I'm sick of the feeling or lack of feeling from my stock SC430 brakes. So today I brought a complete set of OEM pads and DOT 3 brake fluids.

I'm going to change all the brake pads, bleed the brakes and get the rotors machine to see if this helps.

If these changes does not give me the confidence I'm after I'm going to go with either LS400 brakes or after market Supra TT brakes.

 

Take some pics as you do the brake job would love to have a set of diy brake job pics for this forum on the SC430

 

I use EBC rotors 3GD vented Gold on all 4 corners with there Green Stuff brake pads. Brake are great.

 

I did a LS400 brake caliper conversion on a SC400 and the difference was night and day.

Here is a picture of the LS400 calipers and rotors.

There was only 3mm clearance between the LS400 calipers and the 19" rims I had on the SC400.

 

Here is the picture of the wheels, but I jack up the brightness level.

Notice how close the calipers to the spoke of the rims.

 

brake size will not impact braking as long as its ABS, what will give you better braking distance is a good set of high end tires. I too was about to go BBK on both my cars until I did more research. Your pads could use replacing so thats a good step but your going to be dissapointed if you expect better braking from a bigger brake such as that of a Supra or LS. It is purely looks. People that say they see improvements are either taking their car to the track or its just a mental thing, or their old pads were just bad before the change.

 

The SC430 are only 2 piston calipers where the LS400 are 4 piston calipers.

I agree that for everyday driving, the stock brakes are OK but I like to take it to the mountains and brake deep before the corner.

Here are the pictures of the front and rear pads. There is plenty of life left from the stock, I'll keep them as spares for emergency.

here is a also the tool I use to push the piston back when fitting the new pads.

 

The rear brakes are easy to do, as you need to just pull out out the pins and slide the pads from the back of the calipers. This is the same setup as the LS400.

 

All up it took me about 2-3 hours to do including removing the rotors and getting the faces machined and bleeding the brakes.

I'm going to do some high speed braking to bed the brakes in and take it to the mountains for lunch.

 

I took alot pictures but I wouldn't do a DIY on a critical system such as the brakes. If people don't know how to do the brakes themselves I recommend them to take it to the service dept to do it properly.

I don't want people to have an accident and injure themselves or someone else because they try to do their own brakes from a DIY instructions found from here.

Just by $0.02c worth.

 

Thanks for the pics - I have a LS430 and also wanted to see some pics to compare DIY brake difficulty to the SC430. The LS has the easiest brakes to work on in any car I have every had.

 

Hi All, I am new here ! I just have my sc pads & rotor done yesterday ! Thanks for the pic.
A lot of help ! Thank you !

 

The stock SC430 brakes are pretty weak. Its only a 2 piston calipers. The LS400 uses 4 piston calipers and even the most basic Porsche boxster uses a 6 piston brake calipers.

 

Multiple pistons do not automatically equal better braking. Simply put, multiple pistons not only help apply equal pressure on the pads to the rotor, it also helps make sure they're in proper contact.

In extreme cases, the pads tend to bend a little, so you're losing some pressure on those areas.

Some set-ups are better as a single piston. There are a lot of factors involved, but one of those could be because the piston area is as large as the pad itself - negating the need for more pistons. Many M3's have single piston setups.

 

any words on this form about brake performance.com I'm thinking of doing a brake upgrade myself and on my corvette forums this place comes highly recommended but was wondering if anybody has install them on a sc43o and what their experience was like and how to breaks performed?

Thanks in advance guys,
DAG