Rear Brake upgrade

Peato40

Well-Known Forum User
Hello All,

Since winter is on it's way I need to think about what it is I will tackle next with my Z and rear brakes are definitely something I would like to upgrade. I know there are various kits available but seem a little expensive for what they actually are. I can easily get some conversion brackets made up, so was wondering what solutions other people have found to be effective?

I'm running 16" rims so have a little room to play with and do also intend to upgrade the front brakes also in the future, so that braking balance can be achieved.

So any thoughts and comments will be very welcome.
 

Peato40

Well-Known Forum User
I have new shoes along with new slaves and master cylinders, which do stop the car but not quite as well as I would like. Handbrake is very poor, thought it would get better once brakes had bedded in a bit but no so far. I think I could get better performance from original setup but I know many have upgraded, which is why I'm reaching out for advice on the subject.
 

Turn & Burn

Club Member
I’m going to use 200sx calipers already obtained from a jap breakers yard. I’m just about to produce a drawing for the brackets to get them laser cut from T6, after cutting they’ll also need milled to get the offset so the caliper sits on disk centre.

You’ll probably also need to upgrade the M.cylinder to 7/8” or 1” and also fit bias adjustment.

I know from all the chat that it’s not really necessary to fit discs but they just seem like a low maintenance upgrade, that’s relatively straightforward to install if ur carrying out a major rebuild/resto.
 

Rob Gaskin

Treasurer
Staff member
Site Administrator
It's worth researching handbrake options if you do decide to go disc because most people's experience (including mine) is that the handbrake will be worse.
 

Sean287

Well-Known Forum User
If your handbrake is poor then your rear shoes are probably not adjusted properly. I'm running 300bhp with wildwood four pots and 300mm discs front and stock drums on the rear with more aggressive shoes. The brakes will put your face through the windscreen. If you need to, then upgrade the fronts with four pots but leave the rears alone, this is a very light car and you will end up with an over braked rear end that will require faffing around with proportioning adjuster.

A badly adjusted set of rear drums will have a huge impact on the overall braking performance of the car. Handbrake should be adjusted to three clicks from pulling the lever.
 

johnymd

Club Member
Sean - I think the handbrake issue is after you convert to rear discs and not with the drums.

I've also been looking into affordable rear discs kits from uk parts. The US kits tend to be around £800 once you factor in postage and duty/vat. I don't consider there is anything wrong with the drums apart from maintenance. Discs require far less and changing pads is a 5min job. For that reason along I would like to make the change. I already have a set of brackets for the maxima/200sx calipers but I'm struggling to find these in the UK. The 200sx one have a terrible history of reliability and I cant seam to find a cheap enough source. The best alternative that has a suitable hand brake mechanism is from a VW. These are available cheap as chips but are a different spacing from the cheap brackets from the US.

I think Dave Jarman still does a kit for around £650.
 

Peato40

Well-Known Forum User
Thanks all for your comments, so all things considered I think I may well upgrade the fronts first to 4 pots, adjust the rears and then decide if I still want to upgrade rears to discs also.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk
 

johnymd

Club Member
I chose this route on the red 280z. Toyota/z31 combo for front with drums on the back. Great for road use but I did run out out brakes on the long downhill section of nordschlife. They came back after cooling a little so better pads would probably fix this.
 
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