Brake question
Thread Starter
Instructor
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 163
Likes: 0
From: Central Texas
Brake question
Recently purchased a black '99 FRC with 14,000 miles. My first corvette! So far very impresssed with the car. I am thinking about doing a little cosmetic/performance brake upgrade and am looking for some feedback. I was looking at changing the rotors, calipers and pads with the GM drilled rotors, red Z06 calipers and Hawk brake pads. Saw these on the Corvettes of Houston site. I can't really spend $$ on brakes and this setup would fit my budget. Any thoughts on this? Does anyone have experience with the GM drilled rotors? Thanks in advance for any advice.
Racer
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 481
Likes: 0
From: Troy MI
Originally Posted by gremmit
Recently purchased a black '99 FRC with 14,000 miles. My first corvette! So far very impresssed with the car. I am thinking about doing a little cosmetic/performance brake upgrade and am looking for some feedback. I was looking at changing the rotors, calipers and pads with the GM drilled rotors, red Z06 calipers and Hawk brake pads. Saw these on the Corvettes of Houston site. I can't really spend $$ on brakes and this setup would fit my budget. Any thoughts on this? Does anyone have experience with the GM drilled rotors? Thanks in advance for any advice.
Or if you really like red calipers.
Team Owner
Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 24,652
Likes: 298
From: NJ
St. Jude Donor '05-'08
save your money for something else.
Paint your calipers yourself. Many people do it and they come out looking good. Keep your stock rotors or if they are bad change over to napa rotors. The rotors cost around $100.00 and then you get some hgih temp paint and paint the rotor hats. They look good.
Pads I would get a new set of Z06 pads. They are OEM and are better than stock and dont dust that much. Anything more aggressive will dust more and probably your stopping power will not increase because your tires will be at max.
So for under around $250.00 you get new brakes and they look great.
BTW dont forget to bleed your brakes. I have seen way too many stock vettes with Black brake fluid...
Paint your calipers yourself. Many people do it and they come out looking good. Keep your stock rotors or if they are bad change over to napa rotors. The rotors cost around $100.00 and then you get some hgih temp paint and paint the rotor hats. They look good.
Pads I would get a new set of Z06 pads. They are OEM and are better than stock and dont dust that much. Anything more aggressive will dust more and probably your stopping power will not increase because your tires will be at max.
So for under around $250.00 you get new brakes and they look great.
BTW dont forget to bleed your brakes. I have seen way too many stock vettes with Black brake fluid...
Melting Slicks
Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 2,332
Likes: 31
From: Silver Spring MD
brakes
With low mileage just clean calipers get some duplicolor torch red caliper paint (less than $15) and add white paint to the corvette logo after you wait a day or so to make sure caliper paint dries good. I did brakes all around replaced fromt rotors with gm oem ones for $23 each and put new OEM semimetalic pads all around. PS while you are doing this if you remove the rear rotors you can adjust the starwheels for the parking brake. Mine didnt work for about 5 years. Stops the car now. Pleanty of threads here to tell you how to do this.
Forget the drilled slotted rotors. Look in todays or yesterdays posts for some bad news from drilled rotors. Bling only not performance.
Have fun BIGHANK
Forget the drilled slotted rotors. Look in todays or yesterdays posts for some bad news from drilled rotors. Bling only not performance.
Have fun BIGHANK
Le Mans Master
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 9,899
Likes: 1,839
From: Hot Springs AR
I went with black paint on my calipers, kept the lettering bare aluminum. Red calipers get dirty to the point you can't keep them clean (ask me how I know 
), my black get dirty as well, but you can't see it.
With an FRC I'd stay away from drilled rotors. Even if you aren't autox/tracking the car now, I bet you will, and the stock rotors are excellent until you get really hard-core.
BTW, the Z06 calipers are exactly the same as C5 calipers, except for the paint. Z06 pads have already been discussed.
Another quick, easy mod that you'll probably want is the Skip Shift eliminator. You can either buy one for $30-40 that comes with nice weatherpack connectors, or you can get a 2200 ohm resistor from Radio Shack (probably a couple of bucks for enough to do all of your friend's Vettes), stick it in the end of the connector, tape it up with electrical tape, and be done with it.
HTH, and have a good one,
Mike
), my black get dirty as well, but you can't see it. With an FRC I'd stay away from drilled rotors. Even if you aren't autox/tracking the car now, I bet you will, and the stock rotors are excellent until you get really hard-core.
BTW, the Z06 calipers are exactly the same as C5 calipers, except for the paint. Z06 pads have already been discussed.
Another quick, easy mod that you'll probably want is the Skip Shift eliminator. You can either buy one for $30-40 that comes with nice weatherpack connectors, or you can get a 2200 ohm resistor from Radio Shack (probably a couple of bucks for enough to do all of your friend's Vettes), stick it in the end of the connector, tape it up with electrical tape, and be done with it.
HTH, and have a good one,
Mike
