Model S Plaid Brakes Are Terrible!

[MFrunkerOG]

I've had a couple of butt-puckering moments braking when some idiot pulled in front of me on two lane highway while I'm flying at relatively high speed on AP...was pleasantly surprised by the feel. two weeks in and driving reasonably conservatively to preserve Safety Score, so not enough experience to thoroughly opine.

Umm. I’ve been at 99 for 3 weeks with over 500 miles. No bueno! Good luck to you

 

[lolachampcar]

Any new options for floating disks with mating pad options? I saw MP came out with disks.

 

[sflgator]

Any new options for floating disks with mating pad options? I saw MP came out with disks.

Don't know about more brake upgrade options other than from RB, MP & UP. But what I can say is that I've now had plenty of time with my (oem sized) brake rotor & pad upgrades from RB...and I'm still super pleased with the performance improvement over oem! The car just stops much, much better with a higher degree of confidence, no fade that I can detect, no squeals, and no overheating after some spirited runs and then trying to slow the F down! I have no clue about how they work on the track as I have no interest in figuring out. I hope that helps.

 

[MarcG]

Don't know about more brake upgrade options other than from RB, MP & UP. But what I can say is that I've now had plenty of time with my (oem sized) brake rotor & pad upgrades from RB...and I'm still super pleased with the performance improvement over oem! The car just stops much, much better with a higher degree of confidence, no fade that I can detect, no squeals, and no overheating after some spirited runs and then trying to slow the F down! I have no clue about how they work on the track as I have no interest in figuring out. I hope that helps.

I just went to Buttonwillow yesterday with TeslaCorsa and took the Plaid out with stock-sized RB brake rotors, XT970 pads, and RBF660 fluid.

After four sessions the brake pedal was definitely getting long, but there was very little brake fade over time. I definitely need steel brake lines..

After one of the “time attack” sessions when I pushing a bit more and expecting more from the brakes, the front rotors were registering nearly 1000°F on my temperature gun!

I’m thinking I’ll probably go for the cooling brake ducts from UP as well, while I get my lines replaced.

Fun day nonetheless! @omarsultan came down to hang out, and @rhuber took his stock Plaid for his first track event, so he can comment on his brake feel.

 

[juanmedina]

the garage comment is hilarious:

 

[MFrunkerOG]

Unplugged is saying 4 more weeks minimum for the iron brake kit! Fronts and rears!

And I ordered early December!

 

[Gninoked]

I just went to Buttonwillow yesterday with TeslaCorsa and took the Plaid out with stock-sized RB brake rotors, XT970 pads, and RBF660 fluid.

After four sessions the brake pedal was definitely getting long, but there was very little brake fade over time. I definitely need steel brake lines..

After one of the “time attack” sessions when I pushing a bit more and expecting more from the brakes, the front rotors were registering nearly 1000°F on my temperature gun!

I’m thinking I’ll probably go for the cooling brake ducts from UP as well, while I get my lines replaced.

Fun day nonetheless! @omarsultan came down to hang out, and @rhuber took his stock Plaid for his first track event, so he can comment on his brake feel.

1000 deg isn't too bad - as a peak - the problem is if you are checking after you come off the track, (and hopefully you did a cooldown lap?) you don't know what it was during brake events.

Sasha was able to wire up some sensors on our car so we can log temps live which is great but quite a bit of $ and engineering expertise is required. A manual option I have used in the past is the "Genesis Brake Temp Paint." Basic idea is you can put that on the rotors and/or the pad backing plates and it will change color as the temp rises, giving you a peak temp.

On my time-trials RX7 (~3000 lbs, 320rwhp) with aftermarket brakes I was regularly hitting 1200-1400F on the pad backing plates, and ~900-1100F on the rotors (more on this in a second,) but the pads were good to 1600 and I never had issues with them and they were not wearing or damaging the rotors much. This testing was on a track that is 'hard on brakes' like Road America - super long high speed straights with 90 corners at the end, over and over. On a track that wasn't this extreme, temps were 200-400 cooler all around.

