Something different!!
 

Any of you ever done a 4 disc conversion on a civic?? If you have what do you think about it?? Easy to do, work well?? If you could let me know that would be sweet, and if any of you know where I could find a good write up on it I would appreciate it.

Thanks

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been done like x10000000000000000000000000

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wtf ? man that is so un-different its not even funny. for SI's come with 4 disc brakes yo :3

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so not worth changing the rears

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agreed.

Drums: replace them every what.... 15 years? lighter. same braking power... not much either way. and no dusting.

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Did you listen to what you just said? drums suck ass, and if you have ever driven a ef hatch with the rear discs swapped with good pads you would laugh at your self for saying that. and those (rear discs off of a early teg) are small as hell, lots of room to be ugraded. Its def worth it in my opinion but not different or original. Best brake mod i have come by yet.

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I know its not original or different and I know its been done, but its no one of those things you see everyone doing. Just want to know what you guys thought.
Thanks
Bryan

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YOu living under a rock or something? What's next...your thinking of strapping a turbocharger onto your civic? Funny thing is he calls it something different and asks for a writeup. That takes the cake.

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have you done it on your jetta with the spindle kit and ----? its about the same deal except honda rear calipers dont lock up if you use the hand brake :-X

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Its a great mod to do, Very effiective. The douche who said drums are just as good apparently doesn't know what he is talking about. Do it, cuz you will be very happy with it. Even without the upgraded master cylinder, just put on good pads and go stop fast.

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yeah for real. Make sure you get the right proportioning valve, good pads and discs all around, and you'll notice a difference

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huge difference even without the porportioning valve. only problem with running them without it is it likes to lock up all 4 tires too easy.

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Not the rame braking power, disk brakes have more stopping power, if u drag race rwitch em out. They do dust ur rims...

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::) driven CRX's and ED hatches with rear disks. Not impressed. Good front brakes are key. Save time/money/hassle- maintain the rear drums and upgrade the fronts. But hey.... if you like tossing time/money/hassle in the shitter by all means go for it. I do fine with drums, be it abuse on the track or on the street.

::) contradict much?.... its great... but its bad.

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its not that bad, just take some getting used to. Once you get used to it, its like night and day. Drums are good for drag racing and pretty boys who don't like dust on there rims. Get the better performance outa the discs, and they aren't that hard to install, and not too expensive either.

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Yes drums are good for drag and keeping dust off. Those are sorta the secondary points of my argument. (we all know most [not all of course] of the people who do rear disk conversions are the pretty boys :P) Getting better performance out of rear brakes is just a lost cause in general. Maximizing the 20% you get out of the rear is just that.... 20%. (Will the disks effectively create more braking power... sure why not... negligible at best- and this not worth the effort. I believe this is what both Bone and I were trying to get at) Upgrading the fronts to larger rotors/calipers/nice pads.... now that will yield significant gains. Rear disks to me are merely a vanity item especially in a little ass Honda.

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So if thats the case, why is it that after i did my rear disc swap the car would stop MUCH faster than before. And before you asked, i did a breakjob with hawk pads on the rear about a month before i swapped them out. I understand that drums only work so well becuase the car naturally shifts its weight to the front as it is slowing down, but why would it work great on my car if you say it isn't worth it? Upgrading to bigger front rotors is handsdown the best mod short of a huge front disc swap, But for a affordable easily done gain, i don't think you can beat this one.

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I've had this same debate over and over with VW people upgrading to rear discs on Rabbits.
If your drums can lock the rear wheels stock (and they sure as ---- can), they don't need to be upgraded for normal driving. Good fluid, Porterfield shoes (I like the RS-1 material), and a new spring/cylinder package in the rear, and you will be set for everything except wheel to wheel racing.

