Akebonos vs Upgraded BBK

AP - Chris_B

Keep in mind that all parts supplied to OE manufacturers are made to a strict budget. We can surmise that one of the reasons that Nissan went from Brembo to Akebono was cost. To make calipers and rotors at lower costs, several features that improve performance/stiffness/feel/response/etc. get cut back as they are too expensive.

Also consider that the OE's usually require a cost-down schedule. This means they typically agree to pay 'X' during year one, 'X - 2%' in year two, 'X - 4%' in year three, and so on. Those cost reductions must be found by the supplier if they are to continue making money on the program. If you have ever owned a late-run GM vehicle, you might have suffered from this "cheapening" phenomenon. Those cars are usually better in year two or three, when all the bugs are worked out. But years 4, 5 and 6 get riddled with "cost-down" parts, which we has been proven to hurt reliability. I'm not saying the Akebono bits are going to get worse over time, but there is a tremendous amount of pressure on part manufacturers to reduce costs over a several year supply contract.

AP Racing aftermarket calipers, while not nearly as expensive as the full-race hardware, incorporate several features that OE calipers typically do without. That is, if you are not talking about the AP calipers that are OE on Bugattis, Koenigsegg, Lotus, Pagani, Gumpert, Ascari and the like.

One example is caliper optimization. AP invests an ENORMOUS amount of engineering R&D time and testing into making sure that each caliper model is a stiff and responsive as it can be. For example, three changes were recently made to the CP7040 6-piston calipers (the ones in the Z & G front kits) that are hardly noticeable without pretty sophisticated measuring equipment. Why would they go to all this expense for such small changes? It turns out that some of the lessons learned from the latest Radi-Cal development (NASCAR, Formula 1, others) were directly applicable to this particular caliper. Without question, they were incorporated, tooling modified, CNC programs changed, new hardware sourced, etc. A 12% improvement in dynamic stiffness (in all 3 planes) was observed as a result.

And that's just one aspect of the caliper. There are also plenty to talk about when it comes to properly vented, 2-piece rotors that are made from much better iron than the typical OE stuff.

You just won't see that sort of attention to detail on typical (less than US$80k) OE vehicles as the budget is just not there to support it. Sure, the level of fit and finish required is high, but don't expect optimum performance. If any additional R&D is spent on the OE units, it will only be due to a quality problem such as premature leaking, noise, etc. OE budgets usually do not provide for continuing development. Lessons learned from one run get wrapped up into development of the next project.

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Chris Bernal
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www.stillen.com