cobra brakes vs gt brakes

rai_281

New Member
Apr 11, 2005
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ok i know there are alot of other brake post about the cobra brake upgrade but a lot of people are saying there will not be a huge difference. well my cousin has a 2003 cobra and i have a 2003 gt and there is a huge difference. the car stop way faster. they have a dual piston caliper so what is the reason behind the better stoping.
 
both the gt (99-2004) and the cobra (mach1, bullitt) have twin piston calipers. the only difference as far as design is the latter use a 13" rotor for more of a heat bleed off. honestly i just went from GT to bullitt brakes and noticed only slight increase in stopping power, but thats mainly due to the SS brake lines and the new brake fluid (i bled my entire system) and the difference in quality of pads.... getting new lines and new fluid with new pads is the cheaper alternative to better calipers.... but mine needed replacing, so thats why i did mine.

Torinalth
 
The way i look at it, the GT already has 2-piston calipers and so does the Cobras, the main difference in performance between these two is the size of the rotor.

So if you want to upgrade your GT brakes, might as well step up to the 4-piston calipers. The cobra-R Brembo kit could be had for only $900 and comes with everything. I have a hard time with the idea of upgrading my 2-piston calipers with another 2-piston calipers
 
i have an 04 GT. I went from the stock setup to the bullet calipers with 13" cross drilled slotted rotors. I felt a huge diff after the install.

Its time for me to replace the front rotors, so i got some new cross drilled, slotted rotors, with the steel brake lines and i'm going to upgrade the rear rotors to the cobra one's. I'm sure i will feel a diff once this is done.
 
Do a good brake job on your car and it can make a big difference. Get some better stopping pads like Hawk.

The two piston caliper lets it apply more pressure with less brake pedal effort.

But probably the biggest reason the cobra brakes work better is because of the larger rotors. IIRC the back rotors are slightly larger, but most stopping power comes from the front anyway. The front rotors are a large 13", so the caliper sits further away from the wheel.
Its like using a 16" breaker bar to break loost a bolt versus a 7" socket wrench. The breaker bar is much more capable because the pressure is being applied further away from the pivot point. Same concept with the larger rotors. You dont need crossdrilled/vented anything unless you do a lot of road racing. For street driving, just a plain factory rotor would be fine, and if anything, would stop better(thanks to more pad surface contact area).

And FWIW-I did the front cobra conversion on my old 98 GT with a new kit from FRPP. It worked ok. It wasnt mind blowing, but it stopped a lot better than it did. I just installed new rotors/pads, and bled the whole system on my 02-and that made a nice difference. As it sits now, it stops good enough for me(and Im just using the cheapo pads from Oreilly-brake best I think)