So I had Saturday off work for a change & used that time wisely to hunt around the wreckers for some brake upgrades as it seems to be a common topic here on this site so I thought I would post something about it. I had never really worried about brake upgrades until I thought more about a Vtec conversion & realized bigger brakes are must if I ever do attempt the B series swap & try to get it road legal, with that said here are some comparisons.
Here are the two types of City knuckles i had mentioned before, the one on the left is the 110mm caliper spacing & on the right is the 140mm spacing, from my experience all T2's have 140's
Here is a comparison between a N/A City 210mm disk(left) & a 230mm disk(right) from my GA2 City, this is the straight bolt on to the 140mm N/A knuckles that I was referring to in my above post, as you can clearly see the disks from the GA2 are reasonably larger but also use a much larger pad so should give a substantial increase in braking performance over the 210's
Same two disks showing the thickness difference.
Here is a comparison between 260's, 240's, 230's & 210's. From left to right we have DA6 Integra 260mm vented disk, caliper & pad above then some 240mm DC1 Integra vented disk, caliper & pad above, 230mm T2 disk with GA2 caliper & pad above(I don't have any T2 calipers for a comparison but gauging from the GA one its likely to be around that size) & last we have a 210mm disk, caliper & pad from a N/A City.
This is just showing the thickness differences.
So with the photos there I will explain some more. I was looking around the wreckers for possible brake upgrades for my N/A knuckles but found basically nothing, they seem to be an odd offset to most other Honda's but found it much easier to find a upgrade for T2's instead which is a good thing considering i wasn't looking for T2 upgrades. First thing to note is that N/A City's use a 40mm offset disk & i'm also sure T1's do to but T2's & i'm sure Cabriolet's use a 45mm offset disk which seems to be much more common in the Honda range, so common in fact that 90% of the cars i looked at had 45mm offset disks, Mazda, Ford, Nissan, Toyota & almost all Honda's had 45's which ranged from mid to late 80's Accords, preludes, Integra's through to the 90's which makes it very easy to find a set.
The DA6 Integra disks & calipers are no good for either N/A or turbo City's even thought the disk fits the hub it's the calipers that don't as the mounts on the City knuckles do not protrude far enough out to allow the DA6 caliper to bolt on with that disk even though the DA6 caliper is a 140mm, it also has a thicker 14mm mounting flange than the rest which are 10mm so if they did bolt on then the disk would need to be a 40-41mm offset so it contradicts it's self a bit here.
So the other option which i found plenty of was the 240mm vented disks & calipers, i got these ones from a DC1 Integra (1994 on) which has the bug eye (twin) headlight which here in NZ normally means NZ New but in Australia I think only the Australian New Type-R's have those fronts. This DC1 i found at the wreckers had a D16 in it so it's the lowest spec one i believe. DOHC Vtec DC2's use 260's or bigger & maybe even some SOHC Vtecs but i'm not completely sure of this.
The 240mm DC1 disks & calipers bolt straight onto the T2 hubs/knuckles & even though some of you may think that its only 10mm bigger than T2's so what's the point well if you look at the photos above you will see even though they are only 10mm bugger in diameter its the larger thickness of them & the considerably larger pad that is going to make a difference especially if doing a lot of hard braking which is going to create a lot of heat which the thinner T2 disks wont handle so well & are likely to brake fade earlier. Anyway i's up to the individual what they think but for a simple straight bolt on upgrade then i feel it is worth it.
