Xenonk

I don't, that looks pretty happy and free to me, I like it!

decided to drop in after all these years.. good to see the chassis is still out there trying something. keep up the work, good luck on your track days and lap times.

from what I remember, they are longer by like an inch or two (not sure if it's just where the mounting points are for the longer suspension pieces). I remember doing testing and fitments a long time ago (many, it's been more than 10 years now) on this matter.

blah, you dont have to.. but it is the cost effective way to get at least the rotors and not worry about anything else as you are paying for a quality rotor (lasted me plenty of miles on the track before I had to toss them away). the Polishing? I think you are thinking of "turning" or "resurfacing" the face of the rotor to get rid of the vibrations or imprints of the pad material on the surface. Typically I brake a little harder in a smooth fashion to resurface them.. if the vibration is too much, a couple of things could have happened: 1) they warped 2) they are worn too thin to the point where resurfacing them is a waste of money 3) lug nuts are loose I would check your brake pads.. some pads have a beveled edge to them, which helps slightly of removing the water when it's the initial contact of the pad to the rotor.. but that just goes away.. I never had "water" issues at all.. you would have to be driving in some really deep waters for actual water to hinder your braking.

it's ok, but if you are street driving, you dont need the cross-drilled or even slotted brakes.. you are better off just driving around with full blanks as they dont eat up your pads as quickly. either case, you should just check your rotor thicknesses regardless, if you need to get rear ones because they are getting too thin, then you should get them replaced anyways.

doh, my fridays just got booked up practically forever!! on the bright side, got my car back, clutch feel and clutch is all new to me.. the engagement point is so low!! will need to relearn how to drive this thing.. any chance of a Saturday meet some time?

by walking?

as it couldnt get any worse for me, the mazda 6 is also out of commission as of last night since it decided that it didn't want all the nice mobil 1 10w40 full synthetic oil all over every parking spot that I poured in the oil.. the oil filter housing is a total... FAIL!

my car is at andrewtech right now getting a new clutch in place.. the throw-out bearing took a dump on me after 99,291 miles (of which 20k of that was on the track). The clutch itself is fine, but I wont know when I'll be getting my car back tomorrow night...

I wont be around for this one fellas, I should be around for the next one.

that's because you dont know the servers and the people that work at Ziki's well enough The bartenders all got me lit up last time.

no more credit? that's funny. I wont be around guys.. got too much stuff to do prior to the weekend (and track weekend coming up).

yea, it's my way to work of course.. cant stand driving on that parking lot called I-495. I'll try to make it, it's one of the few Fridays taht I dont have much to do. Wife gets off from work around 6pm from the metro, I can probably just pick her up from Twinbrook Metro and meet you guys at Fridays. Hope to see you guys there.

yea, please let me know, some one PM me.. I've been MIA for a while now..

I think the order really doesnt matter too much as long as you get all the old fluid out. The only time I have seen it matter is when you have fixed piston calipers where you have 2 bleeder screws on each side of the caliper, normally I bleed the outside as much as i can and then bleed the inside one last. That way, you end up forcing as much of the bubbles out, and any of the remaining bubbles are caught up in the in-board nipple/bleeder. I've always done all my cars furtherest corner from the ABS unit if the car has one, and if it doesn't I go by the furthest from Master cylinder.

i would go higher since I drive faster just kidding buddy.

Stock rotors are fine.. if anything, you got a "hot spot" (not exactly a soft spot) where you burned and overheated the pads onto the rotor and caused a significant difference in thickness of the rotor. Usually that's a sign of the rotors overheating and that initial slam of the brake pedal eventually wore it to where you got a lot of melted pad material or that you ended up smacking that exact same location of the rotor at every brake entry zone. Either case, that's an indication to work on your braking input as a driver as well. Overall, stock rotors hold up just fine for track days. It's the pads that you need to worry about that you are not glazing them and melting them onto the rotors and causing a hot spot or a pad imprint on them. Spotty pad material will do that to a rotor and that's probably why the shop re-surfaced them. You could look around for some slotted rotors but that still won't solve your problem if you overheat the rotors again. The slots could prevent the pads from burning onto the rotor, but the slots WILL eat up your pads quicker, it's something for you to consider. I used to track the blanks all the time and they did well, they just got really hot so I had to use higher temp pads and looked at changing up my driving habits and also looked into brake ducts. The biggest thing you need is to get new fluid, some new stock/oem-sized rotors and higher temp brake pads as there are enough out there to choose from. I AM NOT DOING A PRODUCT PLACEMENT NOR DOING ANY ADVERTISEMENT OF PARTICULAR VENDORS/SPONSORS by saying this: Brakeswap or Racecomp Engineering probably has a better solution of what you may need to run with your R1Rs and your situation since they have slotted, blanks, and other rotors that would fit your budget than what I would recommend (Magnetic1 has a M3 E36 that he races often at the track, so he knows exactly what you need and Racecomp Engineering have a long history in racing and instructing HDPE as well.. we all came from the same background starting as HPDE students like yourself, so you can learn from our experiences). Call them up to see what pads that will work for you. I would lean towards something along the lines of at least getting new front rotors and front pair of track pads something like Carbotech XP12 or higher (since you have stage 2) and Carbotech XP8 or higher [or match them all aroundif you want] and you are also running on R1Rs and you wont have the response from an r-compound tire, so your braking zones will be longer than an r-compound tire which means you will be on the brakes longer which in turns feeds out more heat. Get some new fluid in the lines (as Im pretty sureu if you glazed your pads from the last time, you probably boiled your old brake fluid too). The SS lines are not neccessary, but just a nice thing to have if you want better pedal feel, but it's not going to make you a better in braking exercises. swap out your stock pads before your track day and swap them back in after your track weekend is over. Stock pads were never meant to do track days.. heck they aren't even good enough for even autocross events. They are only good for the joe shmoe that's trying to get to work at the speed limit with only him driving on the road on a cold weather rainy day while driving grandma home (to keep things quiet).

