3.2 Brake Upgrades?

Unless your tracking the car they seem fine. Not great, but at legal speeds ok.
The long story does have me intrigued!

 

My QV stops fine also. How about that long story? I have all day.

 

You can get an uprated 4 piston caliper setup , plus bigger discs from superperformance, but you need the after market wheels and tyres to give you enough room to get the bigger discs fitted. Mondial brakes are poor as i friend of mine found out backending another car

 

mike32 is correct, it's one of the upgrades I've been thinking of doing to our car. Here is the link, the price is not too bad.

Brake Parts for Ferrari Mondial - Superformance

 

The brakes on my 3.2 are great. All original but well maintained. People I have drive the car comment on how fantastic the feel and function is. Caveat. My car is used for fun driving only.

 

I concur w/ PV Dirk on this issue.

 

I'm firmly in this camp also. Great brakes for this vehicle , though I do have abs in mine.

 

The brakes work best with the oem compound, typically made by ATE. People often use race pads or high performance pads for this type of car, that give much less cold grip and a wooden feel. What is good for the track is not good for the road, even fast road. If you are getting poor braking while cold, you probably have some air in the system, maybe perishing/expanding rubber hoses and probably some "performance" type pads that need way more heat to grip properly.

Big brakes add weight, and unless your brakes fade are not going to improve feel or daily drivability character.

The OEM calipers were shared with BMW 5/6 series cars of the period, even similar in some early 90's BMW M3's which were all known for great braking feel. They all weigh about the same as the Mondial. It does not look like the brakes were underspecced for the intended application.

The only upgrade I have looked at is to use the Girodisc discs on the front, as they look like they would reduce unsprung weight and can fit with the stock set up. On the other hand I bought some spare brembo discs some years ago, and my current rotors could be turned at least once, so I don't have much motive to experiment.http://www.************/Girodisc-Front-2-piece-rotors-for-Ferrari-Mondial_p_6380.html

Here is road test commentary for a 1986 3.2 Mondial, with the TRX tires which are not noted for the their excessive grip...

"If there is criticism to be aimed at the braking system, it is that in town it can feel a little over sensitive, almost over-servoed. One soon gets used to being slightly feather-footed to prevent the car from being brought to an unseemly and snatchy halt. It takes only 20lb pedal pressure to achieve 0.36g — that is the sort of retardation on which passengers start to comment. And with just 30lb more pedal pressure, the car was brought up at 1.0g, with the fronts just starting to lock. With the majority of the car’s weight over the fat-section rear wheels, it is not surprising that the handbrake, located on the outside of the driving scat, recorded an impressive 0.41g.

As one might expect from a car in this class, the brakes coped with our accelerated fade tests extraordinarily well, hauling the speed down at 0.5g from 95mph 10 times in succession without any problems, apart from a slight smell at the sixth stop and a hint of vibration on the ninth."

Road and Track tests in period: 80mph to 0 braking ft:

1986 Mondial 3.2 250ft
GTO 240
Testarossa 261
328 GTS 238
911 Turbo 240
The BMW's were 228 to 260ft.

Not much stopped quicker, the Corvette Cab at 225 (better than the ZR1) and Porsche Carerra 4 at 218 was as good as it got.

 

Brakes dissipate heat. Absent fade, the stock brake can lock the wheel up at any speed, the tire adhesion is the limiting factor. A larger rotor does place the caliper further out, so you get greater torque at the caliper which can feel like a more instantly responsive brake feel, but its really just less pressure being required to get the same braking force. So a larger disc will not in itself give you better braking. By better dealing with heat, a bigger disc can reduce the fade potential.

The big brake kit would reduce weight, but you need to upsize the wheel from 16" to at least 17", so you increase total wheel/tire weight about 4 lbs. per corner depending on the wheels you choose. The net weight savings would be very small if any.

That is why the aluminum centre hat stock sized discs and wheels, and really sticky tires, would be the better braking solution if better heat fade capacity and weight minimizing was the aim. To be clear, the two piece disc design does dissipate heat much better than a stock disc and has no downside other than cost (and corrosion in year round use). But I think we can agree that the two piece rotor idea is a good one for performance improvement. And tire choice affects brake distance more than any other variable. I would suspect a sorted Mondial with ABS and a sticky modern tire compound would be at the 230 ft level 80-0. The Mondial tested was a 1986 w/o abs with the TRX tires.

We are located a bit far away to race for pink slips, but I bet a renewed stock set up with sticky tires would out track a big brake kitted car for the first few laps. Eventually fade would favour the big brake set up. An aluminum hat set up on otherwise stock would buy a few more laps.

The Hawk pads are known to be wooden feeling, especially the fast road pads which some use, they need a lot of heat to show their benefit. Many people who "upgrade" pads return to OEM, as nothing usually beats initial cold bite and feel like an OEM pad in a high end car. We all like to think we "race" on the street, but the reality is racing can make brakes glow red hot at night, and pads that perform under these conditions are the polar opposite of what works when at normal operating temperatures.

A modern Aston Martin V8 with forged wheels, fat tires, giant ceramic discs and bling calipers with umpteen pistons in it gets you 80 to 0 in 220 ft. Even with all the modern braking technology, the old Carerra 4 still wins!

I am sure if you do the brake upgrade (and make sure the entire system is refreshed, hoses etc.), you will have good brakes. But I thought it appropriate to point out that improving on brakes that are well designed initially, as the Ferrari's were, may not actually prove to improve things. They do look good, and if you needed to rebuild calipers, get new discs and such anyway, there is nothing wrong with nicely made bolt on/reversible aftermarket parts being the way to go. Just keep your old parts.

 

So the fact that the bigger discs have a bigger swept circle and use much bigger pads, ie more contact area .
Add to this the 4 piston caliper and you are getting a lot more brakes in my mind. The original mondial brakes were not very good at all.

 

A bigger pad and swept area does not make for better brakes, it is about the material of the pad and its properties. The number of pistons is to reduce what is called taper wear and allow the pad to have a longer life under hard use. Not something that will actually increase braking forces.

I used to think like you are as it seems to make sense. I have since learned that brakes are total engineered systems, and how impressive it is for those manufacturers that nail all the tradeoffs and have great feel.

 

Oh, one last point worth noting, the braking performance also requires the front and rear to be balanced. Here is a short credible commentary by StopTech that also puts the caution on big brake kits.

Rear Brake Upgrades

 

Agreed great comments.
I did buy some 360 brakes a while back but of course no plans to put them on yet due to lazyitis/kids/life.
They do seem quite heavy so it wont help the ride much. Have 360 wheels on mine so dont mind admitting the brakes look puny in this age of brake bling and thats a big reason for the upgrade.
Been vaguely searching for aluminium bells but will of course keeping the originals in a box somewhere.
Image Unavailable, Please Login