fits inside the stock wheels, wheel weights and all (your mileage may vary). And most importantly, it looks great. Now I need to order the matching rotors for the rear and some fresh Hawk HPS pads to keep up.
As far as the unused inner strip of the rotor: You're getting the braking force farthest from the axis of rotation, which has the most leverage when it comes to slowing you down. You're also getting the most out of the surface area of the rotor, since Area = pi*R2^2 minus pi*R1^2. If the visual is really that big of a turn off, maybe get the GT500 caliper too, make your own custom bracket, and then get bigger wheels because it's probably thicker than the corvette caliper and won't fit between the rotor and the stock marauder wheels.
Anyways, 10/10 recommend
Breakdown is C5 calipers from Rockauto, 18FR1853/4, $234 for the pair. Specified no logo, came with the corvette logo, ground it off with an 80 grit flap disc and under paint, you literally cant tell.
GT500 rotors from Summit, got the raybestos 680497PER, $181 for the pair
TCE Zack kit, $194. Need to double check my front line routing now that they've been used for a bit, but the lines are nice and came with all the hardware. On the front brackets, the ones that hold the junction of the hardline to softline, the holes for the bolt and the guidepin weren't very precise, I'd advise re-bending, grinding, or drilling before you take the old line off and have brake fluid dripping everywhere while trying to make it fit.
I went with expensiver race pads from Hawk, HB247S.575 for $264. If you're not tracking your car, go with a street compound from a normal company. These are expensive and loud, but holy cow do they stop hard, and I haven't experienced even a hint of brake fade yet.
And of course, the brackets from Gerald Irwin, who is easiest to find on Facebook. $170 got me a pair of very nice looking brackets, anodized, with appropriate hardware for attaching the corvette caliper. You'll need to grind a little of the spindle ears, I just made sure I could get a piece of paper between the spindle and the bracket.
So for a total of $1043 and a few hours of work, it feels like I've increased the stopping power of the car by at least 60%. More importantly for my 20-25 minute track sessions, I've increased the heat capacity of the system and no longer need to take a chill lap in the middle. And it fits inside the stock wheels, wheel weights and all (your mileage may vary). And most importantly, it looks great. Now I need to order the matching rotors for the rear and some fresh Hawk HPS pads to keep up.
As far as the unused inner strip of the rotor: You're getting the braking force farthest from the axis of rotation, which has the most leverage when it comes to slowing you down. You're also getting the most out of the surface area of the rotor, since Area = pi*R2^2 minus pi*R1^2. If the visual is really that big of a turn off, maybe get the GT500 caliper too, make your own custom bracket, and then get bigger wheels because it's probably thicker than the corvette caliper and won't fit between the rotor and the stock marauder wheels.
Anyways, 10/10 recommend
daniel.drives
Member
So 5 month update: I run my Marauder at track days at road courses around the southwest. I'm pretty sure I drive mine harder than anyone, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
Performance has continued to be astounding. The increase in braking force and heat capacity has dramatically improved my confidence in driving and I can push this thing into corners way harder than anyone on track would suspect. I've ran through a couple sets of Hawk DTC-60 pads, they have incredible braking force and no change in feel as things get hot, even at the most demanding tracks. Impressive, but $300/set hurts, so I'm trying out the carbon metallic brakes from Performance Friction concepts, available from local parts stores for $99/set. So far so good, and it's nice having access to the range of pad options that are made for the C5. The TCE lines are great, just make sure they fold nicely at installation before you tighten anything down, they can end up rubbing on tires if you're not careful. Gerald Irwin's brackets continue to be excellent. The first set of slotted Raybestos rotors I had finally cracked after like 7 track days, I knew I was pushing it when I didn't replace them before the weekend that it happened, I'm going to buy more, Slots seem to work much better than the blank rotors that I had to get in a pinch. Speaking of getting rotors in a pinch, don't forget that the hub bore of the mustang rotor needs to be opened up a smidge for the panther hubs. I'm going to keep a spare pair that are already modified on hand because that was a pain to do in the paddock.
My biggest problem is the Rockauto sourced C5 calipers. They're rebuilt, as any 15+ year old caliper you can buy is, but there were some surprising quality issues: the slide pins were different side to side, one had a hex head, one had a round head, and on one side, the bolts that hold the caliper to the slide pin come on the verge of stripping, there's maybe half of the thread depth left the first time I removed them to change pads. I've also developed an issue with one side getting loose and letting the caliper move around, it was already tight on the mustang 18s I track with, but at the end of this last track weekend I had scrapes both on the inside of the wheel and the outside edge of the rotor. Since I ground the "corvette" off and shaved the fins to fit the mustang 18s (fanblade design, the Marauder 18s fit with no shaving with plenty of clearance), I think I'm a little married to those calipers, so I may have to source replacement brackets, slide pins, and bolts. Again, this is an issue that's developed over months of track abuse, for spirited street driving you probably wont have this issue.