since we are doing fairly the same commute, I dont see myself using the brakes all that much even in stop and go traffic (since I'm not hard on the accelerator to speed up fast just to hit the brakes in another 5 seconds). I'm usually light on the brakes on stop and go traffic. I run around town on all sorts of pads, from ceramics to track pads between weekends at the track (too lazy to change them out again for the following weekend if I know I'll be out on track soon). Overall, any street performance pad will do, but if you see yourself driving like i do and do hard late threshold braking going into the decel lanes of the off/on-ramps, then I suggest using a little bit higher bite and a bit higher temperature range (probably something that is along the lines of Carbotech Bobcats or higher). Most of the time in the DC area, we dont drive around much in the hills either. The only thing with going with a higher temperature range is that you may need to change out the pads to something colder when winter comes around (unless you are comfortable with warming up your brakes with a few good drags before you head out as you pull out of your driveway on the cold winter days). In terms of suspension, it depends on your set up and how much weigh transfer and suspension travel you are dealing with. On the grand scheme of things, head dive is probably the least of your concerns if you are doing an emergency brake stop because someone brake-checked you or that you came up on heavy 495 traffic, you have other things to worry about at that point. It would be safer to say that the stiffer (this is a very gray area actually because there's a difference between the term "stiff" and the term "compliant" or "controlled" shocks depends on the roads than your tires) can lead to a larger emphasis of what your tires can do, but not always the case. Take for example if you had stiff shocks on a smooth surface, your tires will be in contact of the road all the time. This is assuming that your front shocks and springs are stiff enough to prevent head-dive which allows the rear tires of the car to help slow you down. It is correct that 90% of cars built have the front brakes to be the brute of the force (unless you drive a Porsche 911 or some other Rear Engine Rear Drive car). If your car's suspension was going to do an endo or a stoppie like a motorcycle would, then it's obvious that your rear tires will have little or no effect in helping you slow down, overall, you are only using 70~80% of the braking potential of your car. Even in Motorcycle Safety Classes the instructors spend time teaching the students to use front and rear brakes together to get maximum stopping distance. So backing up, if the road is not smooth, then this causes some problems. As I mentioned before, shocks play a big role in how well the car can stop and non-compliant shocks will make braking distances longer because they are spending too much time in the air or off the ground from the previous bounce or bump and not enough time pushing back down onto the ground to keep the tires back on the pavement. Sure, you can have stiff shocks, but you also need for them to be compliant or matched with the road surface. A fast reacting shock will help (think rebound, or the force of which the shocks pushes back down to extend the shock back to touch the ground) keep the tire down on the ground. What makes a suspension "stiff" is actually how the bound or compression portion of the shock reacts.. and there are two functions of the compression: fast speed and slow speed (rate of which the shock compresses). Fast would be considered how quick the suspension reacts to hitting a pot hole or how quick it can absorb a bump like a 2x4 on the road while a slow speed compression would be the rolling action of the car through a turn or how you are slowly adding the pressure on as you crest over a hill or hitting up a banked turn. So if the car's fast speed compression and fast speed rebound are lousy, then it's going to be obvious that whatever contact that you can make with the tire on the road will determine how well you are going to stop based on how much contact time you have with the road and the tire's grip levels. The "stiffness" really comes from the slow speed bound and rebound actions of the shocks. Hope that all makes sense. Back to the basics, so long as the tires are on the ground and that you are using threshold braking, the tires will do their job to slow you down. If the car is so stiff [and suspension is not compliant] that the tires are leaving off the ground, then it's obvious that you dont need brakes, rather you need air brakes or some kind of parachute to slow you down. I actually reside not too far from Andrewtech in Gaithersburg area, but I drive everywhere north of DC.

aside from the stock pads, the rotors are plenty good as they are.. the way I see it, the only way you would want better rotors is if you do a lot of braking that overheats the pads, at that point, you might as well get better pads if you use the brakes that much.

ah ok, I got a quote today that the bottom element is around $90?! is that right? btw, where did you guys order your hog rings and hog ring pliers? Thanks

I think I have the same problem on mine as well where the lower part has the wired pulled off.. man, that's no joke and a lot of work just to get the darn thing off. I do have one question, for the hog rings, is there a technique to make sure that the bolsters are nice and tight if you are already splitting the pieces apart to get them off in the first place? Thanks

the rotors need to be from a 2004 since all following years of the STi changed their bolt patterns.

I'm just waiting for some Alcon calipers that Eric at Brakeswap may come out with.. You don't neccessarily need more pistons, but it's about size of the piston and how much clamping force you are trying to put on the pads and also how big/"strong" your master cylinder is to push that kind of piston to make it effective.