Uprated Brake callipers
I had to brake hard because of a muntjack in the road the other day and the pedal virtually hit the floor and it took longer than I expected to bring the G350 to a stop. I was expected ABS to kick in, but never got momentum to overcome the braking.
It wasn't bad or faulty, just not as good as it could be.
Anyone got recommendations for uprating the brakes? Probably just beefier callipers? Prefer not to need to change the disks, but I guess bigger callipers will need bigger disks.
Do you need to do front and rear, or can just the front be done?
Thanks/
And yes, Bambi was fine!
Brake pedal to the floor is alarming news - it should not do that unless you have a weak master cylinder.
With your engine off, depress your brake pedal and hold the pressure on where it stops. If the pressure is held your master cylinder should be fine but if the pedal keeps creaping lower and lower, it is either a master cylinder issue that is if you have no brake fluid losses. If you suffer brake fluid loss then you have a leak in the system some where.
When was your brake fluid renewed? Old brake fluid can have similar result. These should be renewed every two years.
This surprises me, are you sure your existing calipers working as they should? No stuck pistons? Sometimes if you are driving it every day you don't notice detiration? Expect uprated calipers to be very expensive?
The best brakes I've ever had were on a Y reg 1982, ge280 Auto, it would stop on a pin. The brakes on my first gd300 1986, were awful, and whilst ok on my w463 ge300 1991, they aren't as good as those of the 280. Never really figured out why this is?
Same brakes on all of them. I remember the much missed Tony Baskill telling me either G Brakes were awful or Excellent!
Certainly when you look at the size of the callipers should be good
The GE280 auto had narrow wheels, tyres, that may have helped
The existing brakes are really picky which pads you use, I had some pads in mine that used to have a slight delay when they were wet which was really scary. I'd put this down to just being wet. when they wore out I put some Ferodo pads in. My god what a difference
Ferodo all the way now.
On an uprade note i'm fitting G63 375mm six pot calipers to mine as part of the rebuild. They're not a direct fit but will fit with custom brackets. These coupled with the big 461 drums on the Panzer axles it should stop OK. I've hade to fit aftermarket wheels to be able to use 18" tyres because none of the 18" factory wheels would fit
If you want a factory upgrade on a 460 or an early 463 the G55 ATE front brakes fit and are 315mm instead of 303mm and will go inside 16" wheels
Gordon
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