My baby wants some better brakes. i dunno what goes into that entirely. Just some pizza sized discs and a new caliper cover with Brembo written on it?

Brand suggestions? User testimonials?

 

https://www.zzperformance.com/grand_...=576&catid=138

 

Actually, that link up there ^^^^ isn't any good for our cars.

Why? Those are the front brakes that are on our cars.

The '97-'03 Grand Prix came with 11" front brakes, so they often swap those out with the brackets and rotors from a Monte/Impala/Regal, which are the 12" brakes in that link.

HOWEVER, the 1998-2002 F-body (camaro or trans am) uses a 12" brake that has a dual piston aluminum caliper. The Monte/Impala/Regal uses a single piston cast iron caliper. It is a common upgrade to switch over to the F-body calipers, which is not only a lighter caliper with more piston surface, but is also a bigger pad surface altogether. I know that there are a few people on here with the F-body brakes. I'm sure they will chime in too.

Both ZZP and the W-body store carry these.
You will need the calipers and brackets from the F-body, and the F-body pads.
The bracket bolt on the F-body is smaller, so you either have to use an aluminum shim (included in the ZZP and WBS kits) with the F-body bolts, or you can tap the F-body calipers to fit the bigger W-body bolts (which is what ZZP now does, as the shims can fail which is....well, not good).

Also, the Grand Prix GXP came with gigantic 13" front brakes and 12" rear brakes, which will fit on our cars as long as you are using a 17"+ wheel. This is a bit more extreme and much more expensive upgrade than the F-body (which can be very cheap if you source out the parts yourself), but is about as good as you can get for a plug-n-play brake upgrade.

There are also stainless steel braided brake lines available, which will give you a firmer pedal feel than the stock rubber lines.
Make sure you get a good brand-name quality steel brake line. ZZP recently had a batch of ss brake lines that had a habit of exploding on people. You don't want that.

Good luck with the brakes, and let us know what you decided to do and how it turns out.

-Riggs.

PS. all of the embedded links in this post will take you to various brake-upgrade pages.

 

This has really been talked about a lot recently. Try searching and you'll get a lot of information.

 

Sticky? A post like that, with all the proper links embedded...

:applauds: fantastic post riggs.

 

and riggs gets another A+ nice post

 

I tried searching 'brakes', but all that came up were threads about brake problems.





Very nice info, thanks bro. I gots to add some drilled/slotted rotors for sure. Maybe Ill paint a logo on the caliper covers. Something expensive.....maybe Rolex.

 

or if you can find a C5 calipers that would work too

 

I did not know that about the GXP brakes! Nice bit of info there. Was it an option or standard equipment?

 

i believe GXP calipers are heavier than Fbody brakes if weight is an issue to you. also from what read 06-07 monte carlo and impala calipers also work. i'm happy with my C5, but i do like to upgrade my rear brakes to the GXP sometime.