Talk to me about brakes...

[alexk]

I think the consensus is the following.

The OEM discs are very good quality. Unfortunately they are matched to the single-piston calipers.

- If you put a good pad on the OEM calipers (i.e. Pagid RS29) you will have very good brakes that will not fade. The negative thing is the lack of feeling or modulation. The brake has an on/off feeling.
Having said that, the car does brake very good (never ran out of brakes with this setup in Monza) but squeals like HELL.

- A budget solution is having Porsche 4-piston calipers on the OEM discs. The results are very good (better modulation, larger pad surface) while the cost is low. MattCSLNut and others run this setup and they are happy with it.

- The AP Racing kit offers better modulation, better feeling and consistency. The feeling of the brakes is very good and trail-braking is very easy to do. In general they don't have issues especially when mated with Performance Friction discs.

- Other kits Alcon, Brembo, Movit etc are also good. In some cases pedal travel is increased. I guess here the question is why to pay 20,30,50% more when you have the same performance with the AP kit.
Anyhow a 385mm is not going to be an improvement over the 356mm of the AP kit as it will just increase weight and moment of inertia on the front wheels

[MCSL]

Ok, uber-confused now. Our M3 CS appears to have CSL 8.5" fronts!! -

[alexk]

Hm

I thought all M3 CSs had SMG ?
I also see the front discs appear to be 325mm (and not 345mm).
Are you sure it's an M3 CS ?

[MCSL]

Originally Posted by alexk

Hm

I thought all M3 CSs had SMG ?
I also see the front discs appear to be 325mm (and not 345mm).
Are you sure it's an M3 CS ?

Hi mate, CS's came in manual or SMG

Not noticed the front disks...

Log book (v5) says it's a M3 CS.

[sjb]

Well all those part numbers are the same as my front wheels! you should have BMW in between two wheel nut too, probably just out of shot on your first photo

Regarding brakes, I'm about to fit Porsche brembo 4 pots all round like mattcslnutt. They are as good as a direct fit using easily available parts:

Front calipers - boxster S front pt # 996.351.425/6 £320 ebay
Rear calipers - boxster rear pt # 996.352.421/2 £180 ebay
Pads of your choice, all available .........
Front & rear caliper mount brackets £300 http://porschecalipers.co.uk/uk/81/p..._upgrade_.html

You will have to spend £50 for a bit of simple, obvious machining to the calipers to bring the pad over the whole of the disc face but apart from that it's easy. I have new genuine discs all round which you use with this conversion anyway which is a bonus.
I am going to paint strip mine and repaint them with £10 ebay red caliper paint and £5 BREMBO decals as I don't want porsche on them. I did this in 2003 to my VW campervan 968 brembos and they still look like new after a wipe down



You could have them powdercoated as this paint MAY not stand up to the extremes of the heat generated from tracking but it's always a good idea to do a 'warm down' lap anyway to cool the parts down as opposed to parking up right after a few laps and leaving them to bake!

JUST an opinion on a variation of the above recomendations, depends on how much you want to spend. My reasoning was if Brembo calipers are on Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini's (agreed bigger versions in some cases) then they are good enough for my CSL

[sailorbaz]

You mentioned stop tech brakes earlier, our man mark runs them on his CSL and round a tight track such as knockhill, seems to really rate them.

Good luck.

[alexk]

Originally Posted by cslhunter

Hi mate, CS's came in manual or SMG

Not noticed the front disks...

Log book (v5) says it's a M3 CS.

My bad. Then it's a CS.
The front discs seemed to be small in this photo.

Originally Posted by sjb

You will have to spend £50 for a bit of simple, obvious machining to the calipers to bring the pad over the whole of the disc face but apart from that it's easy.

What exactly do you have to machine ?

[sjb]

Originally Posted by alexk

What exactly do you have to machine ?

The 2 caliper mounting faces need 5mm machined off of them to bring the caliper inwards towards the hub so the pad doesn't hang off the edge of the disc. If that makes sense...

http://www.ca-int.co.uk/search-cXVlc...vZGU9YW5k.html

Handy to read.....

Shawn.

[sjb]

The caliper conversion guide at the bottom of this page tells all......

http://www.ca-int.co.uk/single_prod-...pZD0zMTA1.html

[MCSL]

Originally Posted by alexk

My bad. Then it's a CS.
The front discs seemed to be small in this photo.

no worries mate - might of had standard M3 discs fitted instead of the CS ones. Not got the car with me so can't check atm