Review: K sport 8 piston 355mm big brake kit (front only)

[MR2]

Baaack in 2006? 2007? I purchased these as a nice little upgrade to help her pull up after some serious downhill hairpins at a lovely lil bit of road I use to live near.
I purchased them from a store in Mona vale, NSW called Tweakit (tweakit.net) from memory the kit cost around $2800 to buy and came with everything needed to install
The reason I went with this kit is at the time there really were no other cheap options, the only USA manufac that had anything out there was 3sx, and they were the same price once you landed them, there were none of the stoptech or cheap brembo kits that you see around now. I priced up many brands and all of them were quoted at around $5-6K!! so the Ksport kit was an easy choice, couple this with it being essentially a copy of the AP Racing giving you access to the AP racing parts should you need to replace something.



so I popped on over to a good mechanic who promptly went to work installing them!
with the install the problem with our Hubs being larger than the Australian delivered models (odd but ok) meant the rotor hats had to be sent off and machined wider, and since they were that stupid orange colour I insisted on having them painted black (not that it lasted)

anyway suddenly braking was magnificent, stop after stop...no matter how much I beat the crap out of it it always stopped one small annoyance is the slotting of the rotors gives you a odd grinding through the steering wheel and a loud noise when your really hammering it (say 180 down to 80kmh) so I think next time round i'd go with rotors that have only two slots over the entire surface.

So around 6 months to a year of much fun later I've started to notice heat spots and cracking on the rotors, I took the car into A & B Motorsport (http://www.aandbmotorsports.com/brake.html) who are the Australian Distributor of Ksport for a look, they explained that I had one of the first set of K sport 8 pot brakes and that the disks actually had less material in them (more space between the surfaces for venting...which is bad it seems) than the current ones, however since I'd taken so long to come back to them I would need to purchase a replacement set of rotors...for an astounding $900 :O
yeah SO I said no that's fine what else can we do until I can find another rotor solution, being honest the guy there was pretty good about it, he mentioned that if I decided to go with replacement rotors, that he would have a word to the factory about getting a decent discount seeing my issue, he also said that the stock pads the kit comes with are rubbish and gave me a discounted set of EBC Redstuff pads to try out.
Since then the EBC Redstuff seem to be doing their thing and I'm not noticing as many cracks forming as before (had the rotors machined down slightly) but then I'm not beating it up like I was before.
Soo, at the moment I'm saving my pennies till I can afford some AP Racing rotors, apparently they sell replacement ones for the K sport hats and that will be my final breath with this kit before upgrading to a 380mm kit.

In conclusion, I'm pretty sure a new kit would be fine for just about anyone given the option though i'd recommend Supercar Engineering's Stoptech kit in either 355mm or 380mm rotor as long as your good to stick with 18" or 19" rims.

a bit of a Prologue, the AP Racing Rotors that I'm looking at are the J slot ones:



and IF that does not help then I'll be looking at a 380mm kit but with wider rotors...so 34 or 36mm WIDE ...for effing unreal heat absorbing capabilities maybe by that time carbon brakes will be somewhat affordable

[GTOX]

Nice write up Mick.

Never seen J slots like that before. Do you know if those slots enhance performance (heat?) or purely for looks?

[MR2]

Rotora http://www.autoblog.com/2007/04/20/w...iston-caliper/
WP http://www.wpprobrakes.com/evo12.htm
Endless http://www.endless-sport.co.nz/Produ...rtyID/481.aspx
K Sport http://www.k-sportracing.com/12pot-380x32-19-intro.html
Tarox http://en.tarox.com/products/brake-system-grande.html
Eurotech http://sites.securemgr.com/folder178...owse&pageid=31

Looks like a case of just waiting for the price to come down

Edit: the J Hook face is just another version of the slot...essentially just there to allow gasses that in theory build up and scrape the surface of the pad off in case it glazes over...
I'd probably be better off with a plain face..and will probably get that so i can do without the shuddering that the slots seemed to give.

[MR2]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Kspor...item20b26b90fa

so stupidly cheap hahaha :|

[GTOJOE]

I have DBA slotted and crossdrilled rotors all round and not a hint of noise or shudder. Your issues are prob due to a bad set of rotors. I would avoid a plain face. You need some method of expelling the gases etc.

[GTOX]

Nothing wrong with plain face/blank rotors. I think they are probably the best and safest to use for track applications, hell that's even what the F1 cars use.

Most modern brake pads don't produce gasses these days anyway (like they used to).

FWIW I am going to be running similar DBA slotted rotors to you Joe on my DD, but personally would probably use blank rotors in Mick's case or if I planned to track and beat the shit out of my car, then there would be less chance of cracking issues etc. Cross drilled and slotted are purely for looks these days...

Also some of the better drilled rotors that racing teams may use on GT cars etc and that some Ferrari's etc. come with are cast when the rotor is made and not cross drilled into the rotor which I guess would make it a fair bit stronger. Also make sure you have decent tires together with your upgraded brakes

Just my opinion on this matter...

[MRjayr]

Great writeup Mike! I too need to be looking at some sort of brake upgrade. After the Mt. Dandenong thrash around I quickly realised the limited capabilities of the OEM brakes + rotors. And they give the car that extra bling i reckon

[green-lantern]

Nice write up! I've been wanting to upgrade brakes but I must take care of some other things 1st.

[MR2]

Of the super massive brakes I really like the Rotora kits most, very basically they have a 12 pot kit that takes 6 x pads to each caliper, giving shitloads of pad life (spreading the force over a far larger amount of pad area) essentially I need to now find out what the caliper clearance is and see what 19" wheels will fit, I'm not interested in anything larger as *takes deep breath* I want to fit 35 profile tires at a minimum, I think the maximum rubber width I'll ever be able to fit is 275 ish, and the roads over here are just stupidly bad..gaps between concrete slabs are bad, alot of speed humps and driveways with large lips, I really need the tyre itself to be able to absorb as much of the shock as possible.

so +'s of the Rotora Kit vs others...

380x34 mm rotor (extra 4mm of rotor thickness, worth it's weight in well.... heat absorption!!)
the Rotora Calipers spread the force over more of the Rotora, benefit mostly to pad life and reduced heat into the Caliper + pads I guess?

How the search goes so far:


Rotor Weight (KG), Caliper Weight (KG)

Endless (N/A), 4.6kg

WPpro (N/A), 4.1kg

EUROTeck (N/A), (N/A)

Tarox (N/A), (3.9KG) http://www.venommotorsport.com/manuf...ishi&model=GTO

KSport (N/A), (2.2KG) Finding the 12 pot version is odd...seems they switched to a 10 pot version?(Now moved to a 4 pad per caliper 8 pot version)

Rotora (N/A, (N/A) Pretty much this kit here : http://www.customcarscentral.com/rtr...yline-r34.html

[ZeroAU]

Slotted and Cross-Drilled always where a bit sketchy when it comes to metal fatigue, its just part of the inherent engineering of the disk being weaker even if its heat dispersal is better and however you look at it, the forces involved are fairly monstrous!
How do these go with the ABS systems?
Depending on the track conditions ABS can be a bit of a curse sometimes.