Question for Zack and Jerry: I've learned that the C6 base model caliper fits the same bracket and provides more strength against flexing, why not use it here? Is there an issue with fitment under the stock wheels?
Thanks again for putting together such an awesome kit.
Performance has continued to be astounding. The increase in braking force and heat capacity has dramatically improved my confidence in driving and I can push this thing into corners way harder than anyone on track would suspect. I've ran through a couple sets of Hawk DTC-60 pads, they have incredible braking force and no change in feel as things get hot, even at the most demanding tracks. Impressive, but $300/set hurts, so I'm trying out the carbon metallic brakes from Performance Friction concepts, available from local parts stores for $99/set. So far so good, and it's nice having access to the range of pad options that are made for the C5. The TCE lines are great, just make sure they fold nicely at installation before you tighten anything down, they can end up rubbing on tires if you're not careful. Gerald Irwin's brackets continue to be excellent. The first set of slotted Raybestos rotors I had finally cracked after like 7 track days, I knew I was pushing it when I didn't replace them before the weekend that it happened, I'm going to buy more, Slots seem to work much better than the blank rotors that I had to get in a pinch. Speaking of getting rotors in a pinch, don't forget that the hub bore of the mustang rotor needs to be opened up a smidge for the panther hubs. I'm going to keep a spare pair that are already modified on hand because that was a pain to do in the paddock.
My biggest problem is the Rockauto sourced C5 calipers. They're rebuilt, as any 15+ year old caliper you can buy is, but there were some surprising quality issues: the slide pins were different side to side, one had a hex head, one had a round head, and on one side, the bolts that hold the caliper to the slide pin come on the verge of stripping, there's maybe half of the thread depth left the first time I removed them to change pads. I've also developed an issue with one side getting loose and letting the caliper move around, it was already tight on the mustang 18s I track with, but at the end of this last track weekend I had scrapes both on the inside of the wheel and the outside edge of the rotor. Since I ground the "corvette" off and shaved the fins to fit the mustang 18s (fanblade design, the Marauder 18s fit with no shaving with plenty of clearance), I think I'm a little married to those calipers, so I may have to source replacement brackets, slide pins, and bolts. Again, this is an issue that's developed over months of track abuse, for spirited street driving you probably wont have this issue.
Question for Zack and Jerry: I've learned that the C6 base model caliper fits the same bracket and provides more strength against flexing, why not use it here? Is there an issue with fitment under the stock wheels?
Thanks again for putting together such an awesome kit.
daniel.drives
Member
I went ahead and swapped C6 front calipers onto the C5 brackets, they seem to give a little better pedal feel under hard abuse. I've been dailying on 19 inch mustang wheels and running high brake clearance 18s at the track, havent had a chance to throw the stock wheels back on and see if they clear the thicker calipers.
Here's my brake pad report:
Hawk HPS and HPS+: Excellent. Pricey for street pads, but you get what you pay for and they hold up to aggressive use well.
Hawk HT-10: More aggressive stopping power than HPS, very good heat resistance for sustained abuse. Wears very quickly when hot, though. $250/set
Hawk DTC-60: Excellent track pads with relatively good cold (street) characteristics as well. More durable than the HT-10, I usually get about 5 track days out of a pair. V expensive at $300/set
Performance Friction Compounds carbon ceramic whatever: Bought these at Oreillys when I got tired of paying for DTC-60. Great for street use, but hi-temp track use deposits a lot of pad material on the rotors. Enough to give the car a vibration under braking. Seemed to be a long lasting pad. $100/set
Powerstop PST731: Rockauto's track day brake compound. Smaller friction puck than some, but this doesn't seem to hurt performance under extreme conditions. Only ran for one track day so far, but I was impressed. Too soon to say about durability yet. Seems dustier in street use than track use. $100/set
Here's my brake pad report:
Hawk HPS and HPS+: Excellent. Pricey for street pads, but you get what you pay for and they hold up to aggressive use well.
Hawk HT-10: More aggressive stopping power than HPS, very good heat resistance for sustained abuse. Wears very quickly when hot, though. $250/set
Hawk DTC-60: Excellent track pads with relatively good cold (street) characteristics as well. More durable than the HT-10, I usually get about 5 track days out of a pair. V expensive at $300/set
Performance Friction Compounds carbon ceramic whatever: Bought these at Oreillys when I got tired of paying for DTC-60. Great for street use, but hi-temp track use deposits a lot of pad material on the rotors. Enough to give the car a vibration under braking. Seemed to be a long lasting pad. $100/set
Powerstop PST731: Rockauto's track day brake compound. Smaller friction puck than some, but this doesn't seem to hurt performance under extreme conditions. Only ran for one track day so far, but I was impressed. Too soon to say about durability yet. Seems dustier in street use than track use. $100/set