I just fell in love- new AP Racing Radi-CAL

Well I would say no. I have the PB Brakes on mine spent about $4k and received fronts and backs. 8 piston fronts and 6 piston rears. I just started a thread with the link if you want to check out that company as well. I think you may be over paying for 3700 on just the fronts. Thread is PB Brakes BBK FX37.
 
fx37SupplyEng said:
Well I would say no. I have the PB Brakes on mine spent about $4k and received fronts and backs. 8 piston fronts and 6 piston rears. I just started a thread with the link if you want to check out that company as well. I think you may be over paying for 3700 on just the fronts. Thread is PB Brakes BBK FX37.
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To be fair, these are AP Racing, a brand that would be on par with StopTech, Brembo, or perhaps even Alcon in terms of quality.

I hate to knock on other brands but it needs to be pointed out that Kido, Ksport, PB, and a lot of the other brands are not in the same playing field as the top tier listed above.

If you go look at the stoptech kit or brembo kit for the FX you are looking at roughly the same price as whats listed in the link here. Safe to say you will probably be in for it about 7 or 8k once your all done.

Alenas, a member with the TT build just installed a Brembo BBK on his ride, maybe check that out.

I also know Andy has a different version of the AP racing BBK on his FX.
 
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meme405 said:
To be fair, these are AP Racing, a brand that would be on par with StopTech, Brembo, or perhaps even Alcon in terms of quality.

I hate to knock on other brands but it needs to be pointed out that Kido, Ksport, PB, and a lot of the other brands are not in the same playing field as the top tier listed above.

If you go look at the stoptech kit or brembo kit for the FX you are looking at roughly the same price as whats listed in the link here. Safe to say you will probably be in for it about 7 or 8k once your all done.

Alenas, a member with the TT build just installed a Brembo BBK on his ride, maybe check that out.

I also know Andy has a different version of the AP racing BBK on his FX.
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I thought the same before I bought the kido bbk and was hesitant to get them but now that I have got them I'm super happy with them. Quality and performance are on point, love everything about the kido bbk and would def buy them again. You have to try a product to truly know what's up.
 
RIPnFX said:
I thought the same before I bought the kido bbk and was hesitant to get them but now that I have got them I'm super happy with them. Quality and performance are on point, love everything about the kido bbk and would def buy them again. You have to try a product to truly know what's up.
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This is why I was hesitant to say anything, I am certainly not knocking on kido or any other one of the taiwan brand products. In fact I really want to get a kido BBK, unfortunately I am struggling to even justify spending 4k on a bbk.

But there is a reason AP and a few other brands are such high prices, these are companies with heritage, racing pedigree, and serious R&D budgets. They spend years testing and are continuously improving their products, and they stand behind their products 100%. If you look at phat boy's website, I think it states that if you have a problem with their kit you have to send it to *their facility in taiwan at your own expense. That is simply not something that AP would ever let you go through.

*And when I say "their" facility I mean that plant they contracted to build their product for them.
 
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Yup I totally agree with you on what you said. The reason I chose kido mainly was the fact that they made exactly what I wanted. It was all custom to my liking. This was a huge plus for me. If I had gone with lets say brembo and told them to make a custom kit to my specifications I couldn't even imagine what the price would have been. Plus with kido I dealt with the owner directly the whole time and dude was awesome.
 
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I'm in agreement with Rip, you gotta try it. I have my JBT for about 54,000 miles without any issues. IMO, you're paying such high price for the brand name. I definitely will buy these Taiwan made again in a heart beat if I need another BBK setup.

RIPnFX said:
I thought the same before I bought the kido bbk and was hesitant to get them but now that I have got them I'm super happy with them. Quality and performance are on point, love everything about the kido bbk and would def buy them again. You have to try a product to truly know what's up.
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Part of it is of course the brand name. On a street car, anything from Taiwan will be more than sufficient and look great. But if you look at those AP's, the pistons are tapered and some Alcon/Brembo's use tapered calipers as well. Brembo also offers monoblock calipers on some of their models. It's the little details like this that cause a big part of the price difference and maybe result in incrementally better performance.

The Taiwanese brake companies are probably 95% of the big brands performance for 60% of the price. But some people are willing to pay for that 5%. On a streetcar, it makes no sense considering you'd never hit the limits on any big brake kit. And we're all running Taiwanese coilovers anyways...
 
I agree that a street car will never reach nor need the full capabilities of any BBK, brand name or otherwise. Track cars are a different story.

Tapa on Note III
 
shadow191 said:
Part of it is of course the brand name. On a street car, anything from Taiwan will be more than sufficient and look great. But if you look at those AP's, the pistons are tapered and some Alcon/Brembo's use tapered calipers as well. Brembo also offers monoblock calipers on some of their models. It's the little details like this that cause a big part of the price difference and maybe result in incrementally better performance.

The Taiwanese brake companies are probably 95% of the big brands performance for 60% of the price. But some people are willing to pay for that 5%. On a streetcar, it makes no sense considering you'd never hit the limits on any big brake kit. And we're all running Taiwanese coilovers anyways...
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I wish I could have said it as well as this.
 
performance is one thing...but what about the safety aspect. Does Kido or JBT have an R&D department? Can anyone verify that these companies actually test their products on vehicles?
 
A lot of them just have blanks they buy and put their logo on. It's usually pretty obvious who does this because the calipers and rotors have the same look to them.

To be fair, I think the guy with Alliance actually took the extra step to specify certain things so that you were getting more than just a rebranded blank, which Kido may do as well.

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Just did a bit of research, and I've come full circle. Was trying to find the company that actually sells/sold the blanks because I thought I remembered you could buy straight from them for a discount. Turns out it is/was called Phatboy and is now known as PB. www.pbbrakes.com/ phatboybrakes.com redirects there as well.
 

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I'm just glad he chose to go with PB instead of Phatboy on the brakes. I thought about buying some blank ones tbh, back when those were available. I think in black it would look normal enough.

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I know kido for a fact actually custom makes everything. I know this because I was directly dealing with the owner and he kept me updated and sent me pics of the whole process making the rotors and calipers. These pics actually showed the machine doing the work. I wish I had saved the pics to show you. With kidos I know for a fact they weren't just blanks that they just put their name on.
 
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We are not the first community to be having this discussion:

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21946

There is a lot of stupid posts just hating on cheap brakes in the above, but there is also some good information as well.

---------- Post added at 10:24 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:21 AM ----------
RIPnFX said:
I know kido for a fact actually custom makes everything. I know this because I was directly dealing with the owner and he kept me updated and sent me pics of the whole process making the rotors and calipers. These pics actually showed the machine doing the work. I wish I had saved the pics to show you. With kidos I know for a fact they weren't just blanks that they just put their name on.
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The owner probably forwarded the specs for your brakes on to the manufacturer, and they made a set for you. The pictures probably came from those people. Or maybe the owner went and took them himself, but what I do know is that Kido brakes are manufactured in a plant where many other products are also made.

The above isn't a bad thing, it's just something that happens.
 
Didn't someone (Ed, maybe?) mention in the past that Kido is located right next to where their stuff is manufactured? And that way the owner is able to keep tabs on everything?
 
StuLax18 said:
Didn't someone (Ed, maybe?) mention in the past that Kido is located right next to where their stuff is manufactured? And that way the owner is able to keep tabs on everything?
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Thats fine, and it is certainly a step in the right direction compared to PB who orders their brakes from England, and likely has no control over their manufacturing.

But it certainly does not put them on par with AP or Brembo, a company which actually owns its own CNC and manufacturing equipments, and has its own employees doing the work.
 
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