Aug 2010. Odometer 293198km. At my last track weekend, I upgraded to dedicated R-Compound track tires (Toyo R888s). They let me carry so much speed into corners that I just wan't able to slow down fast enough, no matter how hard I pressed on the brake pedal. Better tire grip means more braking power is required to approach the tire-lockup limit, so I knew I had some brake research ahead. Fortunately, I met a fellow e30 owner who had a Wilwood front-brake setup for sale, so I decided to try it out. The e30 concensus seems to be that the stock rear brake setup is good enough, but fronts are worth upgrading, so I did just the fronts.
The brake setup described in this article will not fit under the stock e30 14x6" bottlecap rims. This brake setup requires at least 15x7" rims, which I have on my car, and even then, the calipers barely fit (see pics below). If you run 14" wheels, do not do this upgrade (your wheels won't fit back on your car if you do). Furthermore, if you run stock tires on your car, this upgrade is unnecessary. The stock e30 brake setup provides more than enough braking power to lock stock tires.
Project Parts Total: $550
Installation: Peter's Garage, in Toronto
All Wilwood parts were originally purchased at www.totalracesupply.com in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada.
Absolutely incredible. The improvement is staggering. I can now lock my wheels effortlessly at 150km+ on the track. Brakes are no longer the bottleneck of my setup. I can't recommend this upgrade enough. This is the night-and-day difference I was hoping for when I installed my first performance rotors and pads. If I were doing my brakes for the first time, I would skip directly to this Wilwood (or similar) setup in the front.
The brake rotors/calipers/pads before installation:
My brake setup before installation (stock calipers, brembo cross-drilled rotors):
Brembo rotor removed to reveal a rather rusty dust shield:
It turns out that the new caliper bracket could not be mounted without impacting the dust shield where the green arrow is pointing:
So the dust shield had to be removed:
The Wilwood rotor mounted:
The Wilwood caliper mounted. Notice the steel-braided replacement brake line connected to the caliper. Highly recommended, as the stock lines on an e30 are rubber, and will be old and brittle if they have never been changed.
Caliper, side view:
Inserting the pad locking pin:
Buffing the rotors to clean off some superficial rust:
Cleaning with brake cleaner to remove brake fluid that came in contact with the rotors during bleeding:
Wheel mounted on my daily driver rims (kazera kz-m) and summer tires (falken azenis rt615k). Notice the close fit with the rim (about a millimeter or two between the caliper and the rim). The rim is actually so close to the caliper that the inner-rim balancing weights had to be removed.
Many thanks to Vaso at Peter's Garage, who personally installed the brakes.