Big Brake Upgrades

[James Stanley]

I've looked into so many part numbers for several different Ford vehicles, and I've come to realize, that the front brakes on the 15+ TC are Focus Brakes, which means any big brake kit for the Focus will work on the TC. 

Pumaspeed has the Focus RS Brembo brake upgrade kit for only $650, but you need to have an 18" wheel or larger, and if it's an OEM 18", like a stock FOcus ST Wheel, you'll need a 5mm spacer to clear the caliper. 

I plan on going for the RS brakes in the future, but there are other, more pressing mods to do first.

[Beta Don]

We have 2 electric cars and pretty much only use our TC for out of town trips, usually carrying our Segways to some other city to explore.  One thing you learn driving electric cars is that using friction brakes shortens your range  -  You can go farther by anticipating the need to slow down and using regenerative braking which puts back the energy you used to get the car rolling

Driving EV's really changes how you drive every other vehicle you own  -  You follow a little less closely, anticipate the need to slow down so you don't have to use the brakes and that gets you much better mileage.  Our TC computer says we've averaged 28.6 mpg for the first 20,000 miles.  I'm afraid if I had a 'big brake kit' I could probably instantly knock 4 or 5 mpg off that number! 

Don

[James Stanley]

I've never gotten more than 22mpgs on roadtrips... I've got a lead foot, so a BBK reducing MPGs isn't going to deter me much. 

[MLB]

what about the ABS and other assiociated electronics?  Would the extra clamping force mess with the settings or do they just respond instantaneously to the locking or not locking state?

 They don't seem over-braked for sure and I seem to see a lot of very early brake jobs being done.  Granted some people are hauling weight, but some aren't and still sub 20k brake jobs?  hmmmm

IF there are no repercussions to the swap, I'd be looking at that for sure at some point.  

[MLB]

On 5/29/2017 at 0:46 PM, Beta Don said:

We have 2 electric cars and pretty much only use our TC for out of town trips, usually carrying our Segways to some other city to explore.  One thing you learn driving electric cars is that using friction brakes shortens your range  -  You can go farther by anticipating the need to slow down and using regenerative braking which puts back the energy you used to get the car rolling

Driving EV's really changes how you drive every other vehicle you own  -  You follow a little less closely, anticipate the need to slow down so you don't have to use the brakes and that gets you much better mileage.  Our TC computer says we've averaged 28.6 mpg for the first 20,000 miles.  I'm afraid if I had a 'big brake kit' I could probably instantly knock 4 or 5 mpg off that number! 

Don

But with todays hard metallic pads, if you drive them like hybrids (I have one) you'll just glaze the pads badly in short order on lots of cars.

Need to brake harder and shorter than the old soft asbestos pads with non hybrids to get decent braking performance and normal wear.

[williaty]

On 6/24/2017 at 11:15 AM, MLB said:

what about the ABS and other assiociated electronics?  Would the extra clamping force mess with the settings or do they just respond instantaneously to the locking or not locking state?

 They don't seem over-braked for sure and I seem to see a lot of very early brake jobs being done.  Granted some people are hauling weight, but some aren't and still sub 20k brake jobs?  hmmmm

IF there are no repercussions to the swap, I'd be looking at that for sure at some point.  

So, I design performance suspension and brakes for a living.

 

1) Yes, doing a BBK almost always screws up MANY things, including the ABS/TCS. I say nearly always because a VERY FEW aftermarket BBK manufacturers design intelligently around this problem.

 

2) Doing a BBK almost always INCREASES STOPPING DISTANCE. There's two reasons for this: a) almost all modern disc brake systems are capable of locking any wheel/activating ABS if you're man enough to push on the pedal that hard (most people won't push hard enough, weirdly) so the car is traction limited, not brake limited. The BBKs alter the brake bias/balance, which pushes one end of the car into lockup/ABS activation sooner while allowing the other end to do less work. Result is that your braking performance gets worse. I say nearly always because a VERY FEW aftermarket BBK manufacturers design intelligently around this problem.

 

3) BBKs are NOT about getting more braking force, they're about having more rotor surface area to dissipate heat. Unless you already have high-temp brake pads and high-temp brake fluid and you're STILL getting brake fade, you DO NOT NEED A BBK.

 

4) BBKs reduce suspension performance, even when you're not touching the brake pedal, because they increase unsprung mass and unsprung mass is ALWAYS bad.

 

 

BBKs are almost never a good idea. If you're doing a race build and you need more cooling, your first step should always be to duct air from the high pressure zone in front of the front bumper into the center of the brake rotor to provide cooling. Only once you can't get any more air blowing over the rotor should you finally give up and put a bigger rotor on there. There are extremely rare exceptions to this and they all revolve around putting a larger rotor on the rear to shift brake bias rearwards since all production cars today have a heavily front-weighted brake bias. Shifting the bias rearwards reduces understeer and allows more brake force to be applied to the road before any tire locks up/activates ABS. THIS IS A RARE CASE THOUGH.

 

 

[G B L]

That was a great post I gained a lot of info. ABS is  a mixed blessing it helps maintain steering control at the expense of stopping distance.

[williaty]

35 minutes ago, G B L said:

That was a great post I gained a lot of info. ABS is  a mixed blessing it helps maintain steering control at the expense of stopping distance.

On a single-friction surface, ABS will stop the car in a shorter distance than most drivers while at the same time preserving steering. This is because most drivers have no frickin clue how to threshold brake and use everything the tires have to offer without locking up one of them. So for the average driver, ABS reduces stopping distances. For the professional driver, ABS increases stopping distances in a laboratory-perfect scenario.

 

In the real world, the single brake pedal can't brake all 4 wheels to different amounts even with a professional driver yet modern ABS systems can. This means that ABS can out-brake even professional drivers when, say, two wheels are on the road and two wheels are off on the gravel shoulder or when, on a racetrack, the inside rear wheel goes light at turn-in under trail braking. Top-grade ABS is effective enough that many race bodies ban it because of the competitive advantage it provides. Most of the negative impressions people have of ABS are from early generation systems or from systems over which the lawyers have run amok and overridden what the engineers figured out.

 

Sadly, this has resulted in modern cars getting MUCH worse to drive and being MUCH less able to avoid an accident. When ABS first debuted, it was advertised as a way to keep braking and steering at the same time so you could swerve around the accident. Sadly, engineering achievements rarely survive contact with the enemy (the public). What happened when the public got ah hold of the first ABS cars is that they'd "stomp, stay, and steer" so violently that they'd spin the car and the car makers lost a string of very expensive court cases. In response, they modified all the cars to have terminal understeer, even with ABS, so that you couldn't spin the car no matter what. Of course, this also means that you can't dodge an accident either, or potentially save the car/yourself when you encounter some kind of dangerous situation mid-corner. Sadly, juries routinely convict the car makers if the car spins (oversteer) because "clearly the car was unsafe" but, if the car understeers, juries routinely conclude that the driver was an idiot and was driving too fast. So because of juries made of bad drivers, we now have cars that are demonstrably less safe (in terms of accident-avoidance).

[G B L]

All of what you post is on target.

I wonder how much time is spent testing the ABS logic in snow and freezing rain?