Dr G

Hi guys,

I was wondering if any of you have any experience of AP Racing brake products? I was looking for any thoughts/experiences etc with regards to thirdgens and/or other vehicles.

I tried to search on thirdgen for info about it but the two letter 'AP' can't be seached for. I've read through dozens of threads and nothings came up.

The reason I'm asking as I am in contact with a company that distributes AP Racing brakes for racing and road applications and they also make up custom set-ups for cars they don't have an 'off-the-shelf' kit for.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Dewey316

I've looked at them, coleman sells them. they look like a nice caliper. I have no hands on experiance though.

Rembrandt

does Coleman have a website?

I tried searching for it.

MrDude_1

i THINK its http://www.colemanracing.com/

i cant goto the site... if i do, i start thinking about projects and i end up broke for months.

Dewey316

I have never seen the AP calipers online at coleman.

but they are in the HUGE catalog i have.

what info are you looking for they basicly make a caliper that will fit either .810 or 1.25" rotors, with pistons sizes from 1.75/1.75 - 1.125/1.125 or in stagored bore that range from 1.875/1.75 or 1.75/1.625.

so there are a whole lot of options for both front and rear.

all the calipers on on the 3.500" mounting. Cost is about $400 per caliper.

Dr G

Thanks Dewey, if I go ahead with it then I'll be basically be sending them a corner of the stock front brakes and the corresponding wheel. They would then make me up custom brackets etc and use the largest disc and caliper combination for my chosen wheel.

The problem is with me (currently) wishing to keep the stock crosslace gold GTA wheels. As you know, the options are limited! I've been in talks with Alloy Specialties for some months (as you know he supplies the Spohn 13inch Wilwood 4 piston set-up). He has been looking into making me up a set-up with 2-piece discs and the same calipers, but feels it's not going to fit even by bringing the rotor size down to 12.5 or 12.0inches.

I was just wanting to find fellow thirdgenner's knowledge and experience of pruducts by AP Racing. And to see if people thought that a custom AP Racing brake set-up for under the GTA wheels would be deemed a good idea.

Rembrandt

I did find that site...but it seemed as though it wasn't the same one you guys were talking about.

I thought (assumed) that they were a brakes(& friction stuff)-only specialist like AP or Brembo.

iroc-si

Well my brother runs AP racing's 12.7" discs front and rear on his ultima gtr (383 chevy sbc based kit car). They look much better than the spohn brakes but are about £1,700 an end (ie. £3,400 for the car) compared with $1,600 for the sphon/alloy front system.

Compared with the spohn 13" system they have lightweight alloy hubs, and instead of cross drilled rotors they are actually cast with the cross holes in them. This gets all the advantages of cross drilled rotors but without the disadvantage of creating stress fractures. The differences won't be noticeable unless you race for 30+minutes etc.

Si.

vsixtoy

AP calipers are very high quality. They have a better reputation than Brembo. The reason you don't often hear about AP is because they will custom label their brakes to other outfits- you've seen them more than you might know.

Dr G

Dean and Si, thanks for the comments and information. I'm pretty certain this is route I'm going down with the front brakes. It won't be for a while, but I'll let you guys know how I get on.

Dean, which companies is it whose brakes include relabelled AP calipers?

powermite

Ive got these lurking in my garage ready to fit but even my 18"rims arent big enough to get them behind
PM

powermite

and

nolanr0413

now those are some sweet brakes. Isnt that the baer kit for our cars that costs like 3500 for the front two .

Dewey316

yup, looks like the 6pot Alcons to me.

Matt87GTA

When I was working on my brake system my buddy and I came up with a kit that would fit inside a GTA wheel with 12.2x1.25" Wilwood rotors and Wilwood Superlite calipers with no problem at all. We had the rotor offset via the hat a TON though.... I think the hat was a full two inches tall. I would bet a 13" rotor would be pretty tight though unless you really offset the rotor even farther inside the wheel where it tapers out.

The problem we ran into with this setup was that we used a bracket that mounted to the strut using longer bolts for the struts and all of the angles just got to be too much to make it feasible. It fit fine and would have worked fine but the brackets required a lot of grinding and tweaking to make them fit and in the end I just ended up going to a C5 rotor and a flat steel bracket to mount the caliper. Much simpler and cheaper in the end. But with the offset of the rotor so high we really had no other choice but to mount the caliper to the strut mounting area with that other setup. Might have been worthwhile to get it to work if I was still using GTA wheels but I have 4th gen sized 17" wheels on mine using adapters now so I have more than enough room for brakes... Even the 13" (well actually 12.81") C5 rotor leaves plenty of room inside that 17" wheel.

vsixtoy

AP Calipers are actually standard equipment on upscale Renault, Lotus, Rovers and many other factory cars. They manufacture brake systems for many big auto companies- mainly British though.

Dewey316

They also apear on quite a few cars when wondering the paddock at the ALMS races.

Dr G

Thanks for the reply Matt, much appreciated. I find your information very encouraging indeed. I'm very serious about this upgrade and about being able to keep the original GTA wheels if I wish to. I still may end up putting bigger wheels on, but I wish to keep the option there of returning to the good old gold cross lace wheels. I'll be sure to post all information and pictures etc of this when I get it off the ground.

Dr G

Dean and Dewey, that sounds encouraging! I think I'll schedule this work to be done over the winter.