Quote:
Originally Posted by swamp2
Good information. An obsession with flex can absolutely be a case where the law of diminishing returns come into play. Especially when in the realm of a street car that you take on the track. I have often pondered the question of who makes "the best" BBK and it sounds like you have pondered the exact same thing. It even sounds like you can point to some testing with real data, which I would love to see. Do you have a reference? Heck any reference to any actual comparisons among the major suppliers would be great. Perhaps I am getting too OT here but heck this happens all the time in a good discussion. So here goes.... I'd love to see a thorough test of a bunch of BBKs for a particular car. Perhaps the order of which system is "best" would not be identical if you changed vehicles, so you would have to just pick a car. Anyway some great criteria to use (not in any particular order) would be the following:
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I'll have to find the hardcopies of the materials I picked up while I was at the Stoptech production facilities. I did find
this on their website but doesn't have the charts that I have in the materials I picked up. The charts and graphs might be buried in their technical information section somewhere. This isn't a point of contention with Brembo either, I read a thread once where a Brembo engineer acknowledged this but was quick to point out that deflection was never an issue with their brakes. Given their track success and following, that's hard to argue with.
Stoptech differentiates their kits by offering packages which they feel are more balanced. They pride their kits on offering more combinations of piston sizes, the ST60 front kit has 19 different piston diameter combinations. The competition has a lot less. Head of engineer Steve Ruiz drove my car and his focus was on delivering a package for the M3 that was balanced. So instead of just making it fit, they picked calipers with a piston diameter combination that would work best based on their testing. I wanted a big 14" rotor in the rear like the Brembos have but it Steve said it was unnecessary and didn't make sense and it would affect the bias. So instead of a 380mm rotor like you get with the Brembo kit, I have a 355mm which is thicker than the Brembo rotor by 4mm. The front is a 380mm rotor though.
To be honest, I just looked at the offerings from Brembo, Stoptech and Rotora. I was offered the sponsorship deal from Brembo for Bimmerfest. Rotora I quickly scratched off my list because from the advice of many racers with firsthand experience.
UPDATE: I found some information on the caliper stiffness
here.
Though they don't specify the manufacturers below, you can bet one of them was Brembo.
An illustration of the bridge.
