Are upgrading rear brakes necessary?
 

Right now I'm getting my foundation together before I go into my TT swap in the spring. I'm looking to buy Wilwood's BBK upgrade for the front. I do plan to attend road course events throughout the year, the question is should I upgrade the rears as well. I believe the front should be more than adaquate, as always I want to be clear before I commit to a buy thanks.

If you plan to track the car, doing something with the rear is necessary. While the front brakes do 70% of the stopping, if you have powerful front brakes and stock rear brakes, the car will feel very imbalanced while braking.

Just as a tid-bit of info, the stock rear brakes on the 300ZX are .8" larger than the front brakes because Nissan was trying to balance out the feel of the braking system. While the rear brakes do much less work all else being equal, they'll do a little more when they have more leverage (that extra .8"). So while the fronts still do the majority of the work, having the extra leverage makes for a more evenly-braking car.

If you don't plan to track the car much, you could probably forgo the rears, but if you plan to be a serious competitor in SCCA events and the like, rears will help you. (It'll allow you to go deeper into the turns before having to decelerate, which will add precious milliseconds onto your time.)

Rather than spending a$$loads of money on Wilwood or some other BBK just for the rear, you might want to look into just getting larger rotors and a bracket to move the caliper out a bit (same concept as the MWS Motorsports kit, the VR4 retrofit, and the 350Z rotor retrofit). It'll cost a lot less and you can use your stock calipers. While the stock 2 piston rear calipers won't bite that well, the extra leverage will at least help.

If you want to be REALLY innovative and impress even me, take your stock front calipers and put them in back with larger rotors... a BBK in front and 4 piston stock calipers with larger rotors in back would probably be a beautiful braking vehicle.

In fact... I might just do that... VR4 kit in front and 4 piston stock calipers in back... perhaps next spring...

What kind of fabrication or modification would it take to replace the rear calipers with front calipers?

I'm honestly not sure.

I've never compared the bolt-holes to know how they line up originally. No matter what, you're going to have to go to a machine shop to have a bracket fabricated, but that's a good thing because it'll give you the opportunity to have it fabricated in a way to move the caliper out a little bit, allowing the larger rotor. Like I said, it'll be a custom job completely, but it'll be a damn nice custom job when it's done.

If you want to know how much fabrication is needed, when you put your Wilwood kit on, take off one of the rear wheels, break loose a rear caliper and compare (don't even disconnect the rear caliper brake lines, just move the caliper off the rotor and put the front on in its place or compare bolt-holes).

Moved to 300ZX (Z32) Brakes, Wheels, Suspension and Chassis

That's a very good idea there Randy. I've had the same thought on occasion but never thought of how to execute it. Too lazy to think it thru probably. :p

I have as well...I always see my stock front calipers sittin' in the garage and I think....what a shame to see them go to waste. There's gotta be something I can put them on.

What I'm afraid of is that it would be too much brake in the rear. To offset that, would you just need to go with monster brakes up front?\

Let us know if you decide to try it.

I don't think you'd need "monster" brakes up front... like I said, in stock form, the rear rotors are larger to begin with; by switching to 4-piston calipers in the rear, you're only increasing the bite of the rear brakes.

I think it'd be easily offset by a slightly larger (or maybe even a better working) front system. I think the MWS Motorsports kit, the VR4 kit, the 350Z kit, or perhaps even some Hawk pads in front/stock pads in the rear might make up the difference.

As long as you don't set up the rear equally with the front (something in the front is better than the rear, whether it be larger rotors or better pads), the braking will feel the same as stock, front/rear ratio-wise.

With all stock rotors (rear being .8" larger), all the same 4-piston calipers, and same brake pads, the braking feeling will probably feel a bit different than stock. You never know, though... you might like it that way.

Not to mention, the front brakes will always do most of the work (~70%) anyway (provided you're driving forward, lol).

Worst case, you can always call SPL Parts and get the front/rear brake proportioning valve.

they Don;t have to. how much do oyu want for them I need some for my S13. as the puny little silvia brakes are not going to cut it.