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Wilwood 13" front kit

~$750 is for the standard Baer kit. I paid about $1250 for my 13" Baer kit... which includes the 2 part lightweight rotors and tax. No shipping since they're about 15 minutes from me. I was originally planning on doing the 12" FSVT upgrade... but I thought even those would look small with my wheels. In hindsight, I do wish I spent the extra $200-300 for the TCE kit, but I was already way over my planned budget. The benefit of the TCE kit over Baer's is it only comes with the 2 piece lightweight rotors, it has lightweight calipers, and 4/6 pot calipers (more clamping force than Baer's 2 pot).

I got the 11.75" TCE rear kit (he's also about 15 mins from me :)) because that maintains the OEM brake bias when combined with 13" fronts. He said he hasn't sold that many of the rear kits. People only upgrading their front brakes are weird.

Tell him to post in this thread, I need a rear brake upgrade more than fronts.
 
I'm working on a 13" front kit that uses the Cobra PBR caliper. Actually working on a bracket. Working on dimensions now. Anyone interested? You would have to source the rotors and calipers.
 
OK Andys did not know that Baer raised the price on the brake kits but will still honor the price on their website!

They will go lower if we are able to purchase 5+ kits and will not go lower after that!!!

$733 per kit for the baer track kit(13" and two peice rotor) Then obviously there would be shipping!

It would be about 60 bucks shipping if they ship them individually to our houses or about $150 bucks per pallet freight over to somebodies house then they ship all of them to each of us!!!!

Compare the price of that to the Wilwoods!

- amyn
 
I'm working on a 13" front kit that uses the Cobra PBR caliper. Actually working on a bracket. Working on dimensions now. Anyone interested? You would have to source the rotors and calipers.

Those Cobra Calipers are probably the same if not very similar to the Baer calipers????

Where would you find these rotors/calipers if we purchased your bracket....

- amyn
 
Those Cobra Calipers are probably the same if not very similar to the Baer calipers????

Where would you find these rotors/calipers if we purchased your bracket....

- amyn
Both are the same PBR dual piston caliper, just one says Baer and one says Cobra. They use different pads that can interchange.
-J
 
Both are the same PBR dual piston caliper, just one says Baer and one says Cobra. They use different pads that can interchange.
-J

Close, but not 100% correct. The anchor brackets are machined differently between the Baer and Cobra calipers. Do not expect to take a Cobra caliper and bolt it up to a Baer bracket and expect it to fit the car correctly.

The caliper bodies are interchangable though, and the pads are interchangable as well.
 
btw, Todd, don't tell me you've turned lazy like me . . . It shouldn't take but a few hours to fully design that bracket . . . The reason mine isn't done is I haven't sat down and measured any of the parts, lol.

Fwiw, to those looking into Todd's bracket, you'll need to pick up a set of Cobra or Cobra R calipers (either the 2-piston PBRs or the 4-piston brembo Cobra R calipers would work just fine, provided you have the wheel clearance) and you'll need to locate a set of Cobra rotors and have them drilled for a 4x108 bolt pattern, and you will need some hubcentric spacers to keep the rotor centered on the contour hub, and you'll need longer wheel studs.

Also, just for the record, MORE PISTONS DOES NOT EQUAL MORE CLAMPING FORCE. If the relevant part sizes are all still equal (piston area and rotor diameter, and pad friction) they won't stop any harder than a single piston. They will simply improve consistancy from stop to stop, and even out pad and rotor wear, and generally are harder to fade. But on a given stop, they will not stop any harder.
 
damn it you are smart..... so, just use my baer kit because it is easy to get parts and because I have no more stopping power in the wilwood 6 pot than I do with the baer 2 pot?

I like the willies because no one else really has the 6 pot wilwood on their tours.... maybe I will rock one of each :shrug:

P.S. why the longer wheel studs? My baer kit was on other tours with standard wheel studs. I thought you only needed those if you had wheel to caliper clearance issues???
 
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damn it you are smart..... so, just use my baer kit because it is easy to get parts and because I have no more stopping power in the wilwood 6 pot than I do with the baer 2 pot?

There are plenty of reasons to go to multi-piston calipers, but "stopping power" isn't one of them. There are 3 things that affect "stopping power" from a brake standpoint, 1st is pad to rotor friction coefficient, this is is affected by pad material choice obviously. 2nd is piston force. This is controlled by the ratio of the caliper piston area to the master cylinder piston area, and the mechanical pedal ratio, and how hard you push on the pedal. If you increase caliper piston area compared to stock, you actually DECREASE the potential piston force. And the third one is the effective rotor radius. Basically the distance from the axle centerline to the geometric center of the brake pad area. Increasing rotor diameter increases the lever arm, so the same friction force will resort in higher brake torque.
You'll notice that "piston count" isn't among any of these factors . . .

