How can I upgrade my disc brakes?

[BonesDT]

Just crammed on 33" X 12.5" X 15" Goodyear Wrangler MTR's on 15" American Racing Mojave Teflon rims! WOW! It looks awesome! Really fills out the wheel wells much better than my old 31.5" X 10.5" X 16" i had on before.

However, I have noticed diminished braking performance due to these monsters.

I would like to know my options for brake upgrades. My friend has recommended just doing a caliper and steel line upgrade. Ideally, I would like a complete Explorer kit if anyone makes them.

Plus, I realize 15" rims are small and i dont know how much bigger i can go with rotors (btw, what are the stock rotor sizes?). How do the guys with 44" tires on 15" rims get powerful enough brakes??

One more thing, I am a huge fan of ABS brakes, can i keep them? I feel like stock brakes with ABS would be better stopping power than an upgraded rotor and caliper kit without ABS, am I right?

 

[Turdle]

you might like these, search for your application

www.powerslot.com

 

[Explorer#2]

i have powerslots and hawk pads and they are great, i have locked the breaks up with this combo, only done it once so i dont know if this is a common problem. and i dont think you can go any bigger with 15" rims

 

[Turdle]

Thanks for the input. I have been wanting to get them for a while now.You just backed that up.
I e-mailed them, since I have 17" wheels I wanted larger rotors and calipers, but they said they don't have a size upgrade. They did promise a much better brake than stock.

 

[Explorer#2]

They are much better than stock. They have saved me a lot of money by not rear ending people.

 

[aldive]

I too recommend Power Slot rotors.

I use em and they perform well.

Good luck ....

 

[ExplorerDMB]

powerslots seem to be the favorite around here. I'm surprised you noticed a lot of difference in your braking. I have had my lift on with 33s and 34s for about 7K miles and when other people drive my truck they are amazed at how strong the brakes are. I guess each truck is different. I still have my origional pads on the rear of my truck (at 77K) and I still have plenty of meat.

-Drew

 

[BonesDT]

is there anyway to upgrade the calipers? what about cobra two piston calipers, is there an easy way to make them fit? any stainless steel brake lines for the explorer?

how do guys running 35"-44" tires on 15" rims (on any truck) deal with braking?

little lightweight sports car enthusiasts are always upgrading their brakes to huge 13" rotors. i never see much in the off-road truck world about stopping huge trucks barrelling down the road with monster tires. if anything, shouldn't the trucks be packing the largest rotors?

 

[Explorer#2]

Well the thing is that the ideal ratio of tire to wheel size is about 2:1, that is you don’t want a wheel that is more than half the diameter of the tire, i.e. forty inch tire no bigger than a twenty inch wheel, but the small the better. This limits the amount of space for break stuff. To get better breaking you can upgrade the rotors, pads, get high performance break fluid, upgrade the break lines, and maybe put more PSI through the break lines. I have the stock 15" wheels on my X and the rotors and calipers fill up almost all of the wheel, so if you have 15" wheels I guess the same is true and you have almost no more room to get bigger rotors or calipers.

As for the little sports cars they are running bigger wheels ideal 17-18" so that they can get a low profile tire and help them grip the road better, and thus they have 17-18" of space to fill with break stuff not just 15".

One thing the little sports car drivers don’t know is that they are losing horse power and torque by putting bigger rotors on there cars. You may think I am crazy, but it takes more horsepower and torque to turn the wheels and the breaks the farther away they are from the center of the axel. So the more weight farther away from the axel the harder it is for the motor to turn.

 

[MONMIX]

Al, what pads do you use ?

 

[Lloyd10977]

Brembo makes a new caliper called the MONOBLOCK which contains 6 pistons. This would seriously increase the torque applied to the rotors and give you the braking force you need without having to change the rotor size. Check into them at TIRE RACK.

 

['97 V8]

And im sure they come with a hefty price.....$$$$$$$ i could use on something else.

 

[Explorer#2]

and would they fit, sure if you have bigger wheels with different spacing, but to get the six pistons in you have to have three on each side and on my stock wheels i dont think there is room for pistons on the outside, you also have to have room to get the break fluid over to the outside pistons and that is most commonly done by going over the caliper, again cause me to wonder if they would fit in 15" wheels. and it is not just about the number of pistons, BMW's one of the greatest drivers cars have only one piston and they break very well.

