G37 / FX50 Akebono Brake Retrofit

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turbocad6

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hey guys, I recently upgraded my front brakes to the 6 piston 14.1" rotora's & now my rear brakes look extremely out of place. a rotora bbk for the rear is over $2,500, and for the most part it is more for esthetics than anything else really, I mean the front is providing at least 70% of the overall braking & unless your hard tracking I don't see the need for bbk's out back too, but, the oe rears are ugly as hell. no amount of painting them or anything will ever make them look like the belong with the front bbk's.

well, I've been researching brakes for the rear without having to spend 2.5K for just rears & I have seen that the G's & even the Z's are now swapping out the 08 G37S brakes... these are a bolt on for 07+ G's, 06 & down need a special conversion bracket for the front that a guy named zak from g35driver imports from japan, these brackets are expensive though at like $600 for just the brackets...

anyway, I'm pretty much focusing on the rears myself at this point... I do belive the fronts can be made to work with custom brackets, or you could just wait for the fx50 retrofit to become available, but i don't have the luxury of time in that my rear brakes are shot...

what I did was order a rear caliper & a rear rotor from the 08 g37s for a test fit on the fx... well, the caliper bolts right up & the rotor lines up fine as well, the only differences really are the parking brake & backing plate/ dust shield, which is smaller on the g37 than the fx.

I just ordered the parking brake/ backing plate assemblies & the remaining parts to do this rear brake swap... so I'll have a complete parts list if this winds up being sucessful, which I think it will

the g37s rear brake is a 2 piston caliper made by akobono, it looks very similar to the brembo rears on the earlier years of the z's, it uses a much larger than stock rotor at 13.8" & the caliper is pretty beefy looking, the picture showing it next to the brembo, well that's a FRONT brembo just as a comparison:smile:

all said & done, the complete rear brake setup with everything will wind up costing me around 1k... much better than the 2.5K+ that the rotora's woulda been, & now I can paint my front & rears to match without it looking retarded:tongue: performance wise I'm sure there is an improvement, but probably more in brake fading areas than stopping power to begin with... the fronts made a huge difference in stopping power...

this should be a very nice upgrade worthwhile for the guys who did a front bbk & don't want to spend a fortune matching the rears...


this is next to a brembo front....
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this is the assy on a g37s...
View attachment 153302

these things are so much beefier than the oe tiny single piston rear brakes we have now...
 
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Dude, that's cool.

Pics! The brackets that Zack brings over for the G35's is the better bracket from multiple brackets kits available in Japan.
 
that is real nice looking. I wonder if you can retrofit the front for those of us who ca't afford the Rotoras or other BBK.

:top: for all your efforts.
 
as far as the fronts go, I'm sure with the right bracket to mount the caliper that the fronts would work, the problem is the bracket. the bracket has to be right, it has to be foolproof & no one is really gonna be too eager to just make a bracket like this for fear of liability... everything else, from the rotors to the line-up of the caliper should be dead on, the bracket is what'll make this happen though...

the safest thing to do would be to do this bracket out of steel, but adding that much unspung weight isn't ideal... to do a billet or any other type of aluminum or alloy would be the way to go, but then theres a lot of stress testing & stuff to prove the bracket is adiquate... the ones zak imports from japan are sold as stricly racing, off road use in japan & a car would fail inspection with them on the street over there.... guys are running them here though on the street, I'm sure there fine, but then again that's why there so expensive... I don't know if that bracket would work as-is on the fx but I suspect not. from the research I've been doing so far our rears are very similar to the other cars in the family but the fronts are not as similar...

I'm sure a steel bracket could be machined to adapt the fronts really, but since I already have the 6 piston fronts I won't be playing with the fronts myself....

I think riverside infiniti sells the front & rear retrofit kit for around $1,750... you'd have to add the backing plate/ parking brake to this # though at maybe $550 or so & then of course the bracket fabrication, but as a big brake kit it's pretty nice for the $$$

also, as an fyi, the 09 inifiniti fx is using brakes very similar to these, also made by akobono... I don't know how similar or even if there the same calipers, but they are worlds better than the puny brakes of the current fx... if & when the new fx brakes are available they will probably be much easier to retrofit... if you have time this would be the thing to wait for... if you have access to a decent machine shop though & really want to, I'm sure the fronts of these g37 brakes could be made to fit too...

the fronts are pretty nice, there 14.1" 4 pistons....

View attachment 153303


if you did front & rears then you wouldn't even need to paint them :)
 
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The FX front suspension is very different from the G/Z, the rear are very similiar. One thing to consider about the new FX is the front is no longer a Macpherson strut config (I think that's what I read) like ours so the new FX parts will probably not help us in regards to the front Akebono kit.
 
