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We are proud to introduce our new Wilwood Track-Day Brake System. Building on the success of our AP Competition Brake System, we produced this brake kit, with the intention of bringing race-inspired engineering to the broader motorsports market. Utilizing many of the specifications of our AP kit, we have designed what is in essence, a light-competition brake system, employing high-end track & street components. The result is a system which provides incredible performance for cost, accessible to the broader driving enthusiast market, which can be easily upgraded to race-performance components if you choose.
Forged Superlight Calipers use the same 20mm Brake Pads that our AP kit uses. These not only add additional thermal barrier between the rotor and caliper, but will also last longer than a standard competition brake pad. Many other calipers use pads that are 12-17mm’s thick resulting in reduced thermal insulation (potentially more brake fluid boiling), and significantly increased pad replacement intervals. In essence you're getting more brake pad material for the same cost of a set of brake pads. Thanks to using a very common pad shape, replacing pads will also be significantly cheaper and easier to source.
Our SBG Premium Brake Rotors have been designed to provide the highest possible performance for cost. Our design utilizes race-inspired directional veins, which drastically increases air flow compared to a stock, straight vein rotor. Our proprietary slot design improves the responsiveness of braking, with better bite, and prevents excessive brake dust build up, keeping brake components clean and improving mechanical engagement. Optionally this kit is offered with an upgrade to AP Racing Floating Rotors for extreme track use.
This is the perfect package for customers looking for the maximum bang for their buck when it comes to brake performance.
Our Package Includes:
• Wilwood Forged Superlight Calipers
• 6061 Billet Caliper Mounting Brackets
• SBG 325x32mm Solid Mount Premium Brake Rotors or Optional 325x32 Floating AP Rotors
• SBG Designed 2024 T351 Aluminum Rotor Hats
• DOT Approved Stainless Steel Brake Lines with dirt/abrasion sleeves
• Full Pictorial Installation Guide
We're finishing production and expect kits to start shipping late this month. Order now for a one time only introductory pre-sale of $1275! This is the best deal you will find anywhere for an FD BBK kit and it wont last long, half of our pre-sale slots have already been purchased.
• Wilwood Forged Superlight Calipers
• 6061 Billet Caliper Mounting Brackets
• SBG 325x32mm Solid Mount Premium Brake Rotors or Optional 325x32 Floating AP Rotors
• SBG Designed 2024 T351 Aluminum Rotor Hats
• DOT Approved Stainless Steel Brake Lines with dirt/abrasion sleeves
• Full Pictorial Installation Guide
Great "Kit". But it doesn't include pads? I don't think I've ever seen a brake kit without them. Plus $200 for racer red calipers?
So it's $1275 + $100 + $200 for red. After shipping, this is $1600+.
How does this compare to the Wilwood 6Pot kit with 355mm rotors (which is the same price)? Does your 20mm pad really beat out a 16.5mm pad, an extra set of pistons and 30mm in the rotor department?
the Willwood 6pot kit uses more narrow rotor, so cooling capacity is probably similar even though its larger diameter. The poston area on the 6pot is 4.04, which is pretty similar to the 4.12 i assume they use in this kit with the 4pot kit in this thread. With the extra rotor diameter i assume the willwood large rotor kit would be WAY front biased using any stock rear caliper option. Also, i dont know about pad thickness vs area, but i have heard the narrow version of the 6pot caliper used in the willwood branded kit is more prone to flex and leaking. Correct me if im wrong on any of the above.
Im pretty close to pulling the trigger on this kit. If I wanted it with the 1.25 pistons to work with stock rears, could I specify that somewhere in ordering?
I actually sold my Wilwood 6 Piston kit to order these. I personally wanted to open up my options for wheel sizes instead of being forced into an 18in wheel (even though, that's what I currently run).
izanami is right. The Wilwood 6 Piston kit has a 355x28mm disc vs the SBG 325x32 - overall area on the 325 disc is actually greater.
As for the Red caliper... yeah, that's a bummer. But Heath explained to me these 4 Piston calipers aren't even offered by Wilwood in red and they had to be special ordered this way.
