Upgrading the Brake?

There are a few slotted and drilled rotors selling on ebay you may want to check them out. I have the stock ones at home; some people have drilled stock rotors (a friend of mine on a EVO IX) and work fine.There is a TRD sportivo suspension kit.. goes for about 1000$ US. Includes 4 springs 2 shocks and 2 struts. I had it on mine. Lost it on an accident. Get good tires!!! I still have a few suspension components (among other things) that I'm selling go to the private sales section and check 'em out.

 

Prius is not a sport car, but there is brake kit, suspension upgrade and 17" wheel with low profile tires upgrade. ray:

Try check out Sigma Automotive for all your need.

 

If I were you I would start with a tire upgrade to a ultra performance line and see how that suits you. I would be willing to bet that will cure your issues.

 

Tell me about it... Not bad in city traffic at all. But at highway speeds it begins to fade and vibrate too easily (the rear drums that is). Same problem as many other rear-drum cars under load... Drove three Camrys with rear drums and they were all like that.

On my Camry I had replaced the rear drums with read disks and that solved the problem - no fading, no vibration, no noise, better looking. Not sure if the actual stopping is any better since I have not measure but it feels better. A fairly easy swap for an experienced mechanic and for the Prius I read that these are available in Europe or Australia as stock items, so should be a bolt-on replacement, if you can get your hands on the parts...

I had to do an emergency lane change yesterday at high speed and the prius felt terrible - the rear lifts-up and wobbles around and and it takes skill, much like driving a large boat to actually anticipate which way it would go under pressure to coutersteer it before it is too late... Not a car for this type of driving but it happens on occasion. A suspension and tire upgrade would help in this type of situation more than brakes. The '04+ models may be better than the '01'03 for this since they are longer and possibly lower riding and with bigger tires.

 

The notion of brake fade on a Prius is just plain silly. Unless you are doing a panic stop or coming down a mountain, the friction brakes are never used. It doesn't matter if you put in drilled, plated, gold-filled, kryptonite lined rotors; you still aren't going to use them except under 7 mph, in a panic stop, or after a very long steep downhill. In a panic stop there isn't enough time for much fade, so I'd put your time and money elsewhere.

Tom

 

I've had to "perform" a panic stop once in this car and man did it STOP! lol The brakes are excellent for stock units IMO.

 

According to a few reviews I've read (and the last one on road and track mag.) they state that the Prii shows underaverage braking for its class. I dont know by how much did it go under but that is what they say. I think it should come equipped with all wheel disc brakes. In my opinion the car has good braking not impressive but good. For me it wasn't underaverage.

I did upgrade rotors for slotted and drilled ones but it was just for the look.. same functionality..

However, I do agree a little with qbee42. Brake use is minimal with Prius.

 

There's a little bit of chicken-and-egg here. Under most
conditions, if you're using the physical brakes much at all,
you're not driving the car right. But that more easily leads
to the infamous rust and corrosion that makes the brakes feel
funny at the 7 mph transition, makes scraping noises after a
wet night, and possibly in that panic maneuver causes the response
to not quite be what you expect. But if you remain aware of
these things and do the "neutral cleanoff" thing every so often
and keep the brakes cleaned out and maintained, there should
really be no need to "upgrade" them. If you're out there
autocrossing the thing every weekend that might be different,
but then the whole regen thing probably isn't part of your
lifestyle anyways. Pity, it's one of the most elegant aspects
of the car's engineering.
.
_H*

 

I was in a hurry to get from point A to ponint B 50 miles away in moderate to heavy highway traffic. To keep-up I have to accelerate, and occasionally stop hard. Nothing out of the ordinary - just keeping-up with busy Thursday evening traffic b/w DC and Baltimore. Speeds vary b/w 75 mph and 35 mph (no stop & go).

Basically, driving the prius just like veryone else drives their "conventional" cars on the same road. Keeping with the faster lane rather than the slow lane.

In this fairly *normal* scenario, far from autocross or racing. This is how most of the other drivers were using their cars. If a car can't handle normal driving, it is sub-par and ther is no excuse for it.

