Code named the Big Dirty Mother BBK, here's a teaser on our new, forthcoming, totally hardcore kit... These feature a massive 11.75" x 1.25" "lightweight" rotor from Coleman Racing and Outlaw calipers. Yes, that's 1.25" of goodness!

The production Outlaw calipers will feature the TSW flag logo... The hat and bracketry is of our own design, machined out of billet aluminum. We'll supply you with aircraft-grade hardware, which means no more safety wiring the hat to the rotor, and SS lines to go with it... Also, we'll offer several choices of pads or you can source whatever you prefer.

The production hats have a built in spacer to allow the massive rotors and wiiiiiiide calipers to fit under most 15's. We've LONG been proponents of 15" wheels for track use - now, you can have a truly race worthy BBK that'll stuff under 15" wheels. It's safe to say that these are the wiiiiiidest 11.75" rotors you can stuff under your car and still run 15's. 225/50R15 is still our favorite size of r-compy goodness for the track.

Expect the hardware to be anodized a nice gunmetal color...

How do they work? Well, I'll let Dr. Mike chime in since he's been trying to kill them - but, you cam jam two fingers into the vanes. Imagine the cooling... *drool* Pound them into submission - we dare you...

We expect to have these in-hand and ready to ship in the next 3-4 weeks. Pricing will be released shortly, but we expect it to fall squarely in the $1350-1450 range.

Here's the prototype, stuffed under some 15x7 Team Dymanics Pro Race 1's with RA-1 rubber (225/50R15)... 16" Rota Slipstreams also clear... We plan on offering a template to see if your wheels will fit...

 

Great!

Got a weight for each side of the BDM kit?

Assuming we have stock rear brakes what do you suggest for an upgrade to maintain brake bias?

60-0 stopping distances of stock vs BDM kit would be helpful.

When ready list your different pads and cost.

 

Dr. Mike will be back home soon, and I'll ask him to post the weights of the rotors, hats, and calipers...

The pads we will offer will match up with an aggressive rear pad selection - e.g. Porterfield R4's. We'll only offer what we think will be a good street/track pad and an all out track pad, and suggest the matching rears... We carefully selected the the Outlaw calipers (bore and piston characteristics) to address inducing any unwanted characteristics of fooling around with the brake bias. Even so, you'll want to run a good rear pad...

We have no benchmark for testing 60-0 stopping distances other than those released in published reviews. We've been running one form of BBK or another for a long time now. In our humble opinions, it's not the 60-0 stopping distance that matters - but how many times you can brake while hot lapping without cooking anything on the track. To that end, we have focused on track testing - in places where an 11.75 x 0.81" rotor let us down, the 11.75 x 1.25" rotor didn't even begin to have issues. They stay cool, stable, and uber predictable.

This really isn't a "bling" BBK - this is only for those of us who want the biggest, baddest, road-racing worthy setup you can find that'll still fit under a 15" wheel... We've cooked a lot lot of setups and just got tired of it... We can't cook these...

 

What's the difference between these brakes and the Wilwood 11.75 kit?

 

These rotors are 0.44" wider...

 

Hey there, this is "Dr. Mike" with a little more information about the forthcoming brake kit.

The design of this kit centers around heat capacity and heat dissipation. No big brake kit can realistically shorten the one-time stopping distance of a particular car, tire, pavement, and set of environmental conditions - or if it does, the car was seriously deficient in braking to begin with! However, the brake systems on street cars are necessarily developed to meet the following goals, among others:

1. Meets the federal guidelines for stopping distance verses brake pedal effort
2. Does not make noise, or more specifically NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness)
3. Works very well when the brakes are cold
4. Can stop the car one time, at least, from top speed, with maximum braking force
5. Has a reasonable pad life

In short, the brakes must be civil, user-friendly, and quiet. For cars such as the MINI, which are performance-oriented, additional performance requirements are levied, but the above requirements must still be met.

After buying my MINI in 2003, I took it to the track, and found, as many of us have, that the stock brakes were not up to the pounding they received. Pads smoked and cracked into pieces, and the rotors died in less than one day.

I followed the familiar arc of increasingly aggresive brake pads, but in the end, I had to admit that a brake kit was necessary.

I will not name names, so don't ask, but I found that, while the racing brake kit I installed was far superior to the stock package, it also could not keep up at the more demanding tracks. With R-compound tires, I was soon cooking pads and destroying rotor sets in less than one weekend. The rotors would glow reddish-orange, and they would cool to a gunmetal color, with severe surface crazing and other modes of failure. Proper brake ducting doubled the life of the rotors - from one day at the track to two days. Full race pads from a variety of manufacturers fared better but tended to wear with an extreme amount of taper.

Through it all, I was determined to keep my 15" wheels. Racing tires for smaller wheels are less expensive and lighter, have less rotating inertia, tend to have smaller outer diameters, and did I mention they cost less? The problem was, there was no other kit available that would solve my problem without necessitating the move to large wheels to fit around huge (and heavy) rotors.

Thus, Texas Speedwerks found itself with an immediate need for a new product, and a willing test subject. The picture above is a mock-up only (the brake hat shown is a cut-down version of the hat from a different supplier); and the prototype has been treated quite rudely without any failures.

Full disclosure - I am absolutely brutal on brakes. My driving style uses late-braking and trail-braking, and I tend to be extremely aggressive (optimistic?) with my braking points. If anyone is going to cook the brakes on a MINI, I will.

 

Update!

Hats and caliper brackets are in production now...

We plan on sending the hats and brackets to the same anodizing place as the calipers, ensuring that you'll get the same finish on all components. The production calipers will feature the TSW logo laser etched on the caliper - all parts will be finished in a gunmetal anodizing, sure to complement all car colors...

