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Carbon Ceramic Brakes - They're on!

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For those of you that wanted to see these CCB brake rotors on a car, here's a photo from a driving event on Sunday. You'll notice my clean car is filthy again and the driving surface is wet. It's been one of those years in this neighborhood. The heavy dust on the rims is from two track days last year - I ran out of time when I was changing tires so I put the dusty rims back on as they were when I took them off last year.

In any case, I'm running MPSC2's in R sizes on GT350 OEM rims. The handling is great - much smoother and more confidence-inspiring on the rougher parts of the driving surface we had on Sunday. The CCB weight reduction on the front wheels makes a real difference. As for stopping power, they're great - ABS is right where you expect it to be, let's just say.

I'm heading out to a real track day shortly - 1.6 miles and 9 turns - murder on brakes. We'll see how they do there. I'll be running RB's new sintered pads for this one.

20170716_093012 Small.jpg
 
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If you've been wondering how different the CCB rotors look on the front, the answer is "not much". I cleaned the car up after the track day this week:

20170722_143027 Small2.jpg

A slightly different point of view that shows the difference in tone from front to rear:

20170722_143004 Small.jpg

Notice how clean the "Brembo" lettering is on the calipers. I cleaned both the front and rear calipers when I installed the rotors the first time, and after 300 road and highway miles, a cones day and a track day I had to wash the rear caliper but the front was still clean. The CCB's don't dust much, that's for sure. The dust on the wheels in the picture below is from last year.

I ran the track day this week on RB's Streetable Sintered brake pads. Those pads are solid metal with no binder, and they laid down a really cool looking transfer layer on the rotors at the end of the event:

20170718_142640 Small.jpg

The sintered pads were excellent, by the way. Good brake performance, easy to modulate and no sign of fading. I was using titanium shields and ATE Typ200 fluid. The whole package worked great on a track that's famous for destroying brakes.
 

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Thanks for the update
 
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It's time for an update on the CCB's. After running them for three track days and four months of highway and city service, I wanted to give the folks who wondered about my sanity an update ;-).

It turns out that I'm sane. I have to say that I put these on with some trepidation - the internet knowledge base said they would be fragile, that they couldn't handle track use and they'd be nothing but an expensive headache. My experience is the EXACT OPPOSITE. I love them. I'm never going back to iron rotors. These things are that good.

First, for track work, they are flat-out phenomenal. I've run them with both RB sintered pads and with Pagid RSL-29's. To help with thermal management, I put the Cooltech brake duct completion air deflectors on and I used titanium shims to protect the brake calipers. After my three trips to the track, I still have healthy caliper piston dust boots and the ATE Typ 200 fluid worked fine. Now, I could have upgraded the stock Brembo calipers with RB's stainless pistons and high temp seals and used Castrol SRF. That would have given me even more thermal capacity, and for racing you'd want that, but for me as a casual track day guy, I wanted to see if that level of prep was needed, and it wasn't.

The sintered pads are a new product and they're "streetable" in the sense that you can run them all the time if you want to, but they're a bit noisy. As for bite, they've got the bite of a tyrannosaur. Mu is around 0.60 and it's immutable. Same brake feel from cold to glowing hot. Most racing pads have a mu curve that you ride up and down as the brakes heat up and cool down. These things are always the same. As for dust and wear, well there's no dust and almost no wear. After three track days, the total pad thickness (two pads pressed face to face) had gone from 34.0 mm to 33.6 mm. I'm not particularly hard on brakes, but it looks like those pads will last a long time. And what's really interesting about the sintered pads is the transfer layer (see photos in this thread). Basically, the pad lays down a metal layer and that becomes the friction surface for braking. So, not only do CCB rotors outlast iron rotors with composite pads, with sintered pads, the metallic transfer layer renews itself as you use the brakes. So, the long-lasting rotors will last even longer.

One of the criticisms of CCB's in the past has been poor modulation. My experience with sintered pads and with the RSL-29's is that they're just as easy to modulate as any other brake system. Now, the high-mu sintered pads give you a lot of braking with moderate pedal pressure, but once I got used to the sensitivity, I stopped thinking about it and got on with driving.

If you want to know more about racing with CCB rotors, Google "David Donohue Pikes Peak brakes" and you'll find videos (one is on the DSC Sport Suspension website) showing David Donohue's run up Pikes Peak in this year's hill climb event. He's Mark Donohue's son, by the way. Anyway, the Google search will turn up a review that David wrote and posted on a forum (that's why I didn't provide the link) about CCB brake performance with sintered race pads on the Pike's Peak race car. Apparently, he likes them too.

The Pagid RSL-29 pads are approved by Pagid for CCB track use. That means they don't crumble when they get hot as some composite pads are known to do. They have less bite than the sintered pads, and they work great too. They are still on the car, and after a couple of months of driving around town with them, they're remarkably good as a street pad. Super quiet, good braking and virtually no dust. Another winner.

I also ran the OEM GT350 Ferodo pads for a couple of weeks just to see what happened. They worked fine - they were a bit dusty, but nothing like they are on iron rotors. I didn't take them on the track, and I don't plan to. I've got everything I need with the RSL-29's and the sintered pads.

So that's the update. This was one of two rewarding upgrades I did on my GT350 this year. The second one is the DSC Sport Magride controller. It's amazing too, and together the two upgrades really change the driving experience.
 
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I got a sense of just how good these things are when I ran at Area 27 back in August. It was my first time at a new track and it's long with lots of challenging terrain and corners. It's the same distance from home as the Ridge Motorsports Park, but instead of a traffic-clogged Interstate, it's a lovely drive in the country. Anyway, I digress.

