I have a 93 si hatch with the 9.5in rotors, i'm not impressed with them to say the least. I was thinking about doing a gsr front brake conversion or going with the fastbrakes 11in kit with stock calipers. What do you think i should do? I was also wondering if the civic kit with stock calipers will fit 15in wheels (konig heliums). I heard terrible things about the willwood kit, wondering if would have similar problems. I do alot of high speed stoping and braking. The stock setup can't handle it. I also plan on flushing my brake fluid what fluid should i use?

 

I know there has been alot of brake questions lately. I've read most of them and none deal with my questions so any info would help.

 

What type of driving are you doing? Autocross, track days, ...?

What pads are you using currently? What tires? What fluid?

 

Lots of people autocross/track their Si with no modification to the brakes.

Get some good pads (Porterfield R4-S, Hawk HP+)
flush the fluid (Valvoline synthetic is good/not expensive)
Make sure you rotors are OK. If not, replace them with OE style (not x-drilled)

Tires are what stop your car, BTW.

 

what year the 92-93 si hatch has 9.5 in brakes while the 94-95 have larger 10 in brakes.

 

Hmm......I had the same car for years and didn't have any problems with the stock rotors and calipers (and I'll bet a loaf of wheat bread I do a lot more high-speed braking than you). I guess I just don't understand the current obsession with big brakes on a non-racecar. If you haven't even tried a decent set of pads yet, you don't know what you're missing. Larger brakes on a street car is a waste of money IMHO (unless you're going for that pHat BliNg-blInG factor 12)

$.02

 

Well, i will admit that big *** brakes are definately blingin'

However... dont forget a good set of sticky street tires, and i like carobtech kelate metallic (although carbotech has been recomending the Axxis Ultimate pads as well). Try that first. Big brakes usually do not increase 60-0 stopping distances, they have other benefits.

Ryan - who test drove a 93 Si hatch last weekend with 135,000 on the original front pads/rotors and all season tires and thought the brakes were just fine....

 

Well i'm thinking of trying better pads and changing my brake fluid. Maybe this will help out. I was considering the big brakes cause if i sell my old wheels i'll have a little money to spend. Big brakes can't hurt, yes they are bling bling but that's secondary. You may be satisfied with stock but i'm not to each thier own. So back to my question do you think i will have problems with cleance? and would you choose stock gsr brakes or the fastbrakes kit?

 

if you are upgrading... i'd use OEM parts. The ITR brake setup is supposed to be very nice, if you swap front and rear, MC, and prop. valve.... You know OEM will work well - you have to get up pretty early in the morning to beat the engineer at his own game. OE Honda parts are built very well...

 

Yes they can. Grassroots Motorsports put Flyin' Miata big brakes on a Miata and it took an average of 13 more feet to stop from 60 mph than the stock setup with OEM pads.

Big brakes most certainly will remove money from your bank account at a higher rate, though.

 

If you used a more aggresive pad on the big brakes wouldn't that build more heat while stoping? I respect all your opinions but you are all totaly against big brakes. If they didn't work why do all high performance cars come with huge brakes and i'm not talking about just race cars here. If your going to use big brakes you will obviously need to do your homework and find what makes them tick. Like i said i will mostllikely try better pads and flush my brake fluid and see if that helps any. What brake fluid do you recomend?

 

You asked for people's opinions in your first post. You can't now "complain" about the opinions you were given.

Valvoline (mentioned above)
Ford HD
ATE SuperBlue
Motul 600

I have tried all of these and I like the Motul. I believe it is the most expensive of the 4 I have listed.

 

Thanks for the list ill try one of those out. I'm not really complaining, just trying to get to the bottom of the whole big brake thing. Can someone find a comparo of the 92-93 hatch and the 94-95 hatch? the 94-95 had bigger brakes and i want to see if it did infact help in braking. I do understand that the lighter the car the less heat it will creat under brakeing meaning you need less friction to stop. But if you have lager brakes an a aggresive pad wich will create more friction wouldn't that build more heat? I'm not talking about spending $600-1000 on a big brake kit the kit i was looking at is like $250 or something.

 

We are not totally against big brakes.

Big brakes have their place, and street/autoX really isnt it.... other than they look damn cool. Alot of it has to do with pad selection, for stopping distances and fade resistance.

You presented a question, and we voiced our opinions - i base my opinion on other's experiences, what i've read, and data from brake tests i have seen. I am not biased in any way, except towards performance and value for your hard earned money.

The reason for big brakes on a race car (and all show room stock, IT, PS, etc cars run stock brakes on big race tracks just fine thank you) is because big brakes are just a bigger heat sink - some cars need 'em (heavy fast cars like an S4) but cars like a civic hatch most definately do not. A car's brake system is sized for what it needs to do to stop the car. Period. Bigger abd faster cars have bigger factory braking systems, and there are alot of factors that go into a system, with rotor size only a very very small part of this equation.