I read on the Org that the FX50 is already having issue with the brakes....

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supposedly one of the infiniti dealers has compared the new fx brakes to the old & thinks that they will retrofit, even if they changed from a strut to dual c arms, the caliper mounting points could still be the same.. I haven't seen them myself to say much about that though...

I did see those reports about the fx brakes, I also seen some talk about that particular test & that they are very biased against the infiniti's/nissans in general... who knows what to believe with what you read though... considering larger, thicker rotors with twice as many pistons front & rear though, I would guess if there was any diffecencies it would probably be in the pads themselves... I can't see any way that they wouldn't still be much better than the stock early brakes...

you gotta see the rear caliper & rotor from this g37 against the stock fx stuff, it's much bigger & beefier, the fx rotor & caliper looks puny next to these....

also, if I wasn't concerned about the parking brake then the rear setup would be really cheap... if I did it without the backing plate/parking brake setup it would still function fine & it woulda been under $600:rolleyes: I want it to be 100% though & even though I don't think I ever applied my parking brake, I would feel like I butchered it if I eliminated that myself...

the g37s rear calipers are only $228 list each & the rotors are under $100 list... no one makes anything aftermarket yet though as far as cross drilled rotors & stuff yet, but they should be available soon... for now for the $150 it cost me for the 2 rear rotors,I will just swap them out with cross drilled when they are available...
 
The spindle differences is what concerns me, it's all talk until some pictures or actual views of the front suspension are available. My guess is they would make the new FX much like the G37, the G37 is said to have splines in the front hub for possible AWD future.

This is the G37 front bolt pattern, and hub.
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I guess what really matters is the placement of the caliper in relation to the hub... as long as those 2 bolts are in the same position relative to the hub then it could work even if the spindle itself is completely different...

in the end disc brakes only have 2 defining points that matter, the caliper mounting point & the hub surface for the rotor to sit on... those 2 points will determine if it'll work or not I think... from what I've seen so far it seems infiniti is using the same mounting points throughout the family of vehicles...

if I get the rears sorted & mounted I may pick up a front caliper & rotor to see how far off it is, only problem is my local dealer is being a jerk in that these are not stocked parts yet, so he doesn't want to take stuff back if it don't work without charging me like 20% to return special order stuff... that's why I only ordered one rotor & caliper intially... I'm still not 100% sure the backing plates will be a direct bolt on really, there may be some modification necissary, but the fact that the caliper mounts up 100% & lines up with the rotor 100% gave me enough to know that I should be able to get this to work no matter what in the rears at least...
 
I dig it. I've seen the brackets Zack imports from Japan. The biggest difference I see is the offset bolt (pretty sure they are offset) locations. From what I've seen it's way different than ours, machining a bracket wouldn't be too hard, but set up costs for machining gets expensive.
 
from the few brake adaptor setups I've seen, I think sometimes they need to offset it quite a bit because the stock bolt locations wouldn't have enough room with a bracket... in other words lets say it's only off by 10mm, there may not be enough room to keep it in the same place without offseting it a bit for room so a 10mm difference might cause the bracket to need to be offset way more than that just to have room for everything including the bolts new & old original holes... they may need to move the caliper mounting either way up or way down for clearance, just to clear the original mount... so they may need to move it 10mm out & then 40mm up or down just for room for the bolts...

like you said, without seeing it first hand who knows... now I'm pretty curious, don't know if I'm curious enough to order a front caliper, but maybe... after I finish the rears:smile:
 
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yeah, the g37 brakes turned into a problem. I got the backing plates to fit this all togeather & the rear spindle needs to be replaced like rookie said. the differences are slight though, everything bolts up & is amost there, but the diameters are off about 1/2" I'm going to work with joe from infinitiparts & help him develop the fx50 retrofit:biggrin:

we've already discovered from my test fitting that the spindles need to be replaced in the rear. it turns out that the fx50s uses the same caliper as the g37s in the rear anyway, so this is becoming more the fx50s retrofit thread than the g37s retrofit thread.

I'm doing the complete front & rear conversion. once we confirm fitment he's gonna offer the conversion kit... even at worse case 2K for front & rear BBK's, real deal 14" multi piston fixed caliper's... hot. I think these are going to be an awesome seller for him, front & rear BBK's for less than half the cost, almost 1/3rd the cost... this is going to be a must have mod. finally front & rear big brakes without having to take a second mortgage...

these calipers are easy to paint any color you'd want, & they look nice in the silver with the infiniti text really... after the testing & photo's I might paint them
 
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