So I'm on about my third lap in the first session and I'm starting to think I know the track enough to start building some speed. Now, this track has a few blind corners and you have to know where you are or there could be a problem. So I came off turn 8 heading for the blind left-hand turn 9. Except my brain had skipped ahead by two corners and I thought I was headed for (also blind) right-hand turn 11. So I set up on the left side of the track, got into the brakes and headed for the turn-in cone on the left. Except that the "turn-in cone" was the apex cone for the left-hander. It's amazing how quickly things happen at speed. I had maybe 60 feet to fix the problem. I buried the brake pedal then came out of them as I straightened out the steering and rotated the car to the left over the lip of the hill (which is why it's blind). Now, I was still learning the track so I wasn't going particularly fast, but I was way deep and fast for a 90 degree left that I hadn't set up for.

I had all the brakes you could ever ask for in the moment. I didn't leave the track surface although it was close. The first thought as I collected my thoughts was "wow - these brakes are stunning!". It wasn't the absolute grip - that's tires - but the responsiveness that impressed me. To get around the corner I had to balance braking and steering at the limit, and the brakes made it (relatively) easy. Up until then I thought they were great - after that, I was committed.
 
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No. I don't have a scale that's accurate enough to be able to detect weight loss of a few grams - the one in the picture at the start of the thread is +/- 50g.
 
No. I don't have a scale that's accurate enough to be able to detect weight loss of a few grams - the one in the picture at the start of the thread is +/- 50g.

With RB CCB you just install and run like conventional iron (forget about they are CCB), or you can care about the weight loss like those Porsche guys running pccb with hundreds of discussion here - measuring the rotor on hub or remove from hub, and how about those holes clogged with brake derbies etc..

https://rennlist.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14600902&postcount=490
 
Yes I run CCB brakes for years as experiment to help developing CCB brake system and associated components (e.g. brake pad exclusively for CCB).

No I don't own a Porsche, but we developed more CCB brakes for Porsche, including 991 Turbo and Cup cars that competing in professional level, than other car makes.

Warrern-RB
 
The best companion to the front CCM rotors is the RB's "true" two piece light weight rotors which can save you 1.9 lbs per rotor or 3.8 lbs per axle even with 2mm thicker than OE.

Discs are made with alloyed iron for track abuse, replaceable, and bolted direct under OE calipers and use the same OE pads.

If you purchase the front CCM rotors, you are eligible for a 30% special discount on the rear kit.

http://www.racingbrake.com/RB-Rear-Two-piece-rotor-for-2016-Ford-Mustang-She-p/2569.htm
 
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I was interested in purchasing these same rotors for my 2017 350R. I spoke to the owner ?? & didn’t get a warm fuzzy about my needs which involved some track time. I am an experienced driver/instructor & push my cars hard. The reason I didn’t go that route is that I heard they won’t hold up to hard track use & I was also looking for all 4 corners. Just like Girodisc, they only offer fronts.
 

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I was interested in purchasing these same rotors for my 2017 350R. I spoke to the owner ?? & didn’t get a warm fuzzy about my needs which involved some track time. I am an experienced driver/instructor & push my cars hard. The reason I didn’t go that route is that I heard they won’t hold up to hard track use & I was also looking for all 4 corners. Just like Girodisc, they only offer fronts.
Interesting. I was quite concerned about track suitability too, but I went ahead anyway and it's working fine for me. The sintered pads make the difference, as far as I can tell. They put a metal transfer layer down on the rotor surface so the pad is running on metal, not the bare ceramic. I watched this develop on mine and I'm not worried about longevity any more. For the winter I'm running Pagid RSL29's because they're quiet and there's zero (really zero) dust.

That said, I'm not here to sell you on the product. If you're concerned about longevity and plan on staying with iron rotors, you have the option to put Girodisc on the front and RB iron rotors on the back. I've got the RB rear rotors in a box in my garage, and once I'm done shoveling snow for the year, I'll put them on the car. The rear rotor/hat combo is a bit lighter than the OEM, but the big difference is that you change from non-directional drilled rotors to slotted directional 48 vane 380x28 racing rotors.
 
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It's half way through the 2018 track season and I've put three more track days on my CCB's.

My opinion of them hasn't changed. I love these things. They are the best brakes I've ever driven with, and I've had AP Racing, Brembo Racing, Stoptech and a variety of OEM setups.

For track work, the "streetable" sintered pads are perfect. Super consistent delivering massive stopping power, excellent modulation and consistent brake feel from cold to hot. As for wear, after six track days, the total pad thickness (two pads pressed face to face) has gone from 34.0 mm to 33.0 mm. That's consistent with last year's level of wear. One thing to note - these pads can be noisy. When they're hot they're quiet, but cold, they make a soft whirring sound and the occasional squeal. I've found that a few minutes with a file to chamfer the edges of the friction material seems to reduce the squealing to a level that I can live with.

There is a new addition to the setup for this year - I picked up a set of Racing Brake rear rotors. They maintain the hand brake function (unlike virtually every other aftermarket rear rotor for the GT350) and they are a direct fit into the existing setup. They're 380x28, which is 2mm thicker than OEM, but the OEM calipers take new pads with no problem. I'm running mine with Pagid RSL29's and the brake balance with the front is excellent. They're directional rotors with large vanes so they cool really well. You lose a couple of pounds of weight, but it's not a major reduction - it's all about shedding heat for these things.

RB Rear Rotor 05 July 2018 Small.jpgRB Rear Rotor Angled View 05 July 2018 Small.jpg
 
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