Project: Phoenix

[OEMplus.com]

As many of you know, KfabR8 had an incident recently that put his ongoing R8 enjoyment on temporary hold. Luckily, were able to step in and get him back on track in short order.

What might not be immediately obvious was that he was just a few weeks away from dropping his old car off with us for a host of modifications and upgrades, so this incident had everyone scrambling.

With that behind us, I wanted to start a thread to document the build process to some extent and get some before/after shots of the various components as the vehicle moved from "stock" through to "not stock"...

[tcoop1]

Looking forward to pics....

[TonnyG]

This is going to be Fun,

Tonny

[OEMplus.com]

Okay, finally have some time to upload pics. We started the project with some baseline photos, which I won't bore you with now. They will show up later as we get to the relevant parts of the project.

The first system we upgraded were the brakes. Alex at Europrice was able to get a great deal on OEM Carbon/Ceramics brakes for Kfab, so he had them shipped here to install.

Without further ado, here are the pics!!

The front brakes are where we saw the biggest change. The diameter goes from 360mm to 380mm and the weight goes DOWN by TEN POUNDS per rotor! The new calipers are about 3 lbs heavier, so the net weight loss is 7lbs per corner.



































The rear brakes are the same diameter as the original steel units, but the rotors are big weight droppers, ditching SEVEN POUNDS per corner. The calipers are also slightly lighter so we can confidently say that KfabR8 is shedding a full 7 LBS per corner just in the braking system, ignoring the benefits in reduced rotational mass!





























The brake booster also has to be switched out for this system to be complete. There are some specialty tools required, which makes it a lot of fun. I only wish the parts actually looked different on the outside instead of varying by just the letter code on the part number!

[Europrice]

Oh it's begun, looking great! Anxious to see the final results.

[harrison]

'Kinda sucks that the calipers are heavier.'gotta do what 'ya 'gotta do! Thanks for the "ENLIGHTENTMENT" Rich !

[OEMplus.com]

The +3 on the calipers is more than offset by the -10 of the rotor.

[harrison]

You know what I mean.

[OEMplus.com]

As we tear down the back of the car for the turbo system, the time comes for the trans to drop out and the V10 clutch to go in. Here is the clutch, before, during and after shots...

[dailydriver]

This is good stuff. Keep the pics and updates coming!