Akebonos not up to heavy track use!
 

At least not on a short track like Little Talladega. I mentioned before I boiled the fluid and toasted the stock rear pads in one session at the East Coast Z Nationals when running HP+ up front. I then replaced the rears with HP+, so I was running both on the front and back with valvoline synthetic. I did 1 day at Road Atlanta then one more day at Little Talladega at a time attack, where they boiled again, and today when I pulled them this is what I found on every caliper. Fortunately, I have 4 good dust boots out of the 12, and the seals are all still fine. They should get me through this weekend for the rears, although I will have to have a set of rear brake pads overnited tomorrow for a back up, and then a rebuild kit for the rears before Road Atlanta the following weekend.

Anyways, not pictured are the HP+ pads with all of the factory paint burned off of them. This is a picture of one front caliper upon removal today:

http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/118/wornakebono.jpg

and this is my solution, the bolt on front Brembo GT Caliper set. Unfortunately, they didn't quite clear my 18" wheels and I had to slightly grind the outer ends of them for clearance, so they are being repowdercoated a satin black tomorrow.

http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/6019/bremboon.jpg

Hopefully these and some Motul fluid will do the trick. We will know next week.

The funny thing is, I've never been real hard on brakes and never had a problem with my 350Z brembos, Stock Corvette brakes or C6 Z06 corvette brakes on the same track. I guess the akebono's are more show than go.

That's crazy!

So the calipers, pads and fluid are now changed/upgraded from OEM. Any thoughts about the rotors/discs?

I don't really see any reason to upgrade, but I have. I have Rotora slotted rotors. At the first event when my pads wore down to the backing plates, Z1 Motorsports was kind enough to send a driver an hour away to the track to deliver new pads and rear rotors to me, and the Rotora's are what they stocked, so I went ahead and bought the fronts from them also and am finishing that updgrade tomorrow or thursday also.

I know, especially since I've always considered myself easy on brakes and none of my other cars have experienced this. I think its possibly the relatively small pad size for the caliper. I know the brembo pad has almost twice the surface area.

At first I thought the boiling was because the Valvoline synthetic wasn't up to the task, but seeing the dust boots, I have to wonder how darn hot the calipers got. I know that I have tested dust boots in the powdercoating oven and 400 degrees does nothing whatsoever to them.

Were both like this or where the fronts worse then the rears. Also I wonder it duct work and better cooling would help, or just better brake fluid and pads??

I wonder if you just have a bad set of boots.

all 4 were pretty bad, but the rears had 3 semi reusable boots, only one had a tear in it. The fronts only had one decent one, but I still don't think any of them are in good shape. I'm only going to use the 4 ok ones this weekend only, unless my Nissan dealership can get new ones in by thursday.


Here are the brake pads, just for grins!
4 20 minute Road Atlanta sessions and
7 front, 6 rear 20 minute little talladega sessions.

http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/5733/wornpads.jpg

Nice! Time to get Endless BBK...lol

Yea, but I think I will stick with my $1500 brembo upgrade instead! :happydance::happydance:

I'm a fan of Rotora myself, had some 6 pots on my G with some Hawk ceramics, never had any problems.

Do you think baking your calipers (painting) had a part in this

Not at all, they are fully disassembled and then reassembled in the process, so the seals and dustboots never see the oven. Plus, the corvette and 350z both had repowdercoated calipers and no problems either.

Dust Boots Necessary?
 

Do you think it is absolutely necessary to have the dust boots? I know that Wilwoods do not have dust boots at all. You just have to make sure you clean everything up after a track session.

I am finally going to get the Z on the track for the first time on October 24. I have ATE fluid and custom Porterfield R4 (the only set in the world!) pads. Hopefully the Porterfields will be able to out perform the HP's.

Do you think I should remove the dust boots before going to the track? There seems to be no point in leaving them in if they are going to turn into black goo.

good question. I suppose if you disassembled and cleaned after every event, but I would think the dust would still eventually eat the seals up, especially under track use. I know that some corvette guys run without them though. I really think that most of the problem is that the main track I run on, Little Talladega is very short with no cooling zones. About 12 turns and only 3 small straights on a 1.4 mile course.

Yea Lil Tally is KNOWN for killing your brakes!!! I have seen s2000's loose brake lines on that track! You have such a short time to slow down! I know in the S2000 I was getting up to 110 and having to slow down to 70 to barely make the 1st turn. That was in the dry!!! The 370z did well in the rain I reached 112-113 on every straight and was really LATE on braking lol... Mike I was waiting till the #2 cone to hit the brakes and I was full throttle until #4 cone!!! Needless to say in the rain the sports hold up with stock pads and upgraded brake fluid... but when you change the pads thats a whole new story. I hope to be 115+ in the dry and thats why I have the Alliance BBK coming for me :D I need lots of pad area to keep them cool and consistent! I cant wait to see the Brembos mike!

I ran at Little Talladega last month with Carbotech XP10/8 combination. I was still using stock brake fluid, but my only problem was the bleeder screw on the left front caliper outside slightly loosened and leaked a bit. Luckily the brake paddle gradually softened and I was smart enough to pit in and check it out. I too was hitting around 110 on the straight and braking extremely late. Compared to my 350Z, I was pretty impressed with the brakes. Little Talladega is definately harder on brakes than most of the tracks I've been too thus far. This weekend, I'm heading to Putnam Park. I've upgrade brake fluid to Motul and I'll have 275 width tires on the front for a few runs. This should be a good test of the brakes...