That looks like a nice kit with good features and good options at a good price.
Its great to have options!
izanami the Willwood 6pot kit uses more narrow rotor, so cooling capacity is probably similar even though its larger diameter. The poston area on the 6pot is 4.04, which is pretty similar to the 4.12 i assume they use in this kit with the 4pot kit in this thread. With the extra rotor diameter i assume the willwood large rotor kit would be WAY front biased using any stock rear caliper option. Also, i dont know about pad thickness vs area, but i have heard the narrow version of the 6pot caliper used in the willwood branded kit is more prone to flex and leaking. Correct me if im wrong on any of the above.
Only thing wrong I see above is the Wilwood kit is radial mounted calipers versus SBK perpendicular mounted calipers.
So, the Wilwood should have less caliper flex in the direction that matters for uneven pad wear and crisper initial brake feel and more flex in the direction you want to avoid brake pad knock-back (caliper pivots on the radial mounts with the rotor deflection).
When I put the Wilwood kit on I noticed that in/out flex of the caliper even though I shimmed it to center as best I could with the supplied shims. I thought it was a bad thing, but it is actually one of the advantages of radial mount calipers.
The 6 pot caliper should be 50% more prone to leaking than the 4 pot at the pistons- other than that I hadn't heard about leaks with the 6 pot superlight.
---------------
Some features I really like on the SBK over the Wilwood are-
Application specific rotor hats. The Wilwood kit uses a rotor-centric ring that can be displaced/damaged when changing wheels in a hurry.
Anodized rotor hats (I am assuming). The Wilwood E-coating will immediately come off stuck to your wheel hub mounting surface once you get the brakes to temp. I haven't had any problems with areas visible with the wheel mounted.
Application specific brake lines. The SBK appears to use banjo bolts to the caliper so there is very little chance of catastrophic leaks from an object moving the brake line/fitting. The SBK appears to use a shock mounting boss to more positively locate the brake line.
Upgrade available to fully floating AP race rotors. I really like options and upgrade paths.
I actually sold my Wilwood 6 Piston kit to order these. I personally wanted to open up my options for wheel sizes instead of being forced into an 18in wheel (even though, that's what I currently run).
izanami is right. The Wilwood 6 Piston kit has a 355x28mm disc vs the SBG 325x32 - overall area on the 325 disc is actually greater.
As for the Red caliper... yeah, that's a bummer. But Heath explained to me these 4 Piston calipers aren't even offered by Wilwood in red and they had to be special ordered this way.
Whatever the case, this is a solid kit.
Yeah we were pretty bummed about the red caliper option cost. Just so everyone is aware, these specific calipers ARE NOT OFFERED off the shelf in RED from Wilwood. We had to place a 50 piece order and pay an exorbitant fee, as well as wait 2.5 months so that we could stop production of a batch of calipers, have Wilwood send them off to powdercoating for us, and then re-join the assembly process. We did this as an option for customers as we were being asked over and over if Red Calipers would be an option. It was the only way and we are simply passing on the cost to make this happen. The other option was telling customers, sorry, no red, grab some caliper paint, and good luck. So it's that or the up-charge.
That looks like a nice kit with good features and good options at a good price.
Its great to have options!
izanami the Willwood 6pot kit uses more narrow rotor, so cooling capacity is probably similar even though its larger diameter. The poston area on the 6pot is 4.04, which is pretty similar to the 4.12 i assume they use in this kit with the 4pot kit in this thread. With the extra rotor diameter i assume the willwood large rotor kit would be WAY front biased using any stock rear caliper option. Also, i dont know about pad thickness vs area, but i have heard the narrow version of the 6pot caliper used in the willwood branded kit is more prone to flex and leaking. Correct me if im wrong on any of the above.
Only thing wrong I see above is the Wilwood kit is radial mounted calipers versus SBK perpendicular mounted calipers.
So, the Wilwood should have less caliper flex in the direction that matters for uneven pad wear and crisper initial brake feel and more flex in the direction you want to avoid brake pad knock-back (caliper pivots on the radial mounts with the rotor deflection).