A brake system is limited in functionality by the same thing that limits everything on a car (power delivery, turning, etc)... the TIRES. Once you overpower the tires (lock the wheels), you have more braking power than you need. The only thing upgrading the brakes can do is:
1- Give you the ability to overpower your tires' traction, if you didn't have it before (old 60's cars and 4-wheel drum brakes come to mind)
2- Give you the ability to overpower your tires' traction repeatedly, like in wheel to wheel racing. Repeated hard stops will heat-soak the pads, rotors and fluid. Larger rotors can hold more heat, and can dissipate it faster thanks to the higher surface area. Better/larger pads will be able to soak up more heat and not exceed their critical temperature. Better fluid can handle more heat before it boils, plus some calipers, like the aluminum 4-6 piston ones Brembo, Stoptech, or SSB sells can dissipate some heat.
3- Reduce unsprung/rotating mass, which is always a good thing.
4- Make modulating the threshold of braking easier. If you guys aren't familiar with threshold braking, its basically braking at the precise limit of your tires. If you know how to do it, you can actually outbrake ABS, which many people think is impossible. ABS doesn't stop the car faster than a trained driver, it simply allows an untrained, moron driver to slam on the brakes and steer simultaneously. It saves a lot of people, not because it stops their vehicles sooner than a properly executed threshold brake, but because it allows ANY driver to make repeatable stops while maintaining control.

I'd highly doubt that on such light-weight cars, such as a Civic, upgrading the rear brakes will do anything but increase rotating mass/unsprung weight, and cost you hard-earned dollars, UNLESS you are racing in HPDE's, or SCCA Club racing.

Basically, upgrading the front brakes makes a lot of sense, since they do 70% of the braking, and upgrading the rears... doesn't.
Spend your money on new shoes, drums, wheel cylinders, fluid, and hardware.
Oh, yeah, and on tires, since they make the biggest difference in what your vehicle can do. I never ceases to amuse me when I see cars that have big power under the hood, good suspension, and upgraded brakes running on Nankang tires because the owner blew his budget on everything else, and suddenly realized "oshit, I need new tires".

>:D End of rant about brakes.

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DaaAAAMMMMn son. Hands down from me man. You really broke it down!

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its like you were reading my mind.... but you left out the part where i thought to myself... "i don't feel like typing this" :P

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Any time.
;) Know the feeling.
I ought to ------- save that as a notepad doc for future reference.

I wish someone would break suspension dynamics down like that for me... I get all confused when I try to diagram suspension arcs and ----.

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interesting thread, and that was a lot of reading in that one post.

however, i cannot ignore the fact that i have never met someone with a rear disk swap who said they did not feel any braking improvement by swapping to rear disks. :3

i've got a set in my basement that will go on this summer, and i will see for myself.

-Luke

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Could you explain why larger discs are better? Of course I could see the reasoning for larger discs in a race application, but not on the street. Can you not lock your brakes up with the smaller rotors? If you can lock them up, why would you need more stopping power than that?

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Its like everyone who installs a K&N claiming they can feel the power. Who would admit that their brakes felt the same after spending $200 on parts, and a weekend installing them?
Also, people who swap to discs usually are scared of working on drums, and have let them go to ---- in a handbag. Good drum brakes are just as solid feeling as discs.

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Drums brakes = less maintainance, but you still have to pop the drum and clean them once in a while.

Lets see........you never hear about a drum car dragging a pad, parking brake not adjusting, pads only lasting 60k miles.......

my OEM shoes lasted 250k miles on the back.

Any here every upgrade to the larger rear drums? You can get them cheap from idiots who do rear disc swaps

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I'm currently upgrading to aluminum ones. :6

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CRX HF drums ftw :)

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Sounds like H-T all over again with the kids preaching about how great drums are... all about the 'weight savings'.

Did anybody forget to think about how shitty wheel cylinders are? Just about every time I pull a drum off of any car (civic or chevy) the wheel cylinder is down for replacement. I garuntee I can go out into my garage right now and find little springs and parts to dead wheel cylinders that have gotten swept off to the side.

Recently on the tahoe the 10 month old wheel cylinder failed thus causing drum, shoe, cylinder replacement on one of the rears; and full brake job on the front (it was time to go back to OEM anyways to sell the thing). Enough to piss me off and swear not to run drums on anything I drive again.

Upgraded front brakes are great, but you still need the rears to go along with them. The truth of the matter is, a weaker rear brake will cause additional wear on the front brakes. Proper sized rears will allow for a nice even brake roll of the car, versus a hard dip in the front from a larger front upgrade and shitty drum rear.

Go ahead and look into the larger hondas and their upper line sports cars. The Integra and SI both have 10x9 brakes and a larger MC. The DX only has 9xDrum and is pretty shitty. Just about all the bigger cars have the 11x10 upgrade like the prelude vtec, ITR, Legend. Look at the newer civic SI cars, they have 10x10 brakes (and I think maybe the latest CTR in japan or whatever). The pimped out TSX-S has the same brembos that the evo has, with of course 10" rear brakes to support it.

