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      01-03-2014, 11:22 AM   #7
dogbone
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Drives: '09 E90 M3 - IB
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: 93 million miles from the Sun

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2009 BMW E92 M3  [0.00]
2009 BMW E90 M3  [0.00]
I bought a set of AP Racing brakes, and due to a long story, the fronts and rears arrived at different times. I put the fronts on first and tracked those several times before the rears arrived.

On the street, the rear BBK is simply a cosmetic addition.

At the track, it is nice to have all four corners, but not absolutely necessary. With my stock brakes, I was experiencing pretty bad shaking on the track, plus all the other issues you get with brakes, pads and fluids not up to the task. When the front BBK went on, ALL of the shaking disappeared and I've never had a brake issue since----pretty amazing. But the front was so powerful compared to the rear, that the nose-dive was pretty significant. When the rear BBK went on, the car didn't nose dive nearly as much. It squatted and became more predictable on super hard braking. That was a nice revelation. (Important note: a proper alignment is necessary to ensure the car is predictable on hard braking. A friend with a BBK was complaining about the car being squirmy on hard braking. I suggested getting the alignment checked. Turns out the rear had significant toe out which is bad for hard braking stability. All the squirminess went away after the alignment was fixed.) As Klammer said, with a proper BBK setup on our cars, I can catch all kinds of people while braking. In fact, you almost have to worry about rear-ending someone you were chasing because you can come into those corners so hot and not have any issues.

Now, perhaps you could put a more aggressive pad in the stock rear caliper to help balance a BBK in the front, but my thought on that is----you aren't going to want to leave a hardcore pad in the rear caliper when the car is on the street. It's going to squeal and chew up your rotor. So, if you're committed to changing pads between street and track, which you ABSOLUTELY should be, then changing pads on the stock calipers is kind of a pain in the ass. So, you'll be solving several things by going with a rear BBK----more powerful rear braking, easier pad changes and looks way better.

My pad setup these days is Cobalt Friction---XR3 front and XR2 rear. The XR3 is a medium torque pad and the XR2 is lower torque. This setup has been working very well.
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