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The tips of them are ceramic. they do not fail on the street or even on the track. if you have ducting mine have not failed yet but I run pretty big 3-in naca ducts off my splitter
Nobody is going to make a successful claim because they work fine on the street.
I thought they are ceramic. People (Sneed for Speed, for one) are trying to say they are plastic.
You might be right about a claim... Sucks though. I don’t see the point in having caliper pistons in a car that can fail. BMW/MINI must be aware of this, and yet as with most problem that they are not forced to fix, they just ignore it.
The problem with the Gen 2 MINI is there is no room for even 2” ducts and there is very little room for ducts on my Gen3 JCW, although I think it can be done. The thing is, though, I would not be thinking of butchering up my car for brake ducts if were not for these crap-tastic pistons. The brakes on my JCW seem to be up to the task of handling the heat of being on the track and ducts would otherwise not be needed.
Somewhere I have pics of my GP when I did a night racing session. The discs are literally glowing white/orange they were so hot. I measured mine at >800C when I painted mine and tested on a brake havy circuit. Nowhere near as hot as my old R53 though, that was just off the scale. The GP system has so much more thermal mass than the R53.
ducts are key, no matter how you slice it you are stopping X weight from X mph that generates heat, the faster you are the more heat, heavier the car more heat. Removing the heat is the key! without ducts more mass buys you time to peak temp but not much else
I just got around to doing the piston swap the other day. A friend gave me a hand with it. Neither of us had ever done caliper rebuilds. It took about 3 casual hours start to finish. It's really a very straight forward process. Here's a pic of the pistons that came out. Quite a few of them were in really rough shape. Notice how some of their heights aren't the same. One of the DTC-60 pads was chunked pretty bad. I spoke with a hawk rep for awhile about it. They're sending a new set my way. pretty cool. I talked to him a bit about running 70's too. The consensus is I'm going to hit the rotors with high temp paint and see what they're getting to. I'm seriously considering doing the dust shield mod down the road too. I'll be running the new 60's this weekend at RR though, without any other changes other than the new pistons. Looking forward to seeing how the car feels on track.
Which brake caliper piston rebuild kit is that your using?
Apologies I never gave an update after RR! Piston kit is fantastic on track. I actually did a couple of days at the Firm (Florida Intl. Rally & Motorsport) in the Mini after that RR weekend too. Brakes for days. That track might provide a better assessment too as there is far less cool down time between turns when compared to RR. I actually ended my FIRM weekend a session early as I had a rotor just about cracked all the way through and I was driving home from the track. Anyhow, I would highly recommend the racing brake kit. And MrBlah is definitely correct about the tips being ceramic. It's a sh*t design imho.
Ironically, I am about to put my GP up for sale. I recently bought an Exocet. I've been wanting to make the jump to dedicated track car and get more away from the compromises of tracking a street car. I've got a work truck for a daily so the GP is a garage queen at this point. I'll be sad to see it go for sure. It's been an excellent, super fun car. But, it's on to a new era for me
. The GP system has so much more thermal mass than the R53.