I myself run the 11x10 upgrade (thinking of going dual pot calipers). Of course I have braided stainless lines and motul rbf600 racing fluid to support the setup. I think that maybe I'll get creative and take some old volvo 4 piston calipers and put them to use. My car already comes stock with the largest master cylinder, being the 1" - just need to delete the ABS to make it all gravy.

The person saying that you can just swap on discs and not touch the proportionating valve has no clue. Wheel cylinders take a lot more fluid to stop.. thus the awful pedal travel. You need the right valve out of an RS or SI

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I just put some big nasty brakes on my car over the past month, and I hav to say I love it. I got the fastbrakes 11" adapters to run 91 VW corrado 4 lug rotors with 95 teg calipers, and did a rear disc swap with rsx calipers/brackets and the 10.2" rear rotors off of a 02 civic si hatch (4 lug). All the rotors are stock off the shelf Napa rotors, and the pads are hawk HP plus in the front and hawk HPS in the rears. Russel stainless lines, 95 integra 15/16" master and booster with the correct prop valve from same car. I have always maintained my drum brakes, constantly cleaned them, adjust them up nice and tight, and had a GREAT pedal feel and stopping power, but when you jam on the brakes off the highway, or at the end of the 1/4 mile, it didnt feel that great, plus it would nose dive and get the fronts super hot and they would start pulsating really soon. I kept cutting them (cut them about 4 times last year, but only a couple thousandths so it wasnt under spec yet) till I finally decided to do something about it. Theres nothing wrong with the rear drum for normal use, bad pedal feel is just bullshit, especially if you know how to maintain them, but to people that use their car hard, theres nothing better than having the added stopping power of bigger brakes. Swapping to stock rear disc i dont see being much of a benefit, but when you go bigger like a 11" front and 10.2" rear, you will feel it. I almost think its TOO much brake for my small car, i really have to watch how hard I hit the brakes b/c it stops a shitload better than before, plus it stops really level, no ass end dip or lock-up (like stated before) or front end dive. Its not too easy to lock the up though, I have brand new dunlop direzza's on it, and they are some nice sticky gumballs for the price, so I guess with crap tires it would be easy to lock them up.

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i notice i have almost no nose dive now that i have rear disc's, but my drums were fucked on every civic ive had they probly had 40k+ on them so i really cant say how good drums feel, all i know is i hate changing them and would rather spend 200 on a rear disc swap.

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Vince has a good setup and gave a good synopsis of the proper feel a big brake kit will show.

One thing that must be noted aside from bigger rotors is larger pads and calipers. To go along with the larger 11" rotors I have the larger caliper, not the standard 10" caliper. The typical 9" rotor had a dinky caliper to go along with it (yeah, my rear 10" calipers are larger). The larger diameter piston offers more contact area for a bigger pad to be used. Fastbrakes is one of the very few who offer an aftermarket solution for the honda crowd. I on the other hand have enough metal machining tools that I can seek cheaper routes; of course utilizing the larger calipers available. These calipers are OEM and can be found stock on ITR, Prelude VTEC, Accord V6, Accord Wagon, Odyssey, CRV, and most all the Mid-Full sized acura cars... if absolutely necessary I can provide pics of the various braking components - but the above mentioned calipers/rotors are beefy and surprisingly larger than a stock 7 thousand pound tahoe.

I have spent many hours researching the best bang for the buck in brake upgrades and know the direction to take. Currently I have the drilled/slotted zinc plated rotors (yes I know most drilled will stress under high stress applications) but I bought them because they were cheaper than dealership/brembo blanks and offer the complete bling factor for my neegro-tastic ride.

I have quite a few excess parts up for sale if anybody is interested. PM me

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I agree that you need a new proportioning valve if you swap to discs, never said that you didn't.
I've never had an OEM wheel cylinder fail, unless it was really old, like 150K+miles. Don't buy wheel cylinders from AutoZone or Napa, buy them from the dealer, or get the same MFR's parts. Cheap wheel cylinders fail constantly, I know, I used to work at AutoZone. As for the "awful pedal travel", thats determined by the MC diameter (diameter*travel*pi=volume), not the wheel cylinder's inherent crappiness. You want a smaller pedal travel, upgrade to a larger MC. Nonetheless, read my final statement.