I like the willies because no one else really has the 6 pot wilwood on their tours.... maybe I will rock one of each :shrug:

I'm not a fan of the Wilwood 6-piston calipers. First, for a street car, they don't come with dustboots. Which is fine for a race car or a show car, but for the typical user here, they don't disassmble and inspect thier brakes very often. Also, they have a finite life, at some point, they will age enough through fatigue that they will need to be basically thrown away. And finally, if you ever overheat them really good, they need to go in the trash too.
Bottom line, is it just plain isn't designed to be a street caliper, so its not great at it. Its designed to be used in a racing environment where its inspected often, and replaced at the first sign of trouble.

P.S. why the longer wheel studs? My baer kit was on other tours with standard wheel studs. I thought you only needed those if you had wheel to caliper clearance issues???

Your lugnuts should thread down on the studs at least 1.5 times the diameter of the stud to ensure a solid safe joint. Even with the FSVT rotor upgrade, you can't quite get that amount of thread engagement. Do a search, and see which studs that beyondloaded used on his old car, I think they are a Mazda wheel stud, and are only like $1 each from your local Napa or aurozone. Cheap insurance on an extremely critical component. No real need to go to some high dollar ARP wheel stud if you don't want to.
 
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I'd also like to add a little price perspective for people coming from WRX land.

Brembo front kit that is the same as the STI fronts for my car is $1600 bucks I believe.

A good 2 piece rotor set for the front STI brakes is $600+ for just the 2 rotors and tophats.

Performance front pads that I have now.. $160.

So don't balk too hard at TCE prices and such.
 
Your lugnuts should thread down on the studs at least 1.5 times the diameter of the stud to ensure a solid safe joint. Even with the FSVT rotor upgrade, you can't quite get that amount of thread engagement. Do a search, and see which studs that beyondloaded used on his old car, I think they are a Mazda wheel stud, and are only like $1 each from your local Napa or aurozone. Cheap insurance on an extremely critical component. No real need to go to some high dollar ARP wheel stud if you don't want to.


I actually bought beyonds front hub w/bearings and I pm'd him about the longer studs and he said that he needed them because he needed to use a spacer to resolve wheel to caliper clearance issues. Wheel stud changing is easy and cheap insurance. I will PM him again about where he got them because I threw them in the trash :shrug: :blackeye:.
 
I actually bought beyonds front hub w/bearings and I pm'd him about the longer studs and he said that he needed them because he needed to use a spacer to resolve wheel to caliper clearance issues. Wheel stud changing is easy and cheap insurance. I will PM him again about where he got them because I threw them in the trash :shrug: :blackeye:.

Jim's situation was that he couldn't physically fit things together (or there was only a couple of threads engaged, can't remember exactly), so it FORCED him to go to a longer stud. On my car at present, I've got the FSVT front brakes, and stock E1 wheels, and I don't quite get 1.5 times the stud diameter of engagement, more like 1.1-1.25 or so. It concerns me, and I check them on a regular basis, every week or so. The reason I haven't changed them out, is I'm planning to do my own big brake kit, just like todras has described above, plus I've got some Focus RS wheels to go on, and because of all that, I'm planning to put on some of the even longer ARP wheel studs. I just haven't gotten to it yet, so the stockers are still there w/ not quite enough engagement.


And to comment on Barge's words about pricing above . . . He's absolutely right. The big brake options for the Contour are DIRT CHEAP compared to many other platforms, and I'm sick of hearing people complain about the pricing. I was looking at adapting the big brembo kit for the FSVT, and that kit costs $2500, and its a pretty basic 4-piston caliper kit with 2-pc rotors. Nothing terribly fancy at all. And you guys don't even want to imagine what a big brake kit for my M3 costs . . .
 
Hey Todd. Maybe we should start a new thread about how to build your own 13" brake kit. So we dont hijack this thread. I have lots of info that people could use.
 
Hey Todd. Maybe we should start a new thread about how to build your own 13" brake kit. So we dont hijack this thread. I have lots of info that people could use.

Let's wait until Todd has his bracket up and running. You will still need a custom bracket no matter what anyway. Todd is planning to have some for sale from what I gathered, so I'm sure he'll post up when he has details.

I've talked about doing my own, though I didn't plan to sell them; but if Todd's are available before I get any cut for myself, I'll just buy his.
 
A part of me does not want to have a how-to for building your own 13" front kit because I have purchased the real deal and it has taken me 5 years to get to the point where I could get a kit.
I do agree with trying to make some $ off of the brackets though, but I would hate to see sooooo many 13" kits.
I am on the fence :shrug:
 
it wont be a 13" kit. he will sell the adapter and the owner must source their own parts. ill wait to post info until i get further word from todd.
 
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