Here is a tipical scenario that begins to show what I'm complaining about. Decreasing the speed from 75 mph to 40 mph at a brisk rate, with me alone in the car, induces very significant brake vibrations in the rear drums. Try this downhil with 4 people and you might actually get scared! Do this a couple of times in a row and it increases in magnitude, meaning the temperature affects it. Meaning - brake fade. Let's not get to the definition though. Call it something else if it suits you better.

Now, do I drive like this all the time? No. My lifetime average from 8K miles starting October '07 (meaning mostly winter driving), is 45 mpg at the pump, 48 per the MFD. Suburban DC traffic + heavy DC traffic, mostly. So I think I'm actually driving it pretty easy for a commuter car. BUt it occasionally sees more lively driving and that's when I see things that can be imprved easily.

The fact is, the braking is noisy and sub-par, partially due to the rear drum setup and I have observations that confirm that (and also due to weight distribution and suspension tunning, but that's another topic). You can experiment on your own car should you whish to confirm that as well - just use the emergency brake instead of the normal brake, but be very careful - this is an easy way to slide out of control. In a drum setup the emergency brake uses the main brake's parts. So this way you are eliminating the use of front brakes and can easily see if vibrations come from the rear. I've done it on the Camry so taht I can be factual when I told the delar he is not going to resurface at my dime my front rotors to combat the vibration. In the Prius the emergency brake unfortunately is a foot brake so this proceduer is tricky and more dangerous, so not advisable to perform at all...

As for "use of friction brakes", chek the manuals on the '02 model - it *always* uses the friction brakes to some degree as far as I know. Unlike the '04+ which use them only as you described above.

 

The OP has an 06 so the answer was correct.

Your 02 comments have nothing to do with this thread except to explain the brake upgrades in the 04+.

 

I missed the fact that you are driving an old Prius. Save the money you would spend on upgraded brakes and apply it towards a new Prius. They are much better in every respect, especially from a safety standpoint. Driving in the type of conditions you describe, you should have VSC and airbags.

Tom

 

Just had to throw in my two cents. I upgraded to drilled and slotted rotors with a black zinc plating a few days ago, mostly for cosmetic reasons. I'm not sure how much the stopping performance changed, but between the rotors and the UHP tires I feel a "seat of the pants" increase over stock.

Here's a quick pic I snapped before my wife left for the store.

 

As was pointed out in this post, Australian and European market Priuses do indeed come standard with four-wheel disc brakes. Does the US miss out on rear discs to keep the cost down? Or perhaps Toyota thinks us brutal Aussies are very hard on our brakes so maybe drums just don't cut it ?

 

Okay, I got to through my pennies worth in this pot. I have an 05 Pri and haven't done any mods yet. As a professional mech. I would say the brakes on the Pri are just way to good. I can just barely touch the brakes on the car and it wants to throw my 175 lb butt through the windshield. Now as far as a shaking/virbration, I would check to see if something is loose on the car, in my entire lifetime the only time I have ever felt brakes shake/vibrate was when I had metal to metal contact/warped drums/ or something was broken in the rear end. If it were me I would take the car back to the dealer and get them to look at the brakes and the functionality of the braking system. As far as the Mod I think you are wasting your money, however by the picture taken from another it does look really cool, but then again as said before it is not a sports car.

 

I just painted my brakes, but just the top part not the actual assembly that holds the pads... realized it too late after the rest of the paint can dried. got any pics with the wheel removed?

 

Braking Performance IS Sub-Par

The braking performance of the Prius is definitely sub-par.

I base this statement on Consumer Reports' brake tests of ~270 current model cars, which show that the Prius has a 60-0 mph dry stopping distance of 143 feet (non-sports cars with excellent braking performance will have 60-0 braking distances in the 120's). That puts the Prius braking at about the 30th percentile of the ~270 cars tested.

I trust Consumer Reports' tests because I assume that they used the same testing protocols for all ~270 cars they road tested. This is an assumption I'm not willing to make for, say, the car magazines.

To improve the braking performance of the Prius, I think the biggest bang for the buck will be getting wider and grippier tires.

 

As requested...

 

Re: Braking Performance IS Sub-Par