So increasing your rear braking power decreased the rear-end lock up? Sorry, I don't buy it. If you were overpowering the tires with the small brakes, upgrading them certainly would have made it worse, not better.

I realize that everyone and their brother has an opinion on this issue, but I've done a bunch of testing on my cars, friend's cars, and done the actual calculations. The science doesn't lie, people are biased, and 90% of the time, brake "feel" is completely and utterly qualatative. No numbers=everyone is right... So, go out with a properly maintained stock brake setup and either ABS, or a trained driver who can threshold brake, and put up some stopping distances. Then upgrade that car's brakes to rear disc, a different MC, and whatever you want (including pad material switches, fluid, lines, whatever), and put up those stopping differences. I'm not talking about 10 100-0 stops in a row, I'm talking a single 60-0 or 75-0 stop. If there's a difference (and I'm not talking about 2ft) under controlled circumstances, I'll be amazed.

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I don't know, I think rear drums tend to hate me. I've only ever had one rear disc related problem ever (one slider siezed), but I've replaced about 6 different rear leaking wheel cylinders, and about 3 sets of brake shoes, and one complete rebuild kit (all springs were breaking). Given, this was on three different cars, only two were Hondas. But I just hate drums. Maybe it's a salt thing messing them up with the roads here in the winter....I don't know. I just like rear discs (minus buying the calipers, which cost an ass-ton)

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Cool. But many unsuspecting viewers might have overlooked that ---- when deciding on their setups.

Nope, they fail all the time - sorry to break it to ya. The wheel cylinder will fail before anything else, but will also seep brake fluid on the shoes causing absolute rear failure.

I agree that the bulk of the products found at the mortar+brick parts stores suck balls. It is unfortunate that 99% of the users of this website rely on such parts stores for most any part (but yet find ways to improve those parts through innovations). If I only had $500 every time my car fucks up to blow at the dealer... It would be nice to have the right part all the time to install with my learned knowledge of stolen honda repair manuals. In reality we make do with what we have and do the best possible from experience and help from peeps around the globe.

Sorry homie, but your street cred has gone to ---- with that statement. We all have worked somewhere in the automotive industry before, I did also as a teenager. The pure fact is; working an above minimum wage job for a summer doesn't equate to a masters in hondaoligy.

You almost redeem yourself with the offering of some basic physics (which I can at least expect from any senior in high school with an interest in cars). With real life experience you can actually feel what rear drums do to the pedal travel. Not two days ago I had a bare DX proportionating valve in my hands - blowing brake fluid out of it. The channels leading back to the shitty drums flowed like twice as much as the front 9" disc setup. I am well aware of the ability of adjusting proportionating valves; but come the ---- on. This is pretty much obvious using basic observation skills how the ---- operates.

I'm sorry but that ---- made absolutely no ------- sense. Why the hell are you knocking a guy who has actually paid the money for a real upgrade and contributed his thoughts? To the least I would have expected him to have a decent set of rubbers being a true HMT club member. The only rear lockup experience one would receive is that of the ------- noob who kept the same proportionating valve (as mentioned earlier). I have illustrated the benefits of the upgrades at least twice in this thread - please pay attention next time.

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Oh yeah.. no disrespect to Mista Bone; he has contributed a lot to this site and I have a lot of respect for him. I have brought to light some braking concepts that a few noobs don't quite get.

If Bone wants to prove me different than he is welcomed to contact me for discussion on honda brake solutions.

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Your an idiot. *I* didnt have that problem, it was stated before my post. Learn to read. You work at Autozone, lol. I have nothing left to say to you.

I do have good tires, before and after the brake swap. I had to run 15" rims because of the front calipers and they barely clear as is now, hence the new tires. They almost hit the sticky weights on the inside of the rim lol. But regardless, thanks for backing me up, you sound like you know you ----. I too did alot of research on braking setups of local auto-crossers to see what they were doing. Thats why I went with a LESS aggressive pad in the back than the front was to keep the rears from locking as I was informed by a RACER that was his major problem when he was trying to find proper balance. His next issue was slotted/drilled rotors, he used off the shelf parts store rotors and he never had any heat problems or cracking or anything. Plus you can cut blanks easier if they do start to pulsate. Another reason I got Napa rotors, I get them at cost through my shop, so I payed almost half for every rotor.

