Some of you may follow me on IG and know I’ve been working on this in my spare time for the better part of the past year. Idea came way before when I still lived in NZ and having experience with some of the steeper trails there, but even being back here in BC you can be driving through mountain passes for hours. If it’s one thing the 80 series needs giving attention to in order to modernise the vehicle, imho it is the braking system.
Let’s face it, with everyone’s setup these days the factory brakes just don’t cut it. An 80 can easily weigh 2000+ more lbs, and with larger and heavier wheels and tires that demand more out of your braking system, not just through rotational mass, but increased leverage when going to 35”, 37”, and even 40”+ tires for some of you. Something I think we can all agree on that the stock brakes were never designed for. Even if you’re completely stock and enjoying your truck as so, you can’t deny there’s significantly more cars on the road than there was 25-30+ years ago bringing an ever more importance to accident avoidance..
What’s the best way to improve braking performance? Take a look at your tires, you can have $10k put into your brakes and that won’t do s*** if your tires lock up and don’t have any traction with the ground. Tires account for most of your braking performance. Can you go down to stock tire or reduce your current tire size? Can you switch from a MT to an AT, or an AT to a Highway tire? Can you go to a lighter weight tire? These can all improve your brakes on the road, but hey I’m sure many of us aren’t willing to give up on our MT/AT tires. So what’s next?
Brake bias is the second most important factor in a braking system and is very much related to tire traction. Brake bias is the ratio between front and rear braking power, usually calculated from front and rear brake rotor torque. A good brake bias plays a key role because it takes into account the load on your tires, calculating front and rear weight distribution, not just static, but dynamic on a given rate of deceleration, wheelbase, and centre of gravity.
Unfortunately many people think that because the front brakes typically handle most of the braking forces, you only need to upgrade the front brakes to get a noticeable improvement in braking performance. The crowd that might not be as familiar with tuning brake performance will typically find a caliper from another chassis that might have a larger total piston area and maybe increase the front rotor diameter. This is very much a bad mistake. Most OEM’s will typically be slightly more front biased by a few percent as this creates a safer platform. Whereas going a few percent towards a more rear biased system can become a very unstable platform if you’re rear brakes lock up. Considering most of us on here have more added weight to the rear, I truly believe rear brakes need to be addressed in unison with the fronts.
A heavily front biased braking system will create more strain on the front brakes, overwork them and in turn overheat quicker. Heavily front biased will mean the front brakes may start to play a bigger role in slowing down the rear axle’s rotating assembly than it needs to. Meaning you’re not making much use of your rear brakes.
Why I’m not making this kit to fit under 16” wheels. Many people would probably be disappointed in this, but the calculations just don’t add up. There’s three ways to increase brake rotor torque, either through leverage by increasing the rotor diameter, or by clamping force by increasing the total piston area of your calipers, and last but not least by increasing friction of the pad material. We’re very much limited in high friction pad options for OEM calipers. If we’re looking to keep similar to stock brake pedal travel, we’re looking at such a small increase in brake rotor torque unless we go with larger piston area on all 4 corners and then upgrade the brake master cylinder bore diameter. But even then a larger bore brake master cylinder decreases line pressure given the same amount of pedal pressure(yes you’ll reach it earlier in the pedal travel) and counters the increased clamping force of the pistons.
Why not just a front kit? Most front only kit’s from most of the major motorsport manufacturers are designed to mostly do one thing. Give consistent braking performance by addressing heat soak. Only way to significantly increase braking performance is to address both front and rear. Take a look at how Stoptech does their kits as I believe they are one of the best at what they do with no marketing hype. They typically increase rotor size, which does two things, increase thermal capacity and increase leverage of the braking system. But what most don’t know is that a lot of their kits, if not all, they will actually decrease total piston area for the given platform. This gives a firmer pedal, much more desired in motorsports from most vehicle platforms. Some vehicles are already over-servo’d in factory form, so adjusting total piston area to suite is required.