When I put the Wilwood kit on I noticed that in/out flex of the caliper even though I shimmed it to center as best I could with the supplied shims. I thought it was a bad thing, but it is actually one of the advantages of radial mount calipers.
The 6 pot caliper should be 50% more prone to leaking than the 4 pot at the pistons- other than that I hadn't heard about leaks with the 6 pot superlight.
---------------
Some features I really like on the SBK over the Wilwood are-
Application specific rotor hats. The Wilwood kit uses a rotor-centric ring that can be displaced/damaged when changing wheels in a hurry.
Anodized rotor hats (I am assuming). The Wilwood E-coating will immediately come off stuck to your wheel hub mounting surface once you get the brakes to temp. I haven't had any problems with areas visible with the wheel mounted.
Application specific brake lines. The SBK appears to use banjo bolts to the caliper so there is very little chance of catastrophic leaks from an object moving the brake line/fitting. The SBK appears to use a shock mounting boss to more positively locate the brake line.
Upgrade available to fully floating AP race rotors. I really like options and upgrade paths.
A few points: I'd argue the only way to combat knockback is with anti-knockback springs. We make a radial-mount brake kit complete with anti-knockback springs... it's our AP Competition brake kit as seen here AP Competition Brake System (FD3S RX-7) - SakeBomb Garage LLC The Wilwood kit we put together does have some drawbacks vs the AP kit, but it's literally HALF the price for the base version. As far as shims, idk what those are but we don't need/require any...Wilwood off-the-shelf brake kits are pretty hacked together to be honest, they use a parts bin and cobble things together as best they can instead of making parts application specific. This caliper is very stiff, and while I will agree radial mount is better, it's not going to solve anything like knockback. The purpose of this kit was to give most of the benefits of our AP Competition Kit, with an entry level price point, though obviously there are some drawbacks to the entry level kit.
Like you mentioned above, if any brake kit requires a centering ring on the rotor hat... run. That's nonsense and has no place in a brake kit. They also use very poor quality rotor hats. Our hats are full 2024-t351 aerospace grade for race use, and are the same identical hats in our AP kit! No corners cut here. Yeah the e-coat finish on the Wilwood hats is pretty bad too... nothing beats hard anodizing for aluminum but it's pretty pricey, most companies do not bother.
The AP floating rotor is a good option, but we left that as an option to give people a foot in the door that don't need a fully floating setup. They're not cheap, and for some may be overkill, but we definitely wanted a path to be able to upgrade the rotor to the full floating if someone so chose. Also as the rotor/hat is identical to our AP competition one, we could conceivably sell an upgrade kit to the AP calipers/brackets/lines however that's revamping many of the major components of the kit... but the option is there in the future should someone choose to want to do so.
I think your review above and compare/contrast was pretty unbiased and thanks for posting. We did not set out to solve EVERY problem with this brake kit, but to provide a very nice entry level BBK that could very much hold it's own on the track, with similar specs to our proven AP Competition kit. Hopefully others will love this setup as much as we do, and hey, if you want a full-featured brake kit, there's always the Comp. setup.
Great "Kit". But it doesn't include pads? I don't think I've ever seen a brake kit without them. Plus $200 for racer red calipers?
So it's $1275 + $100 + $200 for red. After shipping, this is $1600+.
You've never seen a brake kit without pads because companies hide cheap pads in their "kit" cost . Let's think about the standard practices for a minute :they give you the cheapest pads available which are garbage for every application (street or track)... they just happen to stop the car. We could have increased the cost of the kit, sold it with something that we know any consumer in the know would throw in the garbage can, and force them to buy something they don't want in addition to the pads they do want. This is a sales tactic that we don't adhere to because we're FD enthusiasts that track our cars... we know what pads are good for which applications and which ones are burners that end up in the dumpster - brand new. The brake pads that someone would choose for this kit should depend on their application, torque preference, rear pads/rear setup, and brand that they are used to or like. We encourage customers to use what they like, what they need, and even to shop around on price. This pad shape is WIDELY available, from many manufacturers in a million different compounds, and if we shoehorned you into some generic pads (that weren't even the same as your rears) we wouldn't feel good and you wouldn't be happy.
