Brake fitment?

I don't know 550 brake size, but have recently started looking at brake kits for my 360 also... And the first thing you need to look at is the size of your rims. If youre using CS or 430 19" rims, then you should be able to fit a 6 caliper Brembo (380mm) from what I have read. (Those in the know, please correct me if I'm mistaken).

I do not believe this Set up would work if you have the 18" starfish. I have not been able to figure out if it would work with the 18" challenge rims though. Still researching this.

 

Brembo 380mm brakes will clear the 19" Stradale wheels with no spacers ... barely. In fact, depending on the thickness of the balancing weights and where they are placed inside the wheel, there will be a tiny amount of contact. From the top of the caliper to the inside of the wheel is approximately 2-3mm of clearance. If you look closely, you can see how close the balancing weight is, just to the left of the bleeder screw on the caliper in the attached picture.
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You will have to loosen the e-emergency brake cable to let out as much slack as possible, because the factory e-brake caliper is moved outboard on a new bracket that comes with the kit.

 

Just curious, when one upgrades the brakes, is it common to do only the front, or is it standard to all four at once?

 

I would do all four. Better braking and for aesthetics. I'm not a mechanic however.

 

Six piston (upgrade) calipers in front and four piston (factory) calipers in back, will lead to locking up the fronts under hard braking because of improper hydraulic bias.

 

Changing to 550 (or 575M) brakes offers no practical advantage over the 360s brakes. 360s have 330 mm F&R rotors while the Maranellos have 330 mm F and 310 mm R rotors. Plus, the Maranellos have a set of parking drum brakes in the rear rotors, while the 360 has a separate caliper for the parking brake.

As mentioned above, much better to get brakes optimized for the 360, for which there are multiple good choices.

Non-matching brakes will not lead to locking since the ABS sensors will take care of that. I ran 396 mm rotor, 6 piston ceramic brakes on the front with OEM 310 mm rears for four years with no problems.

 

No, the rears will not work unless you do some heavy mods to make the parking brake work. The parking brake drum is in the rear rotor hat for the 550.

360 rear rotor and parking brake first, then 550.
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Relying on the ABS sensors to modulate the brake pressure is a less preferential method of controlling hydraulic pressure. The preferred (and direct technique) is to control the front-rear hydraulic pressure from the master cylinder. This is most commonly achieve with internal ports within the master cylinder. A non-factory solution is to install external proportioning valves in the steel tubing between the master cylinder and the calipers. This is a royal PITA. A third technique is to alter the pad compounds front-to-rear to alter the net effective clamping force using unchanged hydraulic pressure. Using the ABS sensors is (in my opinion) the least direct method of managing brake bite front-to-rear, because it relies on "cascading intervention" instead of direct control.

Regardless of the above, it is not the ratio of the number of pistons front-to-rear to be cognizant of when managing hydraulic pressure. Technically speaking, it is the ratio of the sum of piston area front-to-rear. It is not inconceivable to have a six-piston front caliper that might work with a four-piston rear caliper, as long as the piston areas are not grossly out of proportion to each other, front-to-rear.

 

Andy- Much less of a problem with smaller rear brakes than it would be the other way around. Most cars are already set up with a front brake bias for obvious reasons. Ferrari did not even bother to change master cylinders between the stock 330 F and 310 R and the HGTC 398 F (with 6 pistons) and 360 mm R CCM brakes. They did change masters for the Challenge Stradale and F430/Scud CCMs, though, and used the same one for 380 mm or 398 mm F brakes.

 

What makes it a "royal PITA"? It's a relatively simple fabrication/modification.....

 

Bad idea to even try it. Fitment is only part of the issue. What is the varience of master cylinder volumes? What are the variences in caliper piston sizes? Those are some minimum important issues.

 

Billybob, I assume you're talking about the 550 brakes? With regards to the master cylinder issues you're talking about, to upgrade to 380mm brakes instead of the 550, is an upgrade to a CS master cylinder needed if you just do front? And how about all 4?

To the OP, I hope you don't mind me asking these Qs in your thread.... I can start my own if this is a tangent you find unuseful. .

 

I did the 6pot upgrade on the front only of a 430. There were no issues in performance. The front end did not lockup abruptly.

Besides all the fitment issues above, you will find that the bolts securing the calipers to the hub have different spacer/mounting brackets. The kit I purchased from Brembo included a bracket which mounted to the hub. That bracket lifted the caliper and moved the bolt spacing to fit the new caliper. (Which was different from the OEM)It is best to use a kit specifically made for your car unless you intent to machine a bracket yourself. (Not a good idea)

After doing all this I decided it was not worth it unless I wanted to track the car. The larger brakes didn't really make a noticeable difference in stopping distance but did reduce brake fade significantly. As brake fade is not an issue on the street my upgrade was rather pointless.

 

Jonathan- That about covers it except you might need different front caliper adapters, which Vivid should be able to get. You can always sell the rears to a V12 owner. Should work for 5.2 456s and 456Ms, too, which have the same Maranello size front rotors and Brembo calipers. Then they only have to buy fronts.

 

Brake systems are engineered from caliper type to caliper piston size to master cylinder volumes to name just a few items. You can't swap unmatched parts even if they "fit". Relying on ABS to be a giant proportioning valve is not safe and is not sound engineering. A brake engineer might be able to tell you if 550 stuff could be used on a 360 if he does the math and measures off the specs of can get them. But under no circumstances should you put something one that is not OEM for the car that was not aftermarket engineered for the car at a minimum. The OEM's engineer, test fit, test, re-engineer, test and still we see NTSA recalls on factory brake systems. It is unlikely a weekend home mechanic is going to be able to fabricate a safe system.

 

Crud, FBB, you can do that and so can anybody with the WSMs.

 

I don't think so. Just for starters the 550 master is mated to the volume of 550 caliper piston size. Most likely the 4 piston are of 2 sizes. So where is it written the volumes of all these things in the WSM? Pad taper is a character of all brake lining wear. The reason for multi pot calipers is to control pad taper. Brake engineers size pistons to control forces on that section of the pad to control taper. So is the piston size variance of the 550 relative to the 360 going to increase or decrease pad taper? Pad taper is more than just uneven wear. Pad taper changes how pistons do their job. Pad knock back character and pad release are but two issues effected by pad taper. I could go on but that would put everyone to sleep.

 

Simple? Surely you jest!

Purchasing aftermarket proportioning valves is the easy part. Making up steel tubing with a bending tool and a flaring tool is fairly easy in and of itself.

HOWEVER

Working in the very small confines of where the master cylinder is located, is an extremely challenging task of connecting the tubing to the proportioning valves to the master cylinder.

 

That is the point I was making in posts #8 and #12.

The front-rear big brake kit on my 360 by Brembo is specifically for the Modena as an aftermarket upgrade, as shown by the pictures in post #4. Because the original calipers are four-piston front and back AND because the aftermarket calipers are six-piston front and back AND because the sum of the piston areas front and back for factory calipers versus aftermarket calipers is the same, the master cylinder works without external proportioning valves.

By contrast the 360 Challenge Stradale has six-piston calipers in front and four-piston calipers in back. The part number of the brake booster is different from the Modena so it stands to reason the master cylinder is different from the Modena, because of the 6-4 versus 4-4 calipers.