Back to those rotors - in the rear on that car I used the Racing Brake rotors from Warren. They were a massive improvement over the stock setup however I did notice that the cooling design mean there was less material to pull heat away from the rings toward the hubs. So there was a pattern in the temps where the heat was concentrated around those connections to the hub. Never caused a problem, but was interesting to look at - it was about 100-150 degrees higher than other rotors I tested that were not open but were ducted. The fronts were normal full-floating rotors and the heat was more spread across the face and there was no particular pattern on the hub side or on the outside of the ring.

Overall the goal is to engineer the system to work well for the use case. More is not always better because of the penalty of weight and cost when you go too far. Specifically my point in talking about the rotors is to say that it's important to take temps in a number of locations, and live on the car (either with sensors or via the paint) in order to develop a picture of the temps during braking events. It's the overall system performance that is the most important when you are tracking the car, and the needs will vary significantly from track to track.

 

[HyperSeeker]

First impressions are that stock brakes seem adequate but not confidence inspiring. With aggressive driving, a more than typical amount of brake pedal application is required to slow the car than most high end sports cars.

I haven’t pushed the car enough to run out of brakes, but I’d worry that one day I might even in daily use as an aggressive driver.

I did on December 11th and it didn't end well. Right before I hit the back corner of a Rav4 I got an alert that stated "Assist for low brake performance activated". Neither my wife not I were thrown forward despite my stepping hard on the brakes. Still waiting on the final repair parts and expecting to get the car back by March 1st at the earliest. I need to upgrade.

 

[MarcG]

1000 deg isn't too bad - as a peak - the problem is if you are checking after you come off the track, (and hopefully you did a cooldown lap?) you don't know what it was during brake events.

Sasha was able to wire up some sensors on our car so we can log temps live which is great but quite a bit of $ and engineering expertise is required. A manual option I have used in the past is the "Genesis Brake Temp Paint." Basic idea is you can put that on the rotors and/or the pad backing plates and it will change color as the temp rises, giving you a peak temp.

On my time-trials RX7 (~3000 lbs, 320rwhp) with aftermarket brakes I was regularly hitting 1200-1400F on the pad backing plates, and ~900-1100F on the rotors (more on this in a second,) but the pads were good to 1600 and I never had issues with them and they were not wearing or damaging the rotors much. This testing was on a track that is 'hard on brakes' like Road America - super long high speed straights with 90 corners at the end, over and over. On a track that wasn't this extreme, temps were 200-400 cooler all around.

Back to those rotors - in the rear on that car I used the Racing Brake rotors from Warren. They were a massive improvement over the stock setup however I did notice that the cooling design mean there was less material to pull heat away from the rings toward the hubs. So there was a pattern in the temps where the heat was concentrated around those connections to the hub. Never caused a problem, but was interesting to look at - it was about 100-150 degrees higher than other rotors I tested that were not open but were ducted. The fronts were normal full-floating rotors and the heat was more spread across the face and there was no particular pattern on the hub side or on the outside of the ring.

Overall the goal is to engineer the system to work well for the use case. More is not always better because of the penalty of weight and cost when you go too far. Specifically my point in talking about the rotors is to say that it's important to take temps in a number of locations, and live on the car (either with sensors or via the paint) in order to develop a picture of the temps during braking events. It's the overall system performance that is the most important when you are tracking the car, and the needs will vary significantly from track to track.

Correct, I was measuring the rotor temps after a cooldown lap using the strong Track Mode regen to slow down and applying no brakes (or hardly any at all), so the temps were very likely a decent amount over 1000°F while on a hot lap.

Here are a couple of photos of my front rotors & pads after that track event. Two sessions of 15 minutes each (4 or 5 hot laps) followed by two “time attack” sessions of 10 minutes each (only 2 hot laps).

Yeah, the Plaid needs even better/bigger rotors and pads for track days.. time for carbon ceramics? What do the experts here think?

 

[Gninoked]

Correct, I was measuring the rotor temps after a cooldown lap using the strong Track Mode regen to slow down and applying no brakes (or hardly any at all), so the temps were very likely a decent amount over 1000°F while on a hot lap.

Here are a couple of photos of my front rotors & pads after that track event. Two sessions of 15 minutes each (4 or 5 hot laps) followed by two “time attack” sessions of 10 minutes each (only 2 hot laps).

