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Brake Modifications

3/4/00 – Well I made my first brake upgrade today.

At 77,000 miles, the original rotors and pads in the front had seen the end of their life, and then some. The rotors were warped beyond belief, and the pads has less than 5% wear left on them, so I decided I had better do something about it before it caused a problem. My thinking was, if I’m going to buy new parts, why not buy better parts? Well that’s what I did, and this is what I got:

Stillen cross-drilled rotors with Stillen metal matrix pads. WOW!!! What a difference!!! The first thing I noticed was the lack of vibration when breaking, duh!!! Then I realized how much more bite the Stillen pads have over the stock pads. Stopping distances have decreased, at least that’s what the seat of my pants tells me. I have also found that I can push the pedal much harder now before the fronts lock up. However, the rears are still stock and they tend to lock up rather easy, so I still have to ease up on the brake once in a while. Eventually I will get the Stillen pads for the rear drums, and may even convert to disk, but that’s won’t be for a while.

I have read that by cross drilling rotors, you are actually loosing some breaking ability. This is attributed to decreased surface area on the rotor, makes sense. Well, I’m not sure I can vouch for that because the combination that I have still works better that the stock equipment I replaced. However, Justin Hughes has replaced his pads with the Stillen metal matrix, and left the rotors stock, hmmm. I foresee a comparison at an autocross in the future J