rear brakes? worth it?

04gtdrop

New Member
Jun 10, 2005
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Sac, CA
ok, so my front brakes are on the way, now im thinking about doing the rear on my next paid day. i got 3 options, one just replace them with stock parts, two just upgrade the rear rotor and pads, or three upgrade the rotor, pads and calipers. if i did this i would go with the bigger cobra caliper, now im wondering if its really worth it to do this? the bigger rotors are about 100 bucks more vs the GT rotors plus i would still need the calipers.

i guess im just wondering how much work do our rear brakes do? :shrug: is the upgrade worth it? thanks guys
 
i dont know about mustang specific, but ive always heard the front brakes do 80-90% of the braking while the rears only do 10-20%. i would just replace them with stock parts, but thats just me. eventually i'd like to upgrade the front set-up, but the rear will probably stay stock for a long time. maybe some caliper paint, but thats it.

again, thats all my opinion. its your car and money, so do what pleases you.
 
The rear Cobra calipers are the same as the GT. The only difference is a slightly larger/thicker rotor. Just paint your calipers to match the ones you ordered, get some nice rotors and some hawk pads and that will be enough.
 
droptopponynj said:
The rear Cobra calipers are the same as the GT. The only difference is a slightly larger/thicker rotor. Just paint your calipers to match the ones you ordered, get some nice rotors and some hawk pads and that will be enough.

Aren't cobra ones vented compared to the solid ones on the GT and V6?

The rear brakes really don't do that much work, if you think about i our weight distrubition is something like 60/40, then under braking it would be something like 80/20, so the rear brakes would only do something like 20%.

Something to note... through nobody wants to believe it... on the road there will not be much of an objective difference, maybe you will have better pedal feel, but the braking distance from something like 30mph will probably be the same. Once you are able to lock up all four tires, then bigger brakes and stronger calipers won't help at all at that speed, it will result in less fade, but the actual distance wil not decrease unless you change the weigh distribution, the ABS programming, brake distribution or the tires size or aerodynamics.
 
ok, so from the post's so far... it sounds like the cobra calipers arent really worth it. i would like to hear from more of you. on either side of the conversation, but i thin about the price VS. the gain and it sounds like just some new rotors with some new hawk pads will do teh trick.
 
Go out after you put on your rotors, see if you can lock up at about 60mph, if you can, you have more than enough braking power and you would not gain much or have detrimental effects (from higher unsprung weight and rotational mass) from getting even large rotors.
 
helty said:
i dont know about mustang specific, but ive always heard the front brakes do 80-90% of the braking while the rears only do 10-20%. i would just replace them with stock parts, but thats just me. eventually i'd like to upgrade the front set-up, but the rear will probably stay stock for a long time. maybe some caliper paint, but thats it.

again, thats all my opinion. its your car and money, so do what pleases you.
Since you have an 04, your rear brakes are fine as they are. If anything, do what I did: Brembo Rotors and Hawk HPS pads. They only do about 15% of the braking, and its not necessary to put larger brakes in back for typical driving usage.

Wade