By What’s relatively lightweight, has a rev-happy engine, rear wheel drive, and near perfect weight distribution? The Mazda Miata– oh, wait no, that’s not what this article is about. The Nissan Z! The Nissan 350z, 370z, Infiniti G35, and G37 are incredible value for the performance they deliver both on the road and on track. Early models can be found starting in the mid-$3000 range, and even brand new Nissan 370z models start at just $30,000. Their slightly front-biased weight distribution and 300+ horsepower rwd layout are typical of a grand touring sports car, and they make the Z cars excellent drift platforms; there are plenty of mods to make them even better. If you’re looking to put more of a focus on lap times than showmanship, upgrades to the stock braking system are not only a good idea but a necessary one. Nissan’s coupes are very quick in a straight line and coming out of corners, but you have to make sure you’ve got the hardware necessary to make it into the corner in the first place!
Fixing the Flaws
The first step to making something better is making sure nothing’s wrong in the first place. Nissan’s Z cars are very capable, but are very much designed for the street: the Z’s braking system suffers heavily in high temperatures and after extended use. On later model cars, brake cooling has become even more of an issue: the automated stability control and ABS systems misinterpret brake fade under high heat, and can cause what Z enthusiasts refer to as “Ice Mode.” This causes the ABS system to suddenly release pressure on the calipers, slipping the brakes and cooling them but significantly reducing braking performance. This has caused many a fender-bender in unprepared track Zs. Proper cooling goes a long way for all of the components of your vehicle on the track, but it’s safe to say that making sure you can stop should be a higher priority than having to take a breather after 10 laps.
Brake ducting makes sure that cold air can be properly fed from the front of your vehicle against the brake rotors and calipers. Companies like Stillen have invested in ducting for use both with the stock Z bumper as well as their replacement front bumpers. In third party testing Stillen’s cooling kit brought the front caliper and rotor temperatures down by over forty percent during track use, effectively solving the “Ice Mode” problem and allowing the car to stay on track longer. If you’re willing to commit your vehicle entirely to the track and “solve” the “Ice Mode” problem for free, there are options to delete your ABS system entirely. It’s pretty impossible to recommend this, as it gets rid of an important safety feature in your vehicle, and does nothing to improve overall trackability.
Rotors
Now that your stock brakes are working like they’re supposed to, let’s talk about upgrades! Like most cars, 350 and 370 Z’s come standard with smooth rotors, no matter which package you opt for. Upgraded rotors by themselves won’t do much other than help your car look and stay cool, so the most important thing is to find rotors that you like. As a blanket upgrade, StopTech and EBC make great rotors with a ton of different finishes. We’re a fan of slotted rotors in bare metal, but there are also cross-drilled and combination options like EBC’s 3GD Series or just flat blanks like their RK Series. Make sure that you’re purchasing the right size rotors, though: 370z cars with the Nismo performance package have larger brake calipers and rotors in the front than the standard cars.
Calipers
Speaking of which, if you have a standard 370z or a 350z, the easiest upgrade for your calipers is to install the upgraded brakes from the Sport package or the Nissan 370z Nismo. Produced by Akebono for Nissan, this upgrade can use all OEM parts and keeps things relatively affordable. These sets of rotors and calipers can be sourced either new from licensed Nissan dealerships or used from your local Pick-N-Pull. Similarly, 350zs had optional Brembo brakes package that added higher end rotors and calipers for more raw stopping power. For a full-on aftermarket caliper upgrade, Stoptech offers several kits that include four or six piston calipers and far larger rotors than what come standard on any Z.
Pads
No matter if you’re running an otherwise-stock setup or the biggest, baddest brake kit on the market, you need brake pads! More specifically, if you’re actually running your car to the point where you need better brakes, you need performance brake pads. From the factory, your car comes with semi-metallic brake pads. These use a combination of synthetic materials and up to 60% metal materials. The metal component makes semi-metallic brake pads relatively resistant to heat and wear, meaning they will create less brake dust and be more consistent in their performance even at high heat levels. However, this component also causes the pads to wear the rotors faster, especially when the pads are in need of replacement. Like ceramic rotors, ceramic brake pads are the significant upgrade over steel compound semi-metallic pads, but are only truly necessary in extreme applications. Ceramic pads are so good at dissipating heat that they likely won’t even warm up to their normal operating temperature during street use, and as such will create an incredible amount of noise and make everyone around you think your car is broken.
If you’re planning on using your car mostly on the street, standard OEM-replacement semi-metallic pads are probably still more than enough for your car. If you want to go higher end, EBC Red Stuff is a good start, offering better street performance and minimum brake dust. For autocross and occasional track day use, EBC Yellow Stuff; if you’re going any faster than that regularly, high-end application-specific race pads are a worthwhile upgrade to eliminate brake fade and stand up in the face of full race weekends and endurance championships.
Improving Braking Speed
Upgraded pads, calipers, and rotors will do a whole lot of good for stopping your car consistently, but what makes the most difference in stopping quickly is your tires and weight. Weight reduction makes your car faster at everything: faster 0-60 times, faster around corners, and faster stopping times. Think about what you do and don’t need in your car, as the easiest weight reduction is getting rid of your big subwoofer box and amp, the bag of frisbees in the trunk you never use, your spare tire/jack/toolbox (at least while on the track), and so on. Beyond weight reduction, good tires make a world of difference in braking. The better they stick, the less you slip, the less ABS has to kick in, and the faster you stop.
No matter if you’re a Nissan 350z enthusiast driving your Z to work every day or a hotboi sliding around the canyons every night, it’s important to know what’s going on during braking, and it’s important to know that the hardware you’re using is up to snuff. For OEM replacement and performance brake rotors, pads and kits, head over to the Motoroso Marketplace and take a look around!