Here’s my current solution that increases both front and rear brake rotor torque and hits the optimal brake bias I’ve calculated for my rig. The front setup consists of a 14” 2pc brake rotor. I designed the fixed rotor hat that implements the design language I’ve used for another platform I built a big brake kit for. Also introducing the world’s first flip flop caliper adapter that allows the end user to have multiple caliper options to choose. Predominantly designed for either Wilwood’s classic Superlite 4/6 or their more modern, more rigid, and larger Aero 4/6 calipers. But with careful implementation of shims/spacers, may fit other options…
I really do think the rear brakes are the weakest link on our platform. Take a look at the size of the brake pads. These have no thermal capacity and feel pretty comfortable saying they overheat way before the fronts ever do.
For the rear I came up with a “lite” version as I am still working on a full rear upgrade. The lite version implements a high carbon rotor and the highest friction pads I could source for the 80 calipers. Benefits of high carbon is that they’re much more durable, have a higher thermal capacity, and they dissipate heat much faster than traditional iron rotors. I’ve found two quality rotor manufacturers that make rotors for the larger rear 80 rotors. Stoptech and DBA. Stoptech ones are side specific as they’re directionally slotted. And DBA has their T3 rotors(T2 are not high carbon). I”ve found DBA to be slightly lower in price.
In my quest to find high friction pads I found that EBC does make Blue Stuff pads for the 80. Blue Stuff pads have a friction coefficient of around .52 mu through a high heat range. While it’s not uncommon that factory pads can be much lower at .35-.38 mu through a small heat range and dropping significantly once you surpass their heat threshold. Sometimes even dropping down to .20 mu! While Blue Stuff is targeted as a high friction track pad, these differ to most others as they still have quite a lot of cold bite. Brake pad technology has improved quite a bit over the past 5-10 years as not too long ago high friction high heat pads could not be used on the street until you heat them up. Hawk also makes a similar pad that is high friction throughout a high temp range from cold to hot in the HP+, but unfortunately these aren’t available for 80 calipers.
End game for the rears is also a 2pc rotor using a Wilwood Superlite 4 piston caliper and ditching the factory e-brake by going to their electronic parking brake. More to come once I have time to develop these.
There's probably lots that I've missed going over that I've went over on IG over the course of the past year, so other valuable information can be in there, and have a highlights section just on the brake development for the past year if people are interested:
Brake Upgrades = @maysis_fzj81 - https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODk2OTUzMzI5NTMwNzk4?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
Here's my initial performance review
Let’s face it, with everyone’s setup these days the factory brakes just don’t cut it. An 80 can easily weigh 2000+ more lbs, and with larger and heavier wheels and tires that demand more out of your braking system, not just through rotational mass, but increased leverage when going to 35”, 37”, and even 40”+ tires for some of you. Something I think we can all agree on that the stock brakes were never designed for. Even if you’re completely stock and enjoying your truck as so, you can’t deny there’s significantly more cars on the road than there was 25-30+ years ago bringing an ever more importance to accident avoidance..
What’s the best way to improve braking performance? Take a look at your tires, you can have $10k put into your brakes and that won’t do s*** if your tires lock up and don’t have any traction with the ground. Tires account for most of your braking performance. Can you go down to stock tire or reduce your current tire size? Can you switch from a MT to an AT, or an AT to a Highway tire? Can you go to a lighter weight tire? These can all improve your brakes on the road, but hey I’m sure many of us aren’t willing to give up on our MT/AT tires. So what’s next?
Brake bias is the second most important factor in a braking system and is very much related to tire traction. Brake bias is the ratio between front and rear braking power, usually calculated from front and rear brake rotor torque. A good brake bias plays a key role because it takes into account the load on your tires, calculating front and rear weight distribution, not just static, but dynamic on a given rate of deceleration, wheelbase, and centre of gravity.
Unfortunately many people think that because the front brakes typically handle most of the braking forces, you only need to upgrade the front brakes to get a noticeable improvement in braking performance. The crowd that might not be as familiar with tuning brake performance will typically find a caliper from another chassis that might have a larger total piston area and maybe increase the front rotor diameter. This is very much a bad mistake. Most OEM’s will typically be slightly more front biased by a few percent as this creates a safer platform. Whereas going a few percent towards a more rear biased system can become a very unstable platform if you’re rear brakes lock up. Considering most of us on here have more added weight to the rear, I truly believe rear brakes need to be addressed in unison with the fronts.