Yeah, the Plaid needs even better/bigger rotors and pads for track days.. time for carbon ceramics? What do the experts here think?

View attachment 765852

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Yeah great pics. If the rotors were over 1000 when you stopped after a cooldown that is... probably not good. Those pads got nuked. Looks like they were on fire based on that charring and disintegration, and they are smeared all over the rotors. Looks like they started to pit/score the rotors too because you were pushing hard after they were already above the range. This may just be an illusion, it might just be the pad buildup vs the rotor being damaged, either way they should be able to be repaired. No surprise the fluid boiled and the pedal got long either. So yeah you might need more rotor capacity than what you've got, but you definitely need higher temp pads.

While I've used those rotors and found them to perform pretty well, I've never used the RB pads. My guess is that Warren has them customer made by someone else, the site seems to say that they are partnered with Cobalt for some of their pads. Maybe it's worth asking Warren the temp ranges.

We've used GLOC on the 3 and had zero issues, and they do publish some temp limits: Brake Compounds - G-LOC Brakes - G-LOC Brakes I don't have any affiliation with them, we have used Cobalt, Hawk etc as well but this chart shows a nice progression of the compounds and temp ranges. I'd suspect we need something like a R12 or R14 f/r for the plaid with upgraded rotors. For track use my priority is this: #1 - get something that works, #2 is getting something that feels like you want it to at high pressure, low pressure, release etc. #3 is other factors like cost, street use characteristics, dust etc.

 

[MarcG]

Yeah great pics. If the rotors were over 1000 when you stopped after a cooldown that is... probably not good. Those pads got nuked. Looks like they were on fire based on that charring and disintegration, and they are smeared all over the rotors. Looks like they started to pit/score the rotors too because you were pushing hard after they were already above the range. This may just be an illusion, it might just be the pad buildup vs the rotor being damaged, either way they should be able to be repaired. No surprise the fluid boiled and the pedal got long either. So yeah you might need more rotor capacity than what you've got, but you definitely need higher temp pads.

While I've used those rotors and found them to perform pretty well, I've never used the RB pads. My guess is that Warren has them customer made by someone else, the site seems to say that they are partnered with Cobalt for some of their pads. Maybe it's worth asking Warren the temp ranges.

We've used GLOC on the 3 and had zero issues, and they do publish some temp limits: Brake Compounds - G-LOC Brakes - G-LOC Brakes I don't have any affiliation with them, we have used Cobalt, Hawk etc as well but this chart shows a nice progression of the compounds and temp ranges. I'd suspect we need something like a R12 or R14 f/r for the plaid with upgraded rotors. For track use my priority is this: #1 - get something that works, #2 is getting something that feels like you want it to at high pressure, low pressure, release etc. #3 is other factors like cost, street use characteristics, dust etc.

Thanks for the input. I’ve used both the XT910 and XT970 compounds on my former M3P with RB rotors, but after a couple of track events I ended up with Endless EX99 pads and really liked them.

How do you get G-LOC compounds on a Tesla-compatible pad? Tesla isn’t even listed as a manufacturer on their website..

 

[Gninoked]

Thanks for the input. I’ve used both the XT910 and XT970 compounds on my former M3P with RB rotors, but after a couple of track events I ended up with Endless EX99 pads and really liked them.

How do you get G-LOC compounds on a Tesla-compatible pad? Tesla isn’t even listed as a manufacturer on their website..

In some cases we/MPP sent GLOC a set of stock pads directly so they could get the shapes, they have them now (and made pads that Sasha used for a little testing) so that shouldn't be an issue anymore.

That said we also have purchased through a GLOC reseller - Silentspeed is the one we've used but we don't have any affiliation with them, they just happened to be local. I just checked, the S/X pad listed there I think is the old ones (because I have Model S brakes on my Model 3 and that's the link I used before!) and generally these are really new, so I'd confirm with any reseller they have the right info before they submit the order to GLOC.

Other options: Sasha has a contact that got us some custom Brembo motorsports pads that he seems to like so far but more testing is required. Unfortunately even if they work well I don't think there's a way to buy them but I'll ask. I think he's also working with someone else who might be able to produce pads, even though we had success with GLOC on the 3 he wasn't as impressed!

