I know the q45 upgrade you need a bigger size wheel. Anyone know of a more budget solution because I don't want to get new wheels just for better braking. Today I was heading down the street and this chick cut me off hella abruptly, so I slammed on my brakes without locking up the wheels, and I noticed that my brakes were underpowered. I still managed to avoid an accident, but man! I know jeff92se used to sell a bracket for the q45/300zx calipers, but still need a bigger wheel to accomodate them.

 

Get better tires and brake pads. Everything else will require different wheels.

 

really? that's that then? Well thanks for your quick response.

 

Yes.

Upgrading rotors and calipers are more for brake fade and are wasted on a street car. A simpler, less costly and worthwhile option would be to get pads with better bite for better pedal feel (Hawks I hear are good) and new fluid. You should notice a big difference with that alone.

 

street pads will chew your rotors up to $hit. i had ebc reds and they destroyed my brembos in a few short months. i replaced them with akibono ultimate premium, more of a stock pad but they're actually good on braking. fluid should be clear/goldish looking.

 

I've never had the EBC reds, but the Hawk HPS don't really chew up rotors. I paired them with Brembo blanks and the braking is phenomenal for stock size brakes. They dust quite a bit more than a quality ceramic pad, but I can stand on my brakes from 100-0 and as they heat up they seem to work better. I've had them for over a year.

 

i had ebc reds and the destroyed my brembo rotors.... but it was hella fun while it lasted.. bit of an expensive waste tho :/

you can use the q45 calipers with the stock bracket and 96' q45 rotors you just have to mill 8mm off the outer diameter to make them fit.. but it costs less than new rims... just somethin to think about

 

2000-2001 will fit. Rotors are thicker.
Not sure about 2002-2003.

 

Thanks for all the inputs!
I already have the Q45 calipers that I bought long ago, I just never got around to putting them on.
2000-2001 calipers and rotors? interesting. how much thicker are their rotors compared to current ones I have, say 3-4 mm?

 

with out any modding or new calipers?

i believe this would be a good compromise, as i have a good set of pads with enough bite to stop me at any speed... however i would imagine repeated stops will need a bigger heat sink, so JUST rotors would be fine I think.

4th gens are light, i think a lot of people under estimate a GOOD brake job (proper lubrication, new fluid, checking run out) + some good pads.

 

To run the 2000 brakes you need the rotor, caliper, and torque member. Pads are the same. The holes in the spindle will need to be enlarged. Thickness is not a whole lot more but its enough that you cant just use the rotors.
2002 brakes are bigger in diameter as well as thicker. Again you need all the accompanying parts.

The 5th gen 5 spoke 16" wheels have 5mm more offset than 4th gen 16". I have not confirmed 4th gen wheels fit the 2002 setup.

 

thanks man

 

Not a problem. Get the J30 rotors, brake pads, Calipers, and torque member. You need to bring the rotors to a machine shop and tell them to mill the diameter of the rotor 3 mm. You will need a die grinder to remove some material off the inside part of the caliper and there's a little part of the brake pad that needs to be grinded off. Don't worry its not the actual material that stops the car. Its the frame part of the brake pad.

The stopping power is greatly increased with this upgrade and works with 16" rims.

I had mine for 4 years now and would never go back to OEM.

 

Seems like an awful lot of work to run J30 stuff. Next time you need new pads and/or rotors youll have to go though the process again. Why not just use off the shelf parts that fit?

 

i still dont understand what is better about your braking? i have aggressive pads on her now, i have never needed to stop and not been able to stop hard enough to kick in anti-lock even from 80 mph down to a stop (i had an emergency stop on the higway) with out taking the car on the track how could i build up more heat than that?

only way i could possibly over heat and loose braking power with stock parts is if i consistently braked from say 70-80 mph down to 0 many times in a row and i had VERY sticky tires.

 

Your right it is a lot of modifying. I did this a long time ago. Changing brake pads is not too bad. It takes about 5 or 10 minutes each to grind off the material on each pad.

 

Good to see folks talking about stopping power. I am pondering picking up a 4th Gen to use as a track day/road race car and binders are VERY important to me.

I would point out that on most modern cars, good quality pads and clean quality fluid are more than enough to do the job. I point folks to Hawk pads most often and am a big fan of Motul fluid but that is serious overkill for most folks.

As I can't start a thread on brakes yet I would welcome folks to drop me notes on thoughts regarding cheap bolt on track friendly options which I would love to compile into a larger post once I am able to start threads.

Thread jack out...

 

Check out the suspension and brake forum and make use of the search feature extensively, there are a lot of us who track our maximas and have gone through lots of different brake setups. I've tracked like 6 different setups and researched a bunch more. jsutter has done a lot of different brake setups too i believe.

how much brake you're going to need will really depend upon the track or tracks you'll be running and how much power and tire you're going to have.

for a near stock car on track that's not too brake intensive you can probably get away with a good pad on the stock rotor. anything more than that and you need to look at running a larger heatsink in my experience.

 

Thx. I have been digging through a lot of the forums and done some searches but there seems to be a few scoops of questionable info for each scoop of good stuff.

I am guessing that stockish brakes will do well for me but changing around may be needed if only to make sure I get the pads I want to run. The car will bee used for LeMons/Chumpcar racing and as such will have limited HP mods with as much weight cutting as is possible.