Product Features:
APR’s Big Brake Kit Upgrades are ultra-durable, feature-packed solutions specifically tailored to each vehicle. The brakes provide outstanding stopping-power at an affordable price and are targeted towards a wide operating range, such as normal spirited street driving, track days, and HPDE events. All APR systems handily out-brake, out-last, and out-perform many systems on the market with ease. They obliterate massive factory brake systems, such as those found on the Audi RS3. Simply put, few can come close to matching the features and price point. Whereas most systems on the market either make heavy sacrifices to either look fancy, cut weight, or cut costs, the APR system is designed to simply brake better, last longer, and stand the test of time.
APR calipers are CNC-machined from aerospace-grade aluminum billets at Powerbrake’s in house manufacturing facility and offer extreme strength and rigidity. This is thanks due in part to the material and construction, as well as the FEA enhanced design. The caliper design offers the optimal balance between weight reduction and maintaining smooth, quiet braking. Removing too much weight from a caliper can lead to increased levels of noise, vibration and harshness under braking. The APR caliper has been specifically designed for street tuners and track day enthusiasts that want maximum brake performance, while maintaining low levels of noise, vibration and harshness. The APR calipers are also significantly lighter than the factory calipers, while maintaining smooth, quiet operation. While the design reduces weight, It’s important critical weight is left in place to ensure the calipers don’t cause excessive NVH, as is all too common with many of the fancy weight saving designs on the market today. Simply put, cutting away too much of the caliper for weight savings and appearance causes heavy sacrifices in rigidity and NVH with mostly immeasurable performance gains.
Anodized brake calipers with proprietary anodizing dyes offer maximum UV resistance and color fastness, and handily out performs other anodizing methods on the market today. The surface finish is designed to retain its color even under extreme temperatures seen during track day conditions. This runs contrary to powder coat or epoxy paint finishes which tend to discolor, brown, or burn. Likewise, compared to other finishes our brakes are not damaged by brake fluid or most brake cleaners and solvents. The APR logo is laser etched onto the caliper as opposed to the painted logos commonly used by many other caliper manufacturers. Again, the logo will not be affected by brake fluid or brake cleaners in the same way that painted logos will.
APR calipers use high-tensile caliper cross-bolts that are manufactured in Europe. The bolts greatly increase caliper rigidity while adding minimal weight. The calipers are significantly more rigid than most factory or aftermarket Monoblock calipers that are typically cast or forged from 2000, 6000, or 7000 series aluminum alloys. This method is only bested by extremely expensive alloy grades not commercially available at an affordable price point in the aftermarket. Simply put high level race car Monoblock calipers, such as those found in F1, are not made from the same material you find on affordable street brakes. The bolts used in our calipers are coated with a proprietary high-tech black coating which offers exceptional corrosion resistance, while not negatively affecting bolt strength. Lastly, the bolts are installed inboard, giving the outboard caliper face a clean and uncluttered look when viewed through the wheel.
Included High-Performance Brake Pad: Specifically designed for use in high-performance street applications and one of the best high-performance street pads on the world market at the moment. This compound beds-in quickly and delivers strong brake performance over a wide temperature range. The material exhibits a strong initial bite as you engage the brake pedal followed by a slightly rising torque curve during a single brake application. This slight rise in brake torque in the mid-late stages of a brake application makes use of the additional front tire grip available after weight transfer has occurred during a typical (medium-hard) brake application. This delivers optimal stopping distances when tested on street cars running high-performance street tires. The compound features a high average friction co-efficient and delivers reduced stopping distances as well as improved fade resistance when compared to most OEM and aftermarket high-performance street pads.
*Note: The included pads do not have electronic brake wear indicators. Vehicles equipped with this feature will require modification to prevent the warning light.
Brake Rotors: The discs used in APR's big brake kits are cast from a proprietary high-carbon cast iron alloy that provides excellent durability and stability under the high thermal loads experienced during spirited driving or track day driving. The discs in our 2-piece kits feature our curved, directional, cooling vane design that increases cooling vane surface area for optimal cooling. The design also features robust disc plate walls to increase the thermal storage capacity of the discs. This is especially important during spirited driving and track day cars that are generating high brake temperatures but that are not fitted with brake cooling ducts that duct cool air from high pressure zones on the front of the car (as is often the case with true race cars). The truth is that very few fast road and track day enthusiasts will ever run brake cooling ducts as they typically require modification to the car's front end. In this case the robust disc plate walls employed in our 2-piece disc design are a real advantage in terms of thermal storage capacity, durability and service life of the disc. Lastly, APR did not sacrifice cooling capacity for weight like many systems on the market using thinner discs and/or far fewer cooling vanes. The benefits from the weight loss are vastly countered by increased braking capacity.
The disc surface pattern provides an excellent balance between functional aspects such as efficient removal of friction gasses, carbonized pad material, water when driving in the rain, and practical aspects such as a good balance between strong initial bite and low NVH (noise, vibration, harshness). The slot pattern also provides good bite and release characterizes perfectly suited to the crossover street and entry-level track roll intended for our brake kits. Every single disc assembly is measured for run-out and disk thickness variations (DTV) using Swiss measuring equipment. When it comes to QC, there is no batch or statistical quality checking of our discs. Every single disc is measured and our machining tolerances are up to three times tighter than the industry norm.
Fitment:
All caliper component hardware, other than the cross-bolts, are manufactured from stainless steel. This ensures the highest level of corrosion resistance and is rare in aftermarket brakes.
Brake Calipers are available in either Black or Red Anodized Finish
Disc Maximum Temperature Recording (MTR) System:
APR's MTR system provides permanent a permanent record of peak operating temperatures reached by the discs under actual driving. This information is extremely valuable when selecting the correct pad compound for your application. Each tab will change color when the temperature range is met. The longer red tab will provide a color gradient chart to further refine specific temperatures. Blue turns brown at 527 F. Green turns white at 860 F. Orange turns yellow at 1022 F. Pink turns white at 1166 F. Lastly the longer red strip turns various shades from 219 F to 2318 F.
Optional Advanced Street / Entry-Level Track Day Brake Pad:
This compound will offer similar characteristics to our High-performance Street compound in terms of having a slightly rising torque curve during a single application. It will offer a little less initial bite as you engage the brake pedal under normal street driving conditions. This material also takes a little longer to bed in and prefers to be run at slightly higher operating temperatures in order to maintain the friction film that is put down on the disc surface during the bed-in procedure. This material can be run to higher max operating temperatures than our standard High-Performance Street compound while remaining fade-free. The additional heat range means that this compound can be used for entry-level track days. This makes this material a good choice for customers that would like to take part in occasional track days but do not want to change pads prior to these events.
Optional Advanced Track Day Brake Pad:
This compound is specifically aimed at advanced track day users and offers full race performance under track conditions. While it can be used to drive to and from the track, some brake squeal will be experienced during street driving. It is not recommended that this pad material be used for extended daily street use as accelerated disc wear and brake noise will be experienced during daily street driving. On track this compound will offer unmatched brake performance and fade resistance and will be a significant step up over our Advanced Street / Entry-level Track Day compound. The material remains kind to discs under track conditions and pad wear is low. It has a slightly rising torque curve and modulation remains excellent. A mechanical retention system is employed between the pad backing plate and the friction material for maximum shear resistance during high-temperature use. Advanced track day users will really appreciate the characteristics, performance and wear life that this compound offers. For advanced track day customers that also use their car as a daily driver we suggest a two-pad strategy in which you run our High-Performance Street compound for daily street use and then switch to our Advanced Track Day material for track events.