Rear brake upgrade?

[Ben]

Has anyone ever upgraded rear brakes? Can you somehow fit front brakes on the rear for example?

I see many people upgrade the fronts but have always left the rears standard..

[Anton]

Understand how your brakes work and then you'll know why

[cwspellowe]

Anything's possible. For what it's actually worth on a 306 though, noone really bothers.

A caliper is a pretty simple thing to rig up. just a brake line, a grabby bit and a discy bit. As long as everything lines up ie. disc spacing etc then anything could work. For the effort to make a bespoke rear caliper setup though, is it worth it?

[tigerstyle]

The rears don't do much effort in light 306s it's worth investing double at the front.

[Jonny81191]

The track car project may end up with XUD fronts on the rear, as it'll be running a hydraulic handbrake..

[swampy]

No real point upgrading the rears even in a light weight track car they do very little braking.

Cituning used to do a spacer kit for the rear caliper so you could fit s16 front disks on the rear, don't think they do them anymore

[Ben]

Yeah I know they don't do much, but was just thinking how tiny our rear brakes are in comparison to more modern cars. Obviously upgrading the front is the main thing to do for better braking, but you will then surely be making the rear brakes work harder than they would have done with the standard front brakes on. Just wondered if there were common upgrades thats all as I've not seen any.

[Anton]

How much do modern cars weigh?

[tigerstyle]

Bigger brakes upfront would surely reduce the load on the rears, not increase it?

[ozonehostile]

modern cars try to have even weight distribution while the good 'ol 306 has almost all of its weight at the front, standard discs with decent pads are more than enough for a 306, or if you were really worried about it you might look into using some grooved and dimpled discs

[martyn92]

Whatever you do, don't remove the rear compensator and visit the alps

[Anton]

283mm's are good, 266mm's are ok depending on engine, 247mm's need upgrading.

Drives me mad when I see that people have strapped on tdo4's and kept standard dt brakes!

[Ben]

How much do modern cars weigh?

More in general yes but I'd say brake size has gone up proportionally more than weight.

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Drives me mad when I see that people have strapped on tdo4's and kept standard dt brakes!

Drives me mad when people say that! Faster acceleration does not require better stopping power! But I do agree 247's are crap, and Gti brakes are very good

[Anton]

Really though? Biggest standard disc on new Peugeots/Citroens are 302mm as far as i know, the caliper is a bit bigger too obviously.

[ozonehostile]

283mm's are good, 266mm's are ok depending on engine, 247mm's need upgrading.

Drives me mad when I see that people have strapped on tdo4's and kept standard dt brakes!

cough cough Darren lobb cough cough

[Anton]

Lol afaik Darren had some GTI6 brakes and then went to 302's. But yes i think it was after a while and probably double standard power ha.

[Ben]

Really though? Biggest standard disc on new Peugeots/Citroens are 302mm as far as i know, the caliper is a bit bigger too obviously.

I'm more referring to rear brakes when I say they seem to have got bigger, a lot of newer cars the rears seem almost the size of the fronts.

[Anton]

Thats due to the comment Ozone made. In newer cars they try and keep the weight distribution better.

Are you looking at big mercs/bmws? Afaik all the electronics such as TC would need more control of the rear brakes so probably why they are bigger.