Brake Upgrade Options

[joethefordguy]

points i never thought of. I expected answers along the lines of stiffness of the caliper, etc. for what I'm doing, the factory calipers will be fine once I upgrade the rotors and pads.

 

[TheDoug]

I recently purchased a Wilwood TX6R Kit for the front of my 2018 platinum. I have not installed yet because of worries about rim clearance... but I am about to install over the holiday break and I will be making a post about my findings.

 

[TobyU]

But if you're towing and want the added piece of mind that if your trailer brakes fail, your brakes won't be smoking and fading if you do need to stop at the bottom of an exit ramp. Then maybe better pads will do the trick. Getting bigger rotors to dissipate the heat of repeated hard stops is, IMHO, a bit of overkill. But they do look better behind 20 or 22" wheels.

That works for some people but I've never had any peace of mind so why should I start now.

 

[Artie]

I recently purchased a Wilwood TX6R Kit for the front of my 2018 platinum. I have not installed yet because of worries about rim clearance... but I am about to install over the holiday break and I will be making a post about my findings.

Looking forward to this!

 

[TobyU]

points i never thought of. I expected answers along the lines of stiffness of the caliper, etc. for what I'm doing, the factory calipers will be fine once I upgrade the rotors and pads.

Then you when you get into really expensive upgrade kits you even replace the lines. The factory rubber lines allow a little bit of loss of pressure and clamping force.

I preferred when all calipers were simply a single-piston caliper that slid on some pins. Does do the job quite nicely and I don't need anything better on a typical passenger car. That's what they started with like on GM's in 68. It was the simplest but working design. The four piston two-piece calipers before that we're kind of a nightmare.
Then regular car companies started pushing 2 piston calipers on the inside pad and some even going to for Pistons with pistons on the inside and the outside to in theory given equal and stronger clamping Force.
There have been plenty of high-performance cars over the years that only had two piston calipers with the calipers sliding to pull in the outside pad to the rotor when you push the pedal. That is as complicated as I ever want to bother with.
As I said before, I've never had any Factory vehicle they didn't have more then adequate breaks. Adequate is all I go for. More than adequate is just icing on the cake.
I don't need any peace of mind and I'm definitely not an overachiever.
Different Strokes for different folks.
I'm also not one of those people that says just because it's your brake system and it's so important and life can depend on it blah blah blah that you must always replace both rotors at the same time or both calipers the same time or even both sets of pads at the same time.
I just put two brake pads on the left front of a 2002 Buick Century yesterday for a friend of mine. He isn't going to crash and burn and if he does it's going to stop a lot better than it did when he brought it over to me with the inner pad gone and grinding into the rotor.
I also didn't replace the rotor because he is poor and might be selling the car. He barely had the $22 to buy the brake pads.
Different Strokes for different folks again.
I have a car dealer guy that only deals in exotic cars and has brought me all kinds of Porsche 928 S4 has over the years. He buys the brake pads from Porsche and I put them on.
Little does he know he could probably get a better, higher quality pad from some other company a lot cheaper but he feels good about it and it doesn't matter to me which kind of pad I slide into the calipers.

 

[Artie]

points i never thought of. I expected answers along the lines of stiffness of the caliper, etc. for what I'm doing, the factory calipers will be fine once I upgrade the rotors and pads.

In your previous post you mentioned ‘solid rotors’... what did you mean by ‘solid’?

 

[joethefordguy]

not slotted, not drilled.

 

[ExplorerTom]

Running Hawk LTS pads on my 1st gen.

Also used EBC Orangestuff and Yellowstuff pads. Both worked great, but could get squeaky (even with the putty applied), but we’re tremendously dirty and neither lasted very long. The Yellowstuff pads lasted about 9,000 miles. The Orangestuff pads lasted around 20,000 miles.

The Hawk LTS pads have great cold bite, have a good heat resistance and are clean and long wearing. I got about 40,000 miles out of my first set.

 

[edizzle]

I recently purchased a Wilwood TX6R Kit for the front of my 2018 platinum. I have not installed yet because of worries about rim clearance... but I am about to install over the holiday break and I will be making a post about my findings.

what kit did you get?

 

[TheDoug]

what kit did you get?

Wilwood tx6r for 2018 f150

Everything matches up. Just need to check rim clearance