dandan

Thanks mate I did another bedding in session yesterday and they are getting better and better. I still have not managed to get them to fade at all and I'm not sure I'll be able to on the road. I have faded my stock UKs and also CWs but that was repeated braking to the level I've not quite managed yet with these. The cold feel is identical to my UKs normal feel with the CW pads - not overly sharp but with plenty of stopping power. Once a tiny bit of warmth is in them they sharpen right up and feel great and very easy to modulate. The XP8 pads seem to make a lot of very dark dust but that could be from the unusally heavy braking I've been doing Apparently they need to go right to the point of fading for optimum pad transfer to the disc.....I'm getting there Sat at a fairly sensible ride height at the mo but I may drop it a tiny bit.

I suspect it was a custom job but could be a genuine kit. What diameter are the discs and how many pistons in the caliper?

Sorry mate, can you try again?

No good for you Mark - you want a 3.4 to chase dude with. I'll take this little 3 litre Edit: I have to pass on this due to a monster double glazing request from my OH for our new house

Give me a shout if Mark doesn't have it please mate.

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10kg/mm is about 560lb/in for the oldies About the same as my fronts! (road car though). Your droop may be lacking (ooo-er!) so the inside tyre will unload and reduce your overall rear end grip as the weight transfers to the outside tyre (Chris gave me some pointers on this a while back when I was faffing around with rear tyre fitments). I have about 6" droop from nominal ride height till the wheel lifts - this is jacked up fully....what's yours like?

No sweat.

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Any good?

The front calipers give about 7mm more room towards the spoke and are I think they are also more roomy towards the inside of the wheel too - if you mounted them on the UK disc. However, my aluminium bells are quite a low offset which means the clearance to the spokes (compared to UKs) is a little less. I could pull the disc 20mm closer to the centre of the car with a different bell if needed but this way kept the brackets relatively simple (and I have loads of room in the Rotas anyway). My discs are 365mm so they won't fit into 17" wheels. The rears do though I'll add things up Wes and let you know - probably about £3500 but I'll check. The pads were something like £450 alone I've seen a 365mm Monoblock six front setup like mine for sale in Australia by a few companies for ~$5000AUS but never a rear kit of any sort. Thanks chaps

Reserved for an update after finishing the bedding in

There’s quite a picky bedding in needed for the discs and especially the pads to get enough pad film transferred to the discs. So far I’ve only done one bedding in session and that wasn’t the full story as I was taking things easy until I’ve checked over the install again with the wheels off. However, even after just half of the bedding in I am extremely impressed. The feel is incredible, the initial bite is sharp and predictable and they get the hot 255 tyres chirping with the ABS a lot quicker than with the UKs. I need to repeat the bedding in now to the point of fade and that should see the whole thing done – and even more eye popping braking. I think would be a bit OTT for the stock tyres so I’m glad I have the 255s up front.....on a track with some big R888s or even slicks I think these will come into their own even more!

So anyway, here are a few fitted pics: I need a couple of the whole car now, the cleaner silver calipers actually smarten up the whole look over the UKs and fill the wheels a lot better

The front discs are fully floating and the Alcon bobbin system is excellent. The square bobbins transmit the torque from the hat to the disc and allow room for radial expansion when the discs heat up and axial float to compensate for manufacturing tolerances in the hubs. This means the bell wobbles about with the hub (within Toyotas tolerances) but the discs can stay true and square with the pads. This limits the chance of the pads and piston continually being knocked back into the calliper and gives the pedal that slightly sharper feel and instant response. This is all good but can be a bit noisy as the disc and bell are bolted together “loose”. This is fine on a track car where you can put up with the clicking and squeaking all the time but it’s not good for a road car. For that reason, AP do not do a “road” floating setup so their normal kits are just bolted together. Brembo get over this with their funny shaped spring washer and the Alcons do it with a wave spring design on alternate fasteners. These keep everything quiet but don’t limit the float.

Here’s the evolution of the front brackets: And the rears: To get to this:

Front pads comparison: Rear pad comparison: I had to get the rear pads made specifically for this setup by Carbotech. The rear callipers are made for 32mm discs and the Toyota ones are only 16mm so the pad thickness needed increasing to suit. However, I couldn’t just do that on the friction material as the pads need to stay guided in the calliper even when they wear right down so we had to make the backplates thicker. The thick backplates were pretty heavy so they got hollowed out and “honeycombed” under the friction material to save weight. Here you can see the thicker plates:

Seen as I was always going to do the front and rears I was able to make use of the Alcon’s extra braking power rather than (like Brembo and AP) make the kits the same “power” as OEM so you can simply upgrade the front or rear without upsetting the brake balance. The theoretical braking power is up 18% on the UK Toyota setup (assuming the UK setup uses the same uprated pads as this setup). I did a lot of digging around to work out the balance and power of other kits around before I committed to the Alcons. The brake balance with this setup and my choice of pads gives 1-2% more rear bias which should be excellent as I felt the car could handle some more rear bias especially with some of the weight shifting going on with the car (single conversion, rear battery etc etc) plus the suspension setup and the 315 rear vs. 255 tyre setup. That said, I didn’t want to steam-roll into 5% or more rear bias as that might be a step too far – I’d rather faff around with that using a bias valve if I wanted to rather than committing to it 100% with the callipers, pads and disc design with no way back if I’m wrong! Bias Comparison: Brake Torque Comparison:

I decided a long time ago to upgrade the UK spec brakes on my car partly as I wanted to try something a little different to the Brembp/AP norm and I know the monoblock callipers are amongst the best around. The fronts are six piston monoblocks on 365mm crescent grooved Alcon discs and the rears have been designed to run on the UK rear discs to keep things simple with the handbrake setup. Here’s a few pics of all the parts before I fitted them: This gives an idea of the size of the calipers, these are the rears:

As said, they will work fine but they may be a little noisier and they will wear faster. I love them on cars in the winter though....even if it's just on wet roads as they make a huge difference.

That would probably go down well.

I was told by an AA man that the Mazda main dealers have been known to tow these down the road, in gear, when trying to overcome flodding issues - as the WOT cranking sometimes still doesn't work.

Where did you take the water feeds for the turbos from and where do the returns go mate?