Where is Putnam Park? I think I've heard the name before, but not sure.


btw,
the new brembos proved to be excellent at CMP last weekend.

Doesn't Akebono make brakes for F1 cars, wtf?

As far as I know, Brembo, Carbon industry, and Hitco (or Hitko) are the 3 brake makers for F1.

Martin Whitmarsh, CEO Formula One, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes:

"We are immensely proud of this partnership with Akebono, who join our World Class group of partners and suppliers. Vodafone McLaren Mercedes prides itself on forging technical collaborations with the best organisations in the World by integrating leading-edge technology into our race cars. Akebono has proven its capability to deliver increased performance and has contributed greatly to Vodafone McLaren Mercedes’ Grand Prix wins this season so far. We are looking forward to further developing technologies with a long-term relationship with Akebono."

Wow, 1st I have heard of that. Looks like there are 4 brake suppliers in F1.

I have a track day on the 31st...my 1st track day in the Z. I am very hard on brakes so I will soon find out how well these brakes can hold up. Motul RBF600 fluid and Carbotech XP-10's are the only brake mods for the track thus far.

check your pads after the track day too. I just switched to ferodo DS2500s in the rear to match what came with the front brembos and in 2 and a half days at CMP they were pretty much to the backing plate. I've never seen a car eat through rear pads so fast.

Putnam is East of Indianapolis, IN. Turn 7 will test your brakes.

To the question on brake seals: I have never found any that last with hard track use. The seals on Porsche/Brembo Big Reds never lasted more than a few weekends. Keep a can of brake clean and clean the pistons BEFORE you retract them at pad change time. That should keep the bores clean.

Surprised me too, although I think they've been supplying McLaren for the past 2 seasons :rolleyes:

My point is that I'm surprised they're performing so poorly..........

Well, so far there is only 1 person that has posted this issue, and from what it looks like it is just the dust boots that were damaged, which is not a big deal. My STi's Brembos dust boots were very cracked after a few track days and I never had issues 10 track days later.

It's near Terra Haute, Indiana. It's similar to talladega but a bit longer at 1.7 miles.

AP Racing supplies more F1 teams than anyone else. SGL/Hitco and Carbone Industries supply the carbon-carbon discs and pads, but AP Racing or Brembo supply special calipers and engineering support to all but one team based on the latest information that I have.

Akebono bought the Williams deal, much to the disappointment of the team's engineering staff. AP Racing had been the supplier, but they do not sponsor anybody in any series (which is interesting, since they supply the dominating calipers -- the RadiCal line -- in NASCAR these days, a series that is all about sponsorship!). If you remember the financial hot water that Williams got themselves into in 2007 ($100M worth), you can easily understand the changes they needed to make in order to stay afloat.

All that said, Akebono's F1 calipers have absolutely nothing to do with the design and manufacturing efforts for their OE programs. In this particular case, the G/Z Sport calipers are for primarily for looks.

Chris

Really? Akebono derives NOTHING for OEM products from racing? Really?

Race on Sunday, win on Monday?. I'm probably talking out my azz here, but it sounds weird, wtf.

CMP and TGP are two of the toughest tracks on brakes. They just eat up pads, rotors, and everything else. If your brakes hold up well at these two tracks, they will have no problem at Road Atlanta, VIR, Barber, Roebling...etc..etc.

There are only a handful of brake upgrades I would use on track, and Brembo and AP, and Stop Tech are three of them. :)

Carbotech XP10/8 combo with stock brakes worked great at Putnam Park this weekend. I had 275 tires up front and they still held up fine. I did however hit limp mode even with an oil cooler installed.

I forget where I had read it, but one of the car mags had mentioned the Akebonos replacing Brembos and pointing to the F1 deal as if that was a positive thing for the Z's brakes. Seems that's not the case at all, thanks for the info, Sharif.

Nissan switched to Akebonos from Brembos for one reason: Cost savings. :tup:

Sharif, you are 100% correct yet again! :tiphat:

hmm strange, i wonder if brake ducting would make a significant difference

:iagree: Too true. Honestly I think the Nissan base model floating caliper works better than the Akebono setup, it just can't handle the it generates.

ya, keepin' it under the magic $30k. All reviews are very positive though, for the street anyway. The stopping distances are very impressive, fade minimal, dunno what's not to like for street use, anyway. Let dem moddies buy dem Brembos!

In repeated braking tests they start acting up on about the 4th or 5th run depending on ambient temperature. Not true brake fade, rather brake malfunction with ABS skip. Happens to me all the time at Auto-X, sucks b@lls.

Can anyone come up with a design/engineering reason for these findings? How do Akebonos differ from the 'better' aftermarket options? What would cause ABS malfunction rather than the usual fade with repeated stops?

I was pretty impressed with my Akebonos during my track day last week, and I was routinely getting into the ABS by the end of the day.

:icon17: sounds like it. Pity ABS can't be turned off. Hmm...or can it. Where are the electronics propellerheads when you need them.

ABS can be turned off but not easily (plus it's really nice for Auto-X). The problem is that the fuse module covers multiple components, including power windows and VVEL. I was going to buy a new fuse module and hack it up to cut just the ABS fuse wire but I never got around to it.