CLIFFNOTES/MORAL: You ask questions from people who know what they are talking about, who spent the money to get the right stuff, and can PROOVE the end results, then you can talk about what you think you know about a certain topic, ANY topic. Till then, all the noobs, ---- off, get a rope, theres no point in your existence.

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This is the type of discussion I want to see. Most people on here tend to overlook the braking abilities of their car in lew of making it go much faster. Lemme break it down a little for the beginners in ultra-simple terms...stock honda brakes are a tad small even for the stock engine setups in the cars they came in originally. EF's especially, even if your car is an Si or has a full Si swap like mine does. Add a b-series swap into the equation, and you have even more weight over the front tires to try and stop, or a turbo setup with no way to slow you down fast after a quick full-boost run. The stock 9" front rotor sizes on these things are an absolute joke, they should have at a minumum a 10" size. My wrx has 11" fronts and 10" rears, and coupled with a large master cylinder and good proportioning stops on a dime and stops fast. Granted it's a larger heavier car, but the point is moot just for the fact is has more energy behind it to try and stop. I've talked to several people who run the fastbrakes 11" gti rotor swap, and the results from all of them are the same and nothing but rave reviews. Coupled with a larger master yes, you can lock your tires up, but if you do it's because you jammed on your brakes too hard or have a bad proportioning setup. There's a fine line between a quick stop and sliding due to locked brakes. And if the bias bothers you that much, get adjustable proportioning valves, go to an empty parking lot, and set up some cones to blast around and adjust the valves until you get the specific feel you want with the shortest stopping distance. That's probably what I'm going to look into this year, even though it's late in the year I want to hit a few solo events and see what I can run. Anyone even thinking about running some type of road course will want a rear disc setup, they're less prone to locking the rear wheels going into a corner than a well maintained and upgraded drum setup.

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That's like saying that you need to upgrade your brakes if you're a fat-ass.

I have an h-swap and a turbo kit under my hood and I really dont have any issues with braking. The only upgrade I have is higher end pads (forget what they are). I've slowed down from 120mph countless times and have never felt that my brakes were a weak link.

However, I'll bet that on a road course HEAT/USE would have more of an impact on the equation than weight.

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So sorry for not reading what you said 100%. No need to get bent out of shape about it. And for the record, I workED at AutoZone. Gotta make ends meet. Now I'm an oceanographer, which was my major in college. I've been working on cars for almost 10 years... all kinds, Hondas, VWs, Subarus, many of them over 300hp, many of them serious race cars (open-wheel FSAE, ITB/ITC cars, and a ton of autocross cars). I'm glad to see that your racer friend steered you away from slotted/drilled rotors. I've never had anything but problems with them, cracking between the holes, and lots of vibration associated with the slots.

Anyhow, here's my experience:
I upgraded the brakes on my old beater 99 Jetta. Bigger rear discs, better pads, and SS lines. I swore there was a difference, and it sure felt to me that there was. I did some testing, and guess what, I couldn't manage more than a 4ft decrease in stopping distance over a stock setup. I could modulate the pedal better, and the pedal felt stiffer, but the end result was a total disappointment in that respect. It made a big difference on the track, as I could do repeated stops without experiencing brake fade (which is ------- scary when it happens) Once I upgraded the front brakes, there was a noticeable difference (12-15ft), but the rear upgrade, even on a relatively heavy car (3000+lbs), did little to nothing for a single 60-0 stop. The better pedal feel was nice, but it didn't help me stop in a shorter distance.

Everyone's going to have their opinions, I'll stick to mine until I'm proven wrong with actual test results. Apologies to anyone I offended.

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Everyone's opinion of good braking is different. I've driven many different cars that are said to have "good brakes", but even that isn't good enough for me. My wrx stops on a dime with it's large brake setup, but it also has to do with front rotor surface area and how large the caliper is as well for pad contact area. You can slap a larger rotor on and decrease your braking length, but not as much as if you used a much larger caliper with it. As for your setup, I hope to god you have a minimum of a 10" rotor for it to be as decent as you say. Try that with a stock ED/EF Si 9" setup and you'll end up in somebody's ass-end. My main reason for wanting to upgrade my brakes is due to where I live...PA has some of the worst drivers in the country. Nothing like cruising along at 65 keeping up with traffic just to have to slam on your brakes and try to come to a dead stop in less than a 75 foot distance just because some moron decides they want to turn last minute. I'd say at least 90% of the people up here drive like that, so for me it's not just performance...it's survival lol.