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      04-03-2014, 11:08 AM   #22
Clifton
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ChipB View Post
So at the risk of sounding a little negative - there really is no practical reason to swap out the brakes from stock. Really the only reason to consider it is for the looks. Same reason why drilled or slotted rotors are so popular on sport cars and larger diameter wheel on all sorts of vehicles - it's the look! And yes, I admit - they M brake kit does look sharp!
Lots of truth in what ChipB is stating above. Big calipers and rotors do look sharp, but performance advantages are hard to quantify, if at all, over the stock setup.

BMW does brakes very well and the single pot equipment is more than capable to do the job.

As a data point, I used stock calipers (single pot) on my M3 DE/track car. With track pads (perf friction 01), tires (nitto NT01) and brake fluid (ATE2000), I could achieve retina detaching results lap after lap in the heaviest of brake zones. The only down side was the weight of the car equated to pad heat. That heat contributed to an increase in pad consumption.

Adding a big brake kit would help reduce some of this residual heat and thus pad consumption. The detractor was that the cost of all the consumables (pads/rotors/caliper rebuilds) would also increase exponentially. In other words, the big brake upgrade was not worth it for amateur track work.

Since BMW stock calipers are track worthy out of the box, they are more than capable to handle what is thrown at them on the street. That pretty much makes the big brake kits overkill, but man do they look GOOD!!!
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