 

[Turdle]

Ok, I have 17" wheels, 29" x 11" tires, which creates more rotating mass. This,along with more hp, I am concerned with my braking ability.
There is a larger setup that will fit?

 

[BonesDT]

it seems to me that the only direct bolt-on upgrades for an explorer's brakes are simply aftermarket stock-sized rotors and pads (Powerslot/Hawk, i think brembo makes some stock-sized slotted and drilled rotors)

according to powerslots application chart, there is no Powerslot Plus (up-sized rotor with caliper relocation bracket) kit for the explorer.

seems like if we want a substantial brake system upgrade on our stock axles, we would have to fabricate our own caliper brackets in order to use larger rotors and/or upgraded calipers. with some careful calculations and some metal fabrication, i dont think it would be too hard to adapt a Mustang Cobra brake kit to the explorer.

 

[Explorer#2]

the upgrades that are there are much better than stock, if you want to get the bigger rotors you will have to get bigger wheels, if you do end up going with the bigger rotors and calipers keep me in mind if you want to sell your current wheels

 

[5.0L96Exp]

While on the topic of brakes I would just like to add that EBC brake pads are the worst "upgrade" I have ever made. They are manufactured to very poor tolerances; so bad in fact I had to grind (YES grind) 3 out of 8 pads just to get them to fit properly in the calipers. 2 of them were so tight fitting you couldn’t hammer them into place if you tried (not that they should ever ever ever fit that snug). Unfortunately I had no other option at the time and had to use them but you can bet I will be removing them and switching to some other manufacturer. I would not recommend these pads to anyone.

 

[Fredness]

That post frightens me...

OK, so I was in NorCal this weekend and to get to our destination we had to take over 80 miles of non-maintained dirt roads. Mostly washboard, but no ruts. The bulk of the trip was through a mountain pass with 3,000 ft elevation changes. At one point we were on a 14% grade for 2 miles and I overheated the brakes. We were not even loaded down with our normal camping gear or trailer, so it's a major concern.

While it might have something to do with the 10+ hours of driving, I would like to do an upgrade soon. That sucked!

I plan on a complete system flush with quality fluid, slotted rotors and high quality pads, but which ones? An upgrade would be preffered, since the wife wants larger tires anyway...

 

[BonesDT]

I ended up getting all 4 Powerslot rotors and combined them with the Hawk LTS Pads. If you combine that with a DOT4 brake fluid flush (which I haven't done...yet), then that is pretty much the best you can do "bolt-on" wise. Try finding someone that will make you some custom stainless steel brake lines, and then only serious modifications will give you any better braking performance.

I guess I don't have a very good "palate" on my braking foot, so It's hard to feel the performance difference with the new rotors and pads. But I do notice the rotors wear with a thicker strip (surface area) than the stock setup, so this probably means the Hawk pads are slightly larger than the stock. As for the rotors, the rust-free feature looks cool. I apologize my foot isn't sensitive enough to comment on the colder braking power the Powerslots are suppose to bring.

I am looking into doing the DOT4 fluid "flush" and stainless steel lines. This should help a lot. The two combined will basically increase compression in the brake lines. Though this will require custom made lines and the "flush" is annoying. I put "flush" in quotes because you can't drain the old brake fluid.

In my opinion, the most effective braking component is your ABS brakes, when they are working properly. Yea, you already have them, but they are prob off because of your non-stock tire size. Consider getting a speedometer adjuster for larger tires like Superlift's. This will not only correct your speedometer and odometer but will recalibrate your ABS system to accomodate the larger tires (even 31's). If you slam on your brakes and lock your tires, then bigger, better brakes are just going to make them skid out even faster, making you brake in less distance. So make sure you get the ABS system working right first.

Probably the best upgrade for my brakes was doing them myself. Because of this, I found some of the "alignment pins", which connect the calipers to the caliper brackets, seized stuck. Because of this, I figured 90% of my braking power was on my front left rotor. Breaking these pins free and repacking/greasing them probably did the most for my braking performance than the new rotors and pads.

 

[LBarr2002]

Powerslot doesn't list rotors for '91-'92...Is there a difference between them and the 93-94?