For the color option fee ("ricer re-" I mean "racer red" ) as stated above, wasn't our choice. The calipers ARE NOT offered in red from Wilwood. We were lucky enough to be able to pull some strings very high up at Wilwood, purchase in a VERY large quantity, stop their production process, and have them do a custom run of parts for us. They charged us for it, and we waited a very long time to have this done, and as sad as I am to pass that on to customers, at least it's an available option. The flip side is, this is a SakeBomb Garage exclusive, and there are 25 sets available in red, no more no less and I can't guarantee we'll be keeping red calipers in stock after these are gone due to the extra cost. Limited run at the moment. (By the way, some off-the-shelf Wilwood brake kits ALSO up-charge for red!)
Originally Posted by Under PSI
How does this compare to the Wilwood 6Pot kit with 355mm rotors (which is the same price)? Does your 20mm pad really beat out a 16.5mm pad, an extra set of pistons and 30mm in the rotor department?
Cost aside, there are quite a few differences. I won't get into price here because I honestly feel our pre-order cost is absolutely seller, and I'm surprised price is being mentioned with a full BBK at this price-point... it's nearly at cost for us. As far as kit differences: The rotors are 28mm vs our wide-air-gap @ 32mm for increased heat dissipation and efficiency vs rotor weight. The metallurgy of the Wilwood rotors is also not particularly great. The Wilwood hats are of a much poorer grade aluminum (possibly even cast previously, it's hard to tell). The hats are also not application specific requiring centering rings, etc. They are not hard anodized, nor are they made from billet aerospace grade 2024-t351 meant for competitive racing use, like ours. They do not use mil-spec mounting hardware, with silver plated deformed thread high temperature locking nuts. Their hats are threaded to accept bolts which can back out as the rotors are heat cycled, we use high-temp mil-spec one-time-use locking bolts and nuts. Their rotor size is an extremely large diameter, good luck balancing rear bias. They can not be upgraded to AP Floating rotors. The parts replacement costs are higher for the Wilwood kit.
Look, some of the Wilwood calipers are pretty good, and share a lot of characteristics with our AP calipers using the same pad shape. Wilwood has been around for a long time, but you really have to pick and choose what components to skip over... we've been in the industry long enough to recognize which pieces are quality and which are not, and it's exactly what we've done here. We've used a caliper that we know is of high quality and built the rest of a brake kit around it. We've attempted to make it as affordable as possible for FD owners to get their foot in the door with a VERY affordable track-worthy big brake kit! I'm more than happy to defend what we engineer, or compare/contrast this with other products out there, but the negative tone of the post about our quote-un-quote "kit" seemed a bit unnecessary. We're happy to answer any and all questions you guys have, but we try to keep things positive. If we've deleted something like pads from a brake kit, there's a legitimate reason... we're not adding any brake kit surcharges here, all of the costs are upfront and visible, and if you've got any questions just ask, we'll explain why we did whatever we did
*** Just FYI to everyone interested we are now OUT of kits for the SBG rotors (as of this afternoon we have had 10 pre-orders to date, some red some black). We are now ordering more rotors, but we didn't expect these to sell out as fast as they are. We'll have another 10 sets coming and customers can continue to pre-order but please be aware brake kits are on a first-come first serve basis, due to the volume of pre-orders. ***
06-15-16, 06:03 PM
. Let's think about the standard practices for a minute 
) as stated above, wasn't our choice. The calipers ARE NOT offered in red from Wilwood. We were lucky enough to be able to pull some strings very high up at Wilwood, purchase in a VERY large quantity, stop their production process, and have them do a custom run of parts for us. They charged us for it, and we waited a very long time to have this done, and as sad as I am to pass that on to customers, at least it's an available option. The flip side is, this is a SakeBomb Garage exclusive, and there are 25 sets available in red, no more no less and I can't guarantee we'll be keeping red calipers in stock after these are gone due to the extra cost. Limited run at the moment. (By the way, some off-the-shelf Wilwood brake kits ALSO up-charge for red!)
