m4a1mustang

Posting from my iPad at the Fontana Village Resort...

Ran The Dragon this morning with a group of 370Zs and a 300ZX and had a blast... Asolutely cooked the brakes, though. The fronts were smoking when we stopped at mile marker 11.

Ordering some slotted rotors, stainless steel lines, and some super blue as we speak.

HoosierDaddy

You forgot the ducts; they will do much more than all those combined.

LEwis26

Which SS lines are you getting?

The ones AM has listed for our cars specifically says not to use on the gt500, which our cars source their brakes from.

JScottGT

Not one of those options will help the car stop any better or keeping you from smoking the pads... The smoke you saw was more than likely melted dust boots on the caliper pistons.
Slotted rotors are more for bling factor, stick with the factory Brembo blanks. Stainless lines and Super Blue fluid will help some with pedal feel, and keeping you from boiling the fluid with excess heat.
The single, most important "upgrade" you would need for better braking performance is better pads. With a pad that can handle more heat than the OEM ones, you will see better overall braking performance. There will be some trade-off though with the amount of noise coming from the brakes.
Glad to see you are having some fun running your car hard. Just be careful at a place like Tail of the Dragon if you are still on OEM brakes. They are really not up to the task of repeated heavy braking... as you experienced.

m4a1mustang

Yep. Pads and ducting on the list too.

You're right about the dust boots. Glad to report I experienced no fade with the Brembos but they really needed to cool off after a hard hard run.

CO_VaporGT_09

Smoke doesn't automatically imply melted boots, it can be simply the pad bonding material 'boiling' away. As I'm sure Scott's aware, a proper bedding session SHOULD end up with the brakes smoking; this is the material closest to the surface floating away into the air.

If your brakes are actually on FIRE, well you've probably melted something and have fluid adding to the fun, or possibly caught the paint of the caliper ablaze.





What pads you going with??

t-ray

Have fun out there. I know several folks that go to zdayz every year, but I've never been able to make it. Unfortunate, because there are lots of cool cars in that crowd.

Did you every take your 370z to zdayz? I'd like to hear a comparison of the two cars in such an environment.

jlmounce

This.

I'll add that not only are most slotted and drilled rotors for bling, but can fail rapdily under heavy use.

If you really want to go slotted, drilled or both you need to purchase a rotor that is cast or forged with those features in place. slotting or drilling after the casting is made only weakens the rotor, making it prone to cracking and failure.

I've seen it happen on the track. It does more damage than a simple rotor change.

m4a1mustang

I was here at ZDayZ with my 370 last year. I know a lot of the regulars and the 5.0 has had a really nice reception.

As far as the Z vs. 5.0 on the dragon, the 5.0 requires a good bit more work to drive fast, but the balance is better with the square tire setup. The PZeros are awesome and grip like hell with great feedback. The Z has a lot of grip but it comes with a lot of understeer built in from the factory. It's a point and shoot style car that is very easy to drive at the limit -- with the Mustang you really need to think ahead and plan out your lines. You can pretty much do anything and get away with it in the Z.

The Mustang can get a bit difficult to handle in quick left-right transitions but it has so much grip it gets through very quickly. Lets just say with equally skilled drivers, a 370Z will be unable to shake a Brembo 5.0 on this road.

As for the brakes, we determined that it was mostly due to the driver i was following... I was using the brakes 2X as much to keep off of him (some people have funky braking points) so after I adjusted my style I had no further problems.

I have some good GoPro video from our group and will be getting more tomorrow. I have no problem keeping up... In fact I am one of the more advanced drivers in our group so I can easily set the pace.

Had a number of point bys today from some expensive cars, which always puts a smile on your face. I think a lot of the guys here are pretty surprised with the performance of the car.

t-ray

Thanks for the feedback on the two cars. I've only ever test driven the 370z, but I had planned on getting that before the 5.0 came out.

I've been in the g/z world for quite a while. The previous iteration of the fx platform had plenty of understeer built in from the factory. My g35 sedan has a moderately upgraded suspesion (stillen sways f/r, and shocks/struts+springs off a nismo 350). Even with the same tires all around the car, it still has a lot of understeer.

I've autocrossed both my g35, and my mustang, and I've driven both on the same backroads. Quick transitions are not the mustang's strongest suit, but I am continuously amazed at how much front-end grip the mustang has. I'm also very impressed with easily it rotates, and I don't mean as a function of wagging the tail. You turn the car, and it just rotates around an axis that is in the dead center of the car. It's quite amazing for such a large car (my sedan is dimensionally smaller than the mustang).

The only problem I've had with the mustang was some push during one corner at the last autocross, but that was my fault because I had too much speed. For all its grip, it doesn't like turning while on the brakes.

Anyway - sorry for the long post, and enjoy your time out there. I need to make it over there one year.

jlmounce

You're not even kidding about the grip! The PZero's on the brembo package have superb lateral grip. The sidewall is too thin and hard to be of much use in drag racing, but holy god will they hold their line in a corner!

First high speed sweeper I put my car through shocked the hell out of me. I'd say with the suspension setup and these tires that the closest I've come to the same feeling was my 99 Cobra running H&R SS, Koni shocks and Falken RT615's.

This car is as well balanced as my previous Z06, without being nearly as tail happy.

You're right though, without that dialed in understeer, you can make things go bad in a hurry.

Great comparison!

m4a1mustang

Here's a little video of me chasing a friend's 370 on The Dragon. He's got an '09 with KW V3 coilovers, Volk TE37s wrapped in 265/305 RE11s, and Stillen Sway bars as well as your typical intake/exhaust bolt ons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVo25SMAEUo

2011Mustang5.0

A guy I know went there on vacation last week. He said there was a guy with a 350z or 370z that was yellow that had spun out and hit the rock face. Did you see it or was it your buddy?

m4a1mustang

That happened on Friday, I think. A girl with a really nice 350 got spooked when a truck crossed into her lane on the Skyway. She tried to avoid it but in doing so went off the road and lost control and crashed pretty hard. Thankfully her and her passenger were unhurt. If you are unfamiliar with the skyway, it's two-lane road with fast, sweeping curves. She was in a left turn when the truck came over into her lane, so you can imagine how that would be pretty difficult to avoid without going off the road. And since you're in the middle of a turn recovery is going to be difficult.

I checked out the damage and it was pretty bad... she was lucky.

m4a1mustang

We also got to see a life-flight helicopter pick up a downed motorcyclist at the Fugitive Bridge (by the Dam where Harrison Ford jumped off of in "The Fugitive.")

Apparently a Harley rider went down hard right before we got on the scene so we waited it out as the chopper landed and took him away for treatment. No clue on his fate.

It seems like every year we go there a motorcyclist goes down hard. We watched one go down right in front of us on the Skyway last year. The dude was lucky and was able to get up and walk it off, but his bike was trashed.

m4a1mustang

Here is the girl's car.



There was some extensive damage to the driver side and rear end, and pretty much everything underneath the car was torn up pretty badly.

She had full race buckets for both seats so I'm sure that helped with preventing injury.

t-ray

Off the subject, but I noticed something in that picture. The wheels on the black car look like the nismos. I bet they would look great on kona blue. Pretty light from what I remember. Bolt pattern would work, and I'm sure the bore would be large enough. But the offsets would probably be way too aggressive.

m4a1mustang

They probably would be. I know on my sport Rays the offsets were +47 front and +31 rear.

And man are they light! Around 21-22 lbs each.

I actually think some TE-37s would look sick on a 5.0. Especially the TE-37SL.