A heavily front biased braking system will create more strain on the front brakes, overwork them and in turn overheat quicker. Heavily front biased will mean the front brakes may start to play a bigger role in slowing down the rear axle’s rotating assembly than it needs to. Meaning you’re not making much use of your rear brakes.
Why I’m not making this kit to fit under 16” wheels. Many people would probably be disappointed in this, but the calculations just don’t add up. There’s three ways to increase brake rotor torque, either through leverage by increasing the rotor diameter, or by clamping force by increasing the total piston area of your calipers, and last but not least by increasing friction of the pad material. We’re very much limited in high friction pad options for OEM calipers. If we’re looking to keep similar to stock brake pedal travel, we’re looking at such a small increase in brake rotor torque unless we go with larger piston area on all 4 corners and then upgrade the brake master cylinder bore diameter. But even then a larger bore brake master cylinder decreases line pressure given the same amount of pedal pressure(yes you’ll reach it earlier in the pedal travel) and counters the increased clamping force of the pistons.
Why not just a front kit? Most front only kit’s from most of the major motorsport manufacturers are designed to mostly do one thing. Give consistent braking performance by addressing heat soak. Only way to significantly increase braking performance is to address both front and rear. Take a look at how Stoptech does their kits as I believe they are one of the best at what they do with no marketing hype. They typically increase rotor size, which does two things, increase thermal capacity and increase leverage of the braking system. But what most don’t know is that a lot of their kits, if not all, they will actually decrease total piston area for the given platform. This gives a firmer pedal, much more desired in motorsports from most vehicle platforms. Some vehicles are already over-servo’d in factory form, so adjusting total piston area to suite is required.
Here’s my current solution that increases both front and rear brake rotor torque and hits the optimal brake bias I’ve calculated for my rig. The front setup consists of a 14” 2pc brake rotor. I designed the fixed rotor hat that implements the design language I’ve used for another platform I built a big brake kit for. Also introducing the world’s first flip flop caliper adapter that allows the end user to have multiple caliper options to choose. Predominantly designed for either Wilwood’s classic Superlite 4/6 or their more modern, more rigid, and larger Aero 4/6 calipers. But with careful implementation of shims/spacers, may fit other options…
I really do think the rear brakes are the weakest link on our platform. Take a look at the size of the brake pads. These have no thermal capacity and feel pretty comfortable saying they overheat way before the fronts ever do.
For the rear I came up with a “lite” version as I am still working on a full rear upgrade. The lite version implements a high carbon rotor and the highest friction pads I could source for the 80 calipers. Benefits of high carbon is that they’re much more durable, have a higher thermal capacity, and they dissipate heat much faster than traditional iron rotors. I’ve found two quality rotor manufacturers that make rotors for the larger rear 80 rotors. Stoptech and DBA. Stoptech ones are side specific as they’re directionally slotted. And DBA has their T3 rotors(T2 are not high carbon). I”ve found DBA to be slightly lower in price.
In my quest to find high friction pads I found that EBC does make Blue Stuff pads for the 80. Blue Stuff pads have a friction coefficient of around .52 mu through a high heat range. While it’s not uncommon that factory pads can be much lower at .35-.38 mu through a small heat range and dropping significantly once you surpass their heat threshold. Sometimes even dropping down to .20 mu! While Blue Stuff is targeted as a high friction track pad, these differ to most others as they still have quite a lot of cold bite. Brake pad technology has improved quite a bit over the past 5-10 years as not too long ago high friction high heat pads could not be used on the street until you heat them up. Hawk also makes a similar pad that is high friction throughout a high temp range from cold to hot in the HP+, but unfortunately these aren’t available for 80 calipers.
End game for the rears is also a 2pc rotor using a Wilwood Superlite 4 piston caliper and ditching the factory e-brake by going to their electronic parking brake. More to come once I have time to develop these.
There's probably lots that I've missed going over that I've went over on IG over the course of the past year, so other valuable information can be in there, and have a highlights section just on the brake development for the past year if people are interested:
Brake Upgrades = @maysis_fzj81 - https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODk2OTUzMzI5NTMwNzk4?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
Here's my initial performance review
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