The search for proper stoppers January 2007 The stock brakes of the ST185 are too small and too weak. Since I'm planning on increasing the power output of the engine and attending to track days in the future, so I need new brakes. During some mountain cruising last summer I experienced fading, so I wanted a proper bad ass big brake kit made to suit the car. I made a list of specs which I wanted for this brake kit: 1) 325+ mm thick two piece discs to keep the heat away from the centre 2) 4 or more pistons per caliper for an equal spread braking force 3) A big pad area, 50-60 square cm After lots of hours of online searching I found some existing big brake kits: Tarox The first kit I found is made by Tarox. This kit uses quite small discs; 318x26 mm (stock discs are 277x25 mm)! Therefore I e-mailed Fensport, who sells this kit. "Well that's big enough, I used them on my ST205 too, no problems at all" was the reply I got. A quick look at the specs on the Fensport website showed that his ST205 now uses Hi-Spec brakes. The new Celica they've built which uses Tarox is stripped, the big bhp Corolla they've also built wasn't.. Guess what; the Corolla had Hi-Spec! Ok, Tarox was definitely off my list at this point. Hi-Spec So I took a look at Hi-Spec. The specs were more like it; 330x32 mm and a bigger pad area, near 60 square cm. So I e-mailed them. No reply. Another e-mail. No reply. WTF? Another e-mail resulted in a reply. "Yes we have GT4 kits but I don't know if they fit." Ehh.. what? No reply. To cut a long story short, Hi-Spec sucks. They never reply at once, they gave me a quote which was way higher than their online prices - "We haven't put the 2006 prices online yet, hence the difference." It's November! "Ok, here's a new quote." The new quote was quite attractive, but I Googled for more info on Hi-Spec before I'd buy. Then I found this page, showing nothing but negative experiences with Hi-Spec. If you consider Hi-Spec, please read the page and save yourself a lot of money and problems.. StopTech I know a Dutch company modified a 7th gen Celica StopTech kit to fit a CS before, but that can't be good. The CS is way heavier, let alone the fact that my CS will be tuned on top of that. No StopTech either then. Wilwood Several US based shops offer a kit made by Wilwood. 325x32 mm discs which sounds nice, though the calipers (and thus pad area) are smaller than on my mountain bike. Deffo a no go for me. Outlaw While browsing through my GT-Four picture folder, I noticed my favourite RC from Pit Road M had big brakes! Off to their site, and within minutes I sent them an inquiry in English and Japanese. The next day I received a reply in quite understandable English about the kit and they sent some pictures with it: They are 335 mm discs with 4 pot Outlaw calipers. Nice! But after a Google for Outlaw, I saw those calipers are rated up to 330 mm (?!) and only have a pad area of 46.5 square cm. Another strange thing is the picture above; not the whole radial depth is used by the brake pad. The Pit Road M car has these brakes on all corners, I'm going XXL at the front only.. Outlaw was also off the list. Finally; success! By now I had almost given up the hope so I decided to try a shot in the dark - I've sent a detailed inquiry to AP Racing! The next day I got a reply. YES! They were willing to develop a new big brake kit for my car, how cool is that! I've sent a complete hub with brake parts and a lower control arm to them and lots of e-mails later I got the first drawings: Yes, that is a 6 pot caliper, nice! We agreed on a setup with 330x32 mm two piece discs, 6 pot calipers and a pad area of nearly 80 (!) square cm. After another few e-mails I received some pictures of the new brake kit: Comparison of the stock setup vs. AP Racing: How does AP Racing develop a new big brake kit? Read about it in the next article. Related links AP Racing Formula 330x32 mm 6 pot big brake kit A visit to AP Racing Tech articles Top