Again, we plan on offering a couple different pad choices - Porterfield for street and street/track and full on Performance Friction pads for track use...

 

very nice guys!

 

Pieces and parts are well in process at the moment... Hats and brackets are being machined, brakelines are on order (using Goodridge components!), pads are on order (Porterfield R4, R4-S, and Raybestos ST-43), calipers are in process...

We're about 2 weeks away of the unveiling of the complete, final kit...

Pad choices when ordering:

R4 - for the hardcore dual-purpose car (street driven, autocross, DE's)
R4-S - for the street car and autocrosser
Raybestos ST-43 - hardcore track use only (these are absolutely, hands down, one of the best kept secrets out there)

For the rear, you'd want R4-S or OEM if you ran R4-S up front with the BBK. If you run the R4 or ST-43's up front, choose R4 for the rear (or some equivalent of the R4, but the R4 is our choice).

 

Hats are almost done (OMG they are gorgeous!) and the brackets are also almost done... They'll be sent to the same anodizing shop we're getting to handle the calipers - hard anodized, gunmetal in color.

All the aircraft hardware has arrived, along with the caliper mounting hardware (KILLER stuff), German pinch nuts, etc.

Brake lines are being made from Goodridge pieces-parts by hand right now...

All pads and rotors have arrived and are ready to rock... Dr. Mike continues to try and find something, anything, that will make these brakes go off - good luck, Dr. Mike! Since he engineered the kit, I highly, HIGHLY doubt that will ever, ever happen... Everytime I look at the 11.75 x 1.25" rotors, I sob softly... Hah! They're beautiful!

Mmmmmmm, racing brakes...

 

Just to give everyone an update - the hats and brackets should be in our hands tomorrow. We'll be test fitting the hat to the rotor and to my car to ensure everything's right. We'll also mount up the brackets and test those as well. We'll be taking detailed measurements and sending them to Dr. Mike to compare against the drawings and his setup on his car... I'll take some pics of the finished products.

Why all the need for test fitment? Well, once these puppies are hard anodized, it's almost impossible to re-machine them. That coating is WAY hard!

Right now, we're only waiting on the hats, brackets and calipers. We'll be shipping the hats and brackets to Outlaw on Thursday so they can be anodized in the same batch as the calipers. We should have them all back in 2 weeks time. Everything else is here - hardware, rotors, brakelines (way trick!).

 

Everything's been fitted up, measured and re-measured, and we're good to go... Next step - anodization!

I'll post some pics of the fitment when I get a chance...

 

And now... Keep in mind that these are raw parts and not yet anodized... The hats and dog bones (caliper brackets) shipped today to be anodized, and will be back to us early next week. The caliper was a mock-up caliper from Outlaw (who ROCK to do business with). You can see that Dr. Mike made the hats so you'd still have some hub protruding to locate the wheel.



Mmmm, machinery... Just waiting for 4" stock car pads... And yes, that rotor is massive, massive, massive.



Under an OZ Ultraleggera - 16x7, +37 E.T., with TONS of clearance between the caliper and spokes and caliper and inside of the rim...

 

What parts are getting annodized? Hats and Calipers? What color(s)? Looks like a sharp kit.

No cool scallop slots cut into the rotors?

Just curious - how's the caliper clearance on factory wheels, or other non-BBK type aftermarket wheels, like Panasports for instance?

 

We'll have a wheel fitting party as soon as we get the parts back... To date, we know they'll fit over Rota Slipstreams (16's), Team Dynamics Pro Race 1's (15's) and OZ Ultraleggera's (16's). My guess is that the majority of OEM 15-16" wheels will likely not work because their spokes don't flare out much... 17's, mebbie. We shall see - we're literally going to try and get as many of our local MetroplexMINI.org'ers over and start swapping wheels on over the kit. We'll make a template, too.

Dr. Mike did space the rotor out from the hub, and carefully spec'd the thickness of the hat. Even so, the caliper is massively wide to accept the 1.25" rotor...

Hats, calipers, and the mounting bracket (dog bone) will all get hard anodized in a gunmetal finish... The calipers will have 'texas speedwerks' laser etched into them in our logo font.

And no - no scallops in this kit... Just big, big, beefy rotors...

 

Gas slots will be an option in the near future - the first run of kits does without them. To be honest, I haven't noticed a difference between slotted and plain - except that the plain face rotors are easier to reface on the lathe. That's not to say that we won't accomodate those who want or need them!

 

Is it me or are the vanes on these rotors facing the wrong way? I thought the vanes pulled air from outside to the inside through spinning. These rotors are setup to pull the air from inside out. Which is more efficient or does it even matter?

regardless they look hot.

 

most rotors i have seen operate drawing air from the inside to the outside. that is why brake ducts direct the air to the center of the disk

 

well i think i found my next upgrade. these look awsome guys

 

There's a left and a right rotor supplied with the kit - they are directional, and yup, the orientation matters! This was just for mockup, btw, so I didn't pay any attention to the orientation of the vanes (but they are correct in the pics).

 

Update - we should have them on or before 9/4/07... We ran into a timing issue with the anodizer, so this is a week later than we wanted - oh well, whatcha gonna do?

 

Any idea on what the price will be?

 

Price will be $1350 + shipping... Price includes your choice of one set of pads (Porterfield R4-S or R4, Raybestos ST-43) and everything else (calipers, rotors, hats, brackets, Goodridge lines, all hardware, etc.). Additional pads and replacement rotors can be ordered whenever...

 

will this brake kit work with the 17" web spoke wheels from MINI??

 

We'll find out as soon as the parts get back... We're going to have a wheel fitment party. Also, we should have a template you can print out and use to measure clearance with your wheel in the very near future, too.