andreitentean

Hello my dear colleagues.
As I found myself always looking for answers on this community for my problems and questions about which is the best mod for my car, what the result for that other people got for the same mod that I am willing to make, results made possible only by taking chances and spending time and money of their own pockets, it thing it is time to share back my experience with you guys. My bad experience, so you could have a chance not to go and make the same mistakes as I did buying BAD QUALITY products.
My car is an Mit EVO9 (other cars that I own : STI03, Civic TypeR, BMW E30 M3, Celica CS, Audi S3 1.8T, Dacia Logan CUP-race car) and some of my mods are : FP Green turbo, Deatschwerks injectors 750, ARC intake box and titanium intake pipe, HKS cams, HKS coilovers, Ralliart 18” wheels, and some other small parts.
Recently I wanted to improve the braking on my car and beside AP Racing 6pot 362mm kit (which I have on my STI for 3 years-12000km and I love them) and BREMBO GT 6pot 355mm kit I was also considering the Taiwan company called D2 which makes a massive 380mm 8 piston kit for the EVO.
2 things made me to make the wrong decision, the bigger diameter of the rotors, 380mm versus second best AP Racing 362mm, and the cheaper price compared to the AP and the Brembo kits, so I got the D2 brake kit. – STUPID MOVE
I know that this topic is not about me, but a short introduction will show people that I really don’t thing that the problems with the brakes comes from bad installing or abuse : I run in my country a tuning company called Superformance, dealer of SKN Tuning Gmbh since 2007, with some rally and hill climb activity in the last years : tech support in 2009 for hill climb national champion open category in an EVO6, and my personal race history running with 1.6 Dacia Logan : 2008 FIA GT Logan Cup first race winner and after disqualified due to engine modifications, second race second place, 2009 hill climb champion at 1.6 category .
My “race”car : http://bloganul.blogspot.com/2010/11...entean-de.html
About the FIA GT event: http://prorally.ro/net/index.php?opt...2964&Itemid=31
After installing the D2 380mm front brake kit I have made the brake in myself in a period of 450-500 km.
After the brake in was over I started to use the brakes with moderate to full pedal pressure in different conditions to see what I have paid for, first results where not impressive , not bad but somehow different than what I was expecting . Brake pedal travel was bigger/longer than before and with a somehow unnatural behavior, first part of pedal push was return less braking than expected and the next part was locking the tires pretty easy. I suppose this is normal, the pedal travel should be longer because of the increased fluid than goes in the bigger than stock caliper and tires look is due to the excessive 380mm size ! – So first lesson : for the street using normal street tires you do not need 380mm discs to stop an EVO.
The biggest problem came in the next 1500 km (all on the street, should have happened earlier on a track day or weekend), shacking under breaking become more and more obvious to a point the is nor pleasant or safe to drive the car anymore and stopping at a stop light the car will stop itself after releasing the brake pedal at 1 or 2 km/h and this means only one thing : pads are still touching(or even pushing) against the disc even when brake pressure is not applied !!
After checking the wheel and tire balancing TWICE (and i do have the receipts to prove it) which was perfect exactly as I imagined because I run on Ralliart RAYS forged 18”wheels and I always look after them, I put the car in the garage and make the next measurements which I also filmed to send to D2 but for no good because the answer was fast and clear – it is my fault, no warranty on brake discs.
I tried to explain that heat damage to the discs came from heat build up during roll on from the faulty calipers which do not release the pads from touching the disc but the answer was still the same – no warranty for the brake discs !!! STUPID ME FOR BUYING D2 !!

Same tests for both sides, left and right.
You can see in the movies that the calipers are expanding under pedal pressure, this is bad manly for the performance orientated customer how will want some feedback from the brake pedal ! Pressure is wasted in the bad design and probably bad material caliper instead of going to the pistons and so on to the pads !

LEFT D2 caliper expanding under pressure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEc29-ziWp8
RIGHT D2 caliper expanding under pressure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59Duap_A4iY

Here you can see that using a dynamometric wrench we could approximate the effort needed to turn ONLY the disc – 30 Nm to a side and 45 Nm to the other !!! This is EXTREME ! This D2 people are wasting our hard earned horsepower !!
LEFT D2 rotor 45Nm to rotate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzVtv6CeVx8
RIGHT D2 rotor 30Nm to rotate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_5sjPRCrZk

And here you can see and imagine the shacking under braking !! discs are ****ed up in less than 2000km, that is less than 1250 miles !!
LEFT D2 rotor moving left and right
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c2BEJ7sPOU
RIGHT D2 rotor moving left and right
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dglzqIseEE
LEFT D2 rotor moving up and down
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Dybh2NyCA
RIGHT D2 rotor moving up and down
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUbCSs9gHHY

So maybe I am unfortunate, or maybe I really do not know how to brake or use a set of brakes, or even both, but I will not come close to the D2 ever again. Anybody can make mistakes but not to take responsibility for your product is not Ok. Hope this helps.

GTWORX.com

iTrader: (35)

This is an EXCELLENT post clearly showing the failures of that system. Good work with the videos, they do a great job of showing the caliper flex and runout problems.

Good luck taking care of everything. The standard Brembo brakes are almost certainly better for the time being.

D2 consistently makes parts that are worse than stock.

A good lesson for everyone.

- Andrew

JDMevoBOOST

iTrader: (37)

Yah when I read the thread title I was going to ask what were you expecting. If you want real performance over stock, it's not going to be cheap. Go look into the Alcon Stasis setup if you want the real deal.

andreitentean

Man, this setup was not cheap either ! The list price is 2700 Euro, that is 3645 USD ! That is not cheap, is a good price for a 380mm setup, but it is not cheap !

4ukc

iTrader: (31)

I wsa just going to buy 330mm front brake kit, so you think it sbetter to stay with stock?

Smike

iTrader: (8)

For what use? Stock brakes, with the right pads, rotors, fluids, and ducts work great.

Ludikraut

iTrader: (17)

If you feel the need to upgrade front brakes, I'd look at either StopTech, Brembo GT, or the new kit being put together by Essex, featuring AP Racing parts. Personally I'm very interested in the Essex kit, since pad knockback on the stock calipers is a PITA to deal with when I'm on r-comps, and it looks to be a very reasonable kit once they get it all worked out.

l8r)

GTWORX.com

iTrader: (35)

After looking at this thead, there's NO reason anyone should consider these brakes for any reason.

- drew

Chris_B

100% correct. There are MUCH better alternatives out there, including several from AP Racing. Brakes are an area that you don't really want to scrimp on unless you are building a show car.

Chris

Evokid03

iTrader: (100)

Thats nuts, Its funny that i see this because recently i had a customer who wanted to buy my Brembo Gt brakes i had forsale. HE instead decided to go the route of buying one of these D2 Kits


hahah GOodluck Bud