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The difference between Brembos and EBS discs


drbrunel

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I was all set on getting a set of front EBC turbo grooved and drilled discs until my mechanic (who is really good and ex motorsport) said they were not as good as standard Brembos....

 

Opionions please!!

 

Aerent Brembos like double the price of the EBC??

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I'm no technician, but I have EBC grooved and drilled discs and they are no different to my ex-OEM ones (Brembo calliper). I also upgraded to Ferrodo pads and they are much much better than OEM.

 

TBH, I would ask the Ex Motorsport mechanic why they are not as good, he probably knows more than us ;)

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Would your mechanic be sourcing the discs/pads for you?

 

I have the EBC discs all round on mine, with redstuff pads, though I rekon Ill swap for the DS2500 pads after chewing through these, but that will probably take a while as the car doesnt get that much use.

 

I actually noticed a vast improvement over my standard discs and pads, but two of my standard discs were very badly scored and the pads were getting low too, so may not have been a fair comparison.

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I thought that the general use will not be any different but the fading will not occur till much later on the EBC turbo grooved discs? Also, i had some on my old MG and they made no different on normal driving, but if you break hard and are racing, they do make a big difference, plus the make a whirlling sound when you break, which is quite cool. :thumbs:

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I think good pads will always yield benefits on normal road driving. The difference of an improved disk comes with track time I think - only then do the brakes get really hot and need the benefit of increased ventilation. Better disks will be more resistance to warping from continued high temperature as well.

 

+1 on the disks being standard nissan items, only the calipers are Brembo.

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thanks for the info guys, i did not realise that the discs were standard nissan

 

My mechanic has said that the EBCs do not last as long but then again I cant see me keeping the car for another 30 000 miles.

 

In all honesty I just want a good brake set up that will not cost the earth. Im leaning towards EBC but he has said their customer service is not great and yes he will be sourcing them himself

 

Further opionions?

 

Cheers

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the question of EBC vs standard OEM discs is debateable....but you will find slight improvement in brake fade simply due to the grooved disc vs plain disc heat dissipation qualities.

 

i use standard brembo discs and ferrodo pads with RBF600 fluid...Unless I have more power and do lots of trackdays, I dont think i will need to upgrade the combo.

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Depends on your budget mate, if I were you, get the best pads you can afford (Performance Friction or Ferodo are popular premium pads). If no track time, OEM disks will be ok. If you want something drilled or grooved, I have been very pleased with my DBA disks.

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I've got turbo groove disks on the front and redstuff pads all round. TBH i havent noticed a great deal of difference in the performance maybe a bit sharper.

However i did a track day on friday with this setup and giving the car serious stick around castle combe which is a very fast circuit i didnt notice any brake fade after my stints of between 6-8 laps at a time.

 

In my opinion for the price you cant beat the EBC setup.

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I was all set on getting a set of front EBC turbo grooved and drilled discs until my mechanic (who is really good and ex motorsport) said they were not as good as standard Brembos....

 

Opionions please!!

 

Aerent Brembos like double the price of the EBC??

 

You have pm ;)

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I worked on the development team that produced the original Ferodo DS series of pads (2000, 2500, 3000) so did a lot of testing on pads and rotors. This was a few years ago now

but the basics will be the same and the conclusions valid.

 

Here's something I posted on the SXOC a couple of years ago when we were discussing the same kind of things:

 

OK here goes...

I used to work for T&N's technology centre in Rugby. I worked on the brake system team which did a lot of the development work for another one of T&N's group companies Ferodo. We would look into formulations for new pad materials, additions to existing material blends and brake rotor designs (both Ferodo and the "competition"). We had a number of dyno's that we could simulate any driving conditions you like (temp, speed, humidity, suspension set-up etc.). We also did some work for F1 teams using CRC materials.

 

Right back on topic again. The last project I worked on was looking at rotor designs (plain, grooved, drilled etc.) as Ferodo were looking at supplying "packages" for performance cars. After a lot of testing we came to the following broad conclusions:

 

Plain - Good for moderate duty as the transfer film (what the pad deposit on the disc) is unbroken this gives a stable coefficient of friction at low to moderate temperatures. Bad for higher speed/temperature applications as this transfer film will degenerate and give unstable friction and can cause "hot spotting" of the disc leading to cracking and failure. This design also maintains heat longer and so will be more prone to fade under repeated braking.

 

Grooved - Good for almost all applications. The grooving does two things, first it clears the pad surface of carbonised debris (which is generated at high temperatures due to a lot of pad materials using phenoylic resin as a binder) and also allows the vapours that are generated at the pad face during hard braking to escape allowing a better contact between pad face and rotor and minimising fade.

 

Drilled - Good for almost all applications.

Drilled discs give most of the benefits of grooved but have other good/bad points. They allow the discs to cool faster (some of this affect is speed dependant as at higher rpm's the vortex the discs create does impact the amount of cooling air that the discs see via the holes but is aided by the lower thermal mass) but the down side of this is that we noted more surface cracking on drilled discs than grooved, we thought this may be due to faster thermal cycling. We also noted that on some drilled discs unless the holes were countersunk you could see cracks developing from the hole edges.

 

Grooved & Drilled - See above for plus/minus points.

 

I think that for most driving (which is usually fast in a 200 ;) ) I'd go for grooved discs (but not too many grooves as you lower contact area and reduce pad life) with performance pads (Ferodo DS2500). I have Pagid 8 groove discs at the moment.

 

As a basic rule of thumb I would say that unless you regularly fade the standard set up then plain discs should be OK but I would upgrade the pad material to a performance pad (DS2500). The better thermal performance and higher μ (coefficient of friction) of and uprated material will give you a bit more headroom before you need to look at rotor upgrades. You do need to be careful when selecting an upgraded pad material though as a lot of the pads with a higher metal content sacrifice low temp bite for higher temp stability so feel very "wooden" at lower temps.

 

One of the biggest improvements we saw on the dyno's though was improving cooling to the rotor/calliper assm. but this can be tricky to get right on a car.

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If you want to upgrade....go for DBA discs and ferrodo pads....very good value for money and they stop like someone is pulling ur face apart!!!

Totally agree with Bobby :thumbs:

Don't start me off on inferior EBC crap :yuck:

The pads, discs and calipers on the 350 are all made by brembo, unless they've been replaced, at some stage of the cars life.

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There is also the matter of heat treatment (cryogenics followed by a low temperature temper cycle) which can have a positive impact on disc life/performance but having chatted to our R&D guys we're not convinced. We do have the facilities where I work though and there would be no detrimental affects so I might try it on my next set of rotors.

 

Have a look at one commercial site for a bit more info http://www.frozensolid.co.uk/index.html

 

As has been said there's not replacement for additional swept area.

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