I purchased a complete set of front & rear Wilwood AERO4 Big Brake calipers for my 2014 Ford Mustang GT. To be fair, I'll first tell you what I like about the kit:
The Good:
The braking power is incredible. I cannot fade them no matter how hard I push them. I definitely feel safer driving with them once they are heated up.
The look is also incredible. I'm constantly getting compliments on the "supercar" look of the brakes.
The pedal feels stock for normal driving, but when you push them they bite much harder and the car stops way shorter once heated up.
The Bad:
The brakes do not perform all that well when cold. The hotter the brakes are the better it performs. When driving in the rain (I live in florida), the brakes perform absolutely terrible. A panic stop in heavy rain may likely turn into an accident if you are following too closely and you dont put all your weight on the pedal to stop (yeah.. its that bad). It stops, but it definitely gives you a good scare when you have to stop and the car is not stopping as fast as you think it should. I've adjusted to this phenomenon by increasing the distance to other cars when its raining hard.
THE UGLY:
The parking brake design is seriously flawed. One day I rolled the car out of the garage backwards. Once out of the garage my driveway is slightly pitched so the car naturally started to roll a little faster out of the garage. I jumped in the drivers seat while moving and pulled the parking brake (I'll note that I've done this a hundred times before with this car on stock brakes and several other cars without issue).
BAAAAMMMMM.
The brakes locked up hard and jolted the car back and forth. All other cars I've done this with came to a steady slow stop so I found this behavior to be unusual but didn't really investigate if further.
Next morning I drove the car to work and noticed that the rear of my car was making all sorts of grinding noises when I made hard right turns. Once I got back home after work I took the rear wheel and brake kit apart to figure out why it was grinding, and to my horror I found that the parking brake assembly had completely failed.
The brake pad shoe rest warped the aluminum backing it was mounted to, causing a misalignment of the parking brake shoes that caused it to grind against the parking brake drum. I contacted Wilwood, and some snot nosed kid there told me that this has never happened before, and accused me of installing it improperly. I asked him to put his supervisor on the phone, and he told me that he was unavailable. After this it got heated and I got nowhere. I hung up with him and wrote an e-mail to Wilwood telling them about what happened to me and the ridiculous response I got from their tech support agent.
Some "supervisor" eventually called me back and gave me the same song and dance about how have this kit has been "installed on thousands of Shelbys, and never has had a failure in x amount of years". I told them I can't verify the accuracy of that statement, but the fact is it has failed, I have the proof, and the only way to fix it is to redesign it. He then changed his defense and then stated that the parking brake is "not an emergency brake", and that I should never use them to stop the car. I thought this statement was absolutely ridiculous, but I guess their documentation did say parking brake and did not say emergency brake anywhere. He said that there is no way they can redesign it in the near future, and offered to replace the parts that failed and for me to send them the parts so that they can investigate. Although I knew this was no long term solution, the fact remained that my car was not operable so I agreed to this "short term fix", but asked that I be contacted once a long term fix was available. Well its been 6 months and of course they have not contacted me and here I am stuck with this POS rear brake assembly with no hope that it will get resolved. It has not completely failed again yet because I now don't pull the parking brake when the car is moving. However there are still a few issues remaining with it.
When I installed the brake, the pull handle only required about a 4 inch pull to apply the brake. After only a few months the slack increased and now I'm almost at the end of the handle travel so I have to now readjust it.
The parking brake only holds if you pull the parking brake handle all the way to the last click. If you miss one click, the parking brake does not engage.
I've lost all confidence in Wilwood, and will never buy any of their products again. I suggest you do the same.
Abs
Front
AERO6 Big Brake Front Brake Kit
140-10830-DR
Rear
AERO4 Big Brake Rear Parking Brake Kit
140-10950-DR
Wilwood High Performance Disc Brakes - 2014 Ford Mustang - Rear Brake Kit No.: 140-10950-DR
The Good:
The braking power is incredible. I cannot fade them no matter how hard I push them. I definitely feel safer driving with them once they are heated up.
The look is also incredible. I'm constantly getting compliments on the "supercar" look of the brakes.
The pedal feels stock for normal driving, but when you push them they bite much harder and the car stops way shorter once heated up.
The Bad:
The brakes do not perform all that well when cold. The hotter the brakes are the better it performs. When driving in the rain (I live in florida), the brakes perform absolutely terrible. A panic stop in heavy rain may likely turn into an accident if you are following too closely and you dont put all your weight on the pedal to stop (yeah.. its that bad). It stops, but it definitely gives you a good scare when you have to stop and the car is not stopping as fast as you think it should. I've adjusted to this phenomenon by increasing the distance to other cars when its raining hard.
THE UGLY:
The parking brake design is seriously flawed. One day I rolled the car out of the garage backwards. Once out of the garage my driveway is slightly pitched so the car naturally started to roll a little faster out of the garage. I jumped in the drivers seat while moving and pulled the parking brake (I'll note that I've done this a hundred times before with this car on stock brakes and several other cars without issue).
BAAAAMMMMM.
The brakes locked up hard and jolted the car back and forth. All other cars I've done this with came to a steady slow stop so I found this behavior to be unusual but didn't really investigate if further.
Next morning I drove the car to work and noticed that the rear of my car was making all sorts of grinding noises when I made hard right turns. Once I got back home after work I took the rear wheel and brake kit apart to figure out why it was grinding, and to my horror I found that the parking brake assembly had completely failed.
The brake pad shoe rest warped the aluminum backing it was mounted to, causing a misalignment of the parking brake shoes that caused it to grind against the parking brake drum. I contacted Wilwood, and some snot nosed kid there told me that this has never happened before, and accused me of installing it improperly. I asked him to put his supervisor on the phone, and he told me that he was unavailable. After this it got heated and I got nowhere. I hung up with him and wrote an e-mail to Wilwood telling them about what happened to me and the ridiculous response I got from their tech support agent.
Some "supervisor" eventually called me back and gave me the same song and dance about how have this kit has been "installed on thousands of Shelbys, and never has had a failure in x amount of years". I told them I can't verify the accuracy of that statement, but the fact is it has failed, I have the proof, and the only way to fix it is to redesign it. He then changed his defense and then stated that the parking brake is "not an emergency brake", and that I should never use them to stop the car. I thought this statement was absolutely ridiculous, but I guess their documentation did say parking brake and did not say emergency brake anywhere. He said that there is no way they can redesign it in the near future, and offered to replace the parts that failed and for me to send them the parts so that they can investigate. Although I knew this was no long term solution, the fact remained that my car was not operable so I agreed to this "short term fix", but asked that I be contacted once a long term fix was available. Well its been 6 months and of course they have not contacted me and here I am stuck with this POS rear brake assembly with no hope that it will get resolved. It has not completely failed again yet because I now don't pull the parking brake when the car is moving. However there are still a few issues remaining with it.
When I installed the brake, the pull handle only required about a 4 inch pull to apply the brake. After only a few months the slack increased and now I'm almost at the end of the handle travel so I have to now readjust it.
The parking brake only holds if you pull the parking brake handle all the way to the last click. If you miss one click, the parking brake does not engage.
I've lost all confidence in Wilwood, and will never buy any of their products again. I suggest you do the same.
Abs
Front
AERO6 Big Brake Front Brake Kit
140-10830-DR
Rear
AERO4 Big Brake Rear Parking Brake Kit
140-10950-DR
Wilwood High Performance Disc Brakes - 2014 Ford Mustang - Rear Brake Kit No.: 140-10950-DR
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