We do not "obviously need to do our homework" because the engineers at honda already have.

Take the advice for what you make of it, no one's stopping you from the extensive lightening of your wallet, but there is alot of very, very good knowledge floating around here.

Ryan - who learns alot in the comp forum

 

Whatever you do, be prepared to upgrade the rear brakes, or don't do it at all.

One of the reasons some cars w/ bigger brakes need longer stopping distances is that most are front only. Instead of a 70/30% F/R split, you get 90/10. Whatever increases in force wrought by bigger rotors are negated by the fact they now do 20% more work.

ABS is another reason for long stopping distances, since the system can't always handle the change in force distribution. Something you needn't worry about.

The main problem w/ big brakes is they often increase weight, particularly unsprung weight, often affecting handling.

I would only upgrade to a braking system that seems balanced, such as using integra rotors front and rear, or ITR-type fronts and Fastbrake big rear brakes.

No need to get 6-piston Alcons.

 

My car is around 2400lbs it's not really all that light. If the 9.5in brakes were fine then why did honda choose to put 10in brakes on all their cars after 94? So forget about the fastbrakes kit i'm droping that as of now. Does anyone think it would be worth wile to get the 94 up spec brakes and better pads? how are green stuff pads? and should i change the rear pads as well? I was also Thinking of swapping the integra non abs master cylinder in, i believe it came in the rs model? Can someone list the weights of the 94 up integras?

 

The integras weigh in at 2600-2700 lbs. 2400 lbs is pretty goddam light for a stock production vehicle.

For the extra 0.5" brake rotor diameter increase its not worth the cost and hassle of swapping them in with new caliper brackets. Also, other parts of the system *may* be different.

Green stuff pads suck ***. Call carbotech. They know their shizznit, sell great product and have great service.

You cant go mixing and matching brake system components around, like putting a integra non-ABC MC in... unless it is the same part as what you have, then you're wasting your time. The brake system (notice the continuous use of this word) was designed with all the parts that went into it... If you're doing an OEM swap, get a set of ITR brakes, f/r w/ MC and prop. valve - they have a bit more stopping power.

If you dont want the ABS, pull the fuse. I do this on my Saturn for autoX, 3-channel ABS sucks pretty bad.

Ryan

 

well , i'll answer your "comparo" for you

92-95 civic all have 9.3" brakes...
except the ones with abs , they have teg' sized 10.3" brakes and share the same spindle/knuckle with the 94-up integra

i have this swap on my 93 si and i can tell you this is all the brakes most people would ever need on street/track combo daily driver , but you do sacrifice one thing if you dont change your master cylinder , upgrade to the larger master cylinder and stainless lines with new brembo blanks along with some carbotech p-plus and you have a great low-cost brake set-up that is OEM quality

hope this help - for the swap you need
1- teg or civic abs spindles
2- calipers and brackets off the same
3- a set of new brembo blanks
4- teg mc
5-stainless lines (may as well since you gotta bleed anyway)
6- i use ate super blue fluid and have not had a problem - 11 bucks a can
7- do a full brake fluid flush

 

Ok thanks for the weights. My car like all 92-93 civics do not have ABS. I've talked to a few people who have done the MC and prop. valve swap and they said it works fine and seems to have more bite. So now i'm taking options on pads. Don't want anything too noisy or something that creates alot of dust. I've heard dust off of some brake pads are bad on your paint so i don't want those. I would also like to get around 30-40k out of them. I know that has to narrow the field down a little. Thanks for all the help.

 

Yes, but whats the stopping power of your system compared to just swapping the lines, fluid and pads in the original setup?

Ryan - who thinks the answer is calling carbotech and turner motorsport (for ATE), as has always been the answer for him......

 

I also want to know


[Modified by mantic6t9, 5:09 PM 3/27/2002]

 

Before i go any further into brakes i should first start with brake pads and new fluid.
To flush the system i'm guessing i just losen the bleed screw and pump untill new clear fluid it pushed out and then repeat on the rest of the calipers? How do i flush my clutch fluid? How much fluid should i buy?

 

does carbotech have a web site?

 

There is no pad that meets your description. Take your pick from the following:

o quiet good street pad that is okay at the track
o noisy dusty track pad that stops okay on the street

If you put any brake pad on the track, you'll never get 30k miles out of it. Why can't your stock setup handle "it"? I have yet to see a Honda car be underbraked from the factory. All you need are good pads and fluid.

It's not like when I had my S4. That thing weighed 3500 lbs and had 320 hp / 375 ftlb. Slowing it down took boat anchors (otherwise known as Alcons), but this was only at the track. Even the stock brakes were fine for auto-x and street.

Warren

 

I need more of a street pad right now.