I think all of us need to keep sharing info and we can figure this out. CCBs are not likely to be the answer in my opinion because the temps are going to be too high and the cost is astronomical. Would love to save the weight if we could though!

We plan to be on track for our first test with all the new stuff in about ~5-6 weeks.

 

[Gninoked]

makes sense, you need downforce for that sort of speed, and downforce is bad for aerodynamics.

Even if Tesla were to build a unique aero package for the plaid, owners wouldn't want it, seeing as how roughly 3 of them will ever see that speed.

Not sure who you were replying to - but MPP/We are working on this too! Should be able to share more when testing starts, plan is to test in 5-6 weeks.

 

[Trompazo]

Correct, I was measuring the rotor temps after a cooldown lap using the strong Track Mode regen to slow down and applying no brakes (or hardly any at all), so the temps were very likely a decent amount over 1000°F while on a hot lap.

Here are a couple of photos of my front rotors & pads after that track event. Two sessions of 15 minutes each (4 or 5 hot laps) followed by two “time attack” sessions of 10 minutes each (only 2 hot laps).

Yeah, the Plaid needs even better/bigger rotors and pads for track days.. time for carbon ceramics? What do the experts here think?

View attachment 765852

View attachment 765853

This is great information.

Carbon ceramics have worse heat dissipation than iron, hence why they are always bigger than iron rotors on the same vehicle.

For track use, it need the largest iron rotors that will fit. On a 20" inch wheel that will likely be 400-410mm.

A 21" wheel will allow for huge rotors but tire selection of 21" wheels for the track is limited.

 

[sflgator]

With all of this info on soaring 1,000 degree heat on the brakes, pads burning & disintegrating into dust, and scored rotors, I am so glad I have zero interest in tracking my $146k Tesla MS Plaid that I drive everyday, lol! My Plaid now has > 6k mi on it and I've been using the RB "street" pads with their slotted (oem sized) rotors, and my car slows & stops much, much better than when I had all oem stock brake rotors & pads. I'll stick with these BUT without a minute on the track...no thank you! I'll likely swap out the RB XT910 pads for the XT970 "track" pads if/when these pads are done, but only to see if any difference on the street although I'm quite happy with the XT910 pads.

 

[Gninoked]

With all of this info on soaring 1,000 degree heat on the brakes, pads burning & disintegrating into dust, and scored rotors, I am so glad I have zero interest in tracking my $146k Tesla MS Plaid that I drive everyday, lol! My Plaid now has > 6k mi on it and I've been using the RB "street" pads with their slotted (oem sized) rotors, and my car slows & stops much, much better than when I had all oem stock brake rotors & pads. I'll stick with these BUT without a minute on the track...no thank you! I'll likely swap out the RB XT910 pads for the XT970 "track" pads if/when these pads are done, but only to see if any difference on the street although I'm quite happy with the XT910 pads.

Yeah - what we are talking about here is the ~2% of Plaid Owners for sure. Way out there. 'Normal' Plaid owners who want more brake performance probably can get it simply by swapping to a performance pad (and upgraded rotors wouldn't hurt either.) We all have to remember there hasn't been a car like this ever, with this much power/capacity for acceleration and this much weight. We are way out on the edge of the envelope here!

Also for anyone following along, since this thread started there has been a production change to the brake booster plus the unannounced code changes to braking performance and a new ABS map for track mode too so the problem originally identified is probably 'solved' even though the brakes don't have the capacity for track use.

 

[xEvoLveDx]

Any real details on what changed with the newer brake booster?

 

[impastu]

Any real details on what changed with the newer brake booster?

And how does one ascertain whether their Plaid has the upgrade!?

 

[Gninoked]

My understanding is that it is no different practically than the original part, but they make changes for a reason

That said EPC still shows 1420671-00-A as current, so I don't have any info to share. If someone with a recent build Plaid can confirm their booster's part number we can research any differences.

 

[MountainPass]

Just an update for anyone waiting - our 400mm BBK is still in stock and shipping same day, our 380mm stock diameter front rotors are now in stock as well, and the rear rotor backorders are dropshipping this week, with the rest of the production run finishing up in the next few weeks. We rushed out the backorders because some of these customers were waiting for the full set before installing!