came acroos the brake man revolution bbk the other day and was curious if anyone had any thoughts on it.

anyone running this set up or maybe have had some experience with them?

anything you can share would be apprciated.

cheers.

 

No experience but have seen it around for a while and it looks NASTY! The list of high end sports cars he features and the people that use it must say 2 things. One of them is it ain't cheap. The other is that it must work pretty well.

 

Yeah, just looked at the price for the fun of it. Front was 2300, rear was about 3200. Looks cool but is it multiple thousands cool?

 

i called over there today and just asked some questions. they seem like good people and the fact that i own a shop gets me parts for wholesale so i may give these ago. imma calll back tomorrow and see what wheel apps i have to use.

 

[QUOTE=hemiheaded18;1410037]No experience but have seen it around for a while and it looks NASTY! [/QUOTE

im assuming when you say "nasty" you mean it looks good?

 

I've been running it on my Cooper for about 5 months now... We offer the kit. It is gorgeous, the rotors always looks killer (no surface rust), and it's a definite eye catcher.

I cannot speak as to the effectiveness for full blown track work yet, as I have not run an event with the kit installed... yet. We will be track testing it for the first time at AMVIV on the Spring Mountain circuit. I have done some fast autocross testing, and it's worked very, very well.

On the street, with the #3 pads, it's insanely good - might as well be tossing a battleship anchor out of the back of the car. It does impart some minor vibration into the steering wheel under initial high-speed braking when cold, until the system warms up - then, it's smooth. It also always makes a sound under braking that's similar to sticking a playing card in the spokes of your bike. You can hear the engagement when you hit the pedal and instant disengagement once you let off - one of the Brake Man's hallmark claims.

Initial bite is excellent with the #3 pads and they are quiet - they do produce a good bit of brake dust. They have other compounds available, but they recommend the #3's for fast street, AX, and light track work. For the street only, I think they recommend the #62's (IIRC).

One interesting thing is that you cannot peer into the caliper from the front and tell how much pad is left - the rotors radius out the brake pad material, so you need to pull the wheel and look from the top. Otherwise, you'll always assume that you have lots of pad left, when that might not be the case.

If you're coming to AMVIV, you can check out the system. I'll post my thoughts about it after the track sessions at Spring Mountain. I can't imagine that it won't perform (knowing the founder), but I have no track (other than fast AX) testing to say otherwise.

 

[quote=DOPAMINE;1410604]Oh yeah. Hella Hot! One of the few times that looking good goes along with functioning well.

 

With so much of the rotor cut away my concern for high performance use would be high rotor temps due to the limited thermal mass provided. The smaller the mass, the higher the temperature will be for a given heat load (same for a large vs small diameter rotor). Also, all those holes could result in significant thermal stresses leading to fatigue cracking.

They definitely make a style statement tho'!

Alan

 

So, the Brake Man kit got worked over at Spring Mountain during AMVIV for a couple of sessions... It worked incredibly well from start-to-finish, zero fade, boat anchor-like performance for hard braking points and fine control for superb trail braking late into the last series of corners...

The #3 pads rock out loud. Two sessions and they barely looked worn. The rotors still looked killer, too.

Came in after session #2 and Dr. Mike promptly touched the Revolution rotors - you could hold your fingers on them for a few seconds. Ran over and tried the same thing with his Wilwood setup and promptly got the sizzle of flesh. Not saying the Wilwoods are bad at all, mind you - far from it, they are AWESOME performers that Dr. Mike does his best to kill routinely. They just run a bit hotter, is all.

So, the rotors work as intended. The #3 pads are awesome. The system stayed cool and totally fade-free. It still looked gorgeous.

The one caveat - the 2.2 mile loop didn't seem to be that tough on brakes, IMHO. The morning session had fairly cool ambient temps, while the afternoon was warmer and the Cooper was going faster. Shrug. Still, they work as advertised. The Brake Man spent a lot of time and money developing his rotors.

 

There's actually a white paper on the Brake Man's site on that very subject... It's one reason they took forever in the development process.

It also helps that the rotors aren't iron...