Brake upgrade (EradiSpeed, Steeda hosts, and Motul)

Next upgrade on my list were the brakes. I initially mulled swapping the EB PP 4-piston calipers with either Baer Drag Race Brake kit or Brembo 6-piston calipers, but decided not to for the following reasons:

Baer Drag Race Brake kit: It's about 60 pounds lighter (for both sides) than the stock brakes. That's greater weight savings than my previous light weight wheel upgrade. However, it comes with tiny calipers, pads, and 11.62" rotors. According to Baer and some forum posts, race pads that come with the kit are adequate enough for repeated stops associated with street use, but they are very noisy and dusty. You can get street pads for the kit but they are more prone to fade. This kit would've been awesome for a drag racer, but not ideal for street use.

Brembo 6-piston: If I had the base EB with two piston calipers, I would've just gone with the Brembos instead. I did some research and found that 4-piston calipers on base GTs and EB PPs are good enough for track duty with fluid and pad upgrade. I never felt that EB PP brakes were weak so I decided to stick with those.

EradiSpeed Rotors

First thing I did was to swap rotors out with EradiSpeed 2-piece units for weight savings.

Front rotors

13.9" OEM w/ 20K miles: 28.4lbs
14" EradiSpeed: 23.8lbs

Difference of 4.6lbs each or 9.2lbs total for front




Rear rotors

13" EradiSpeed: 13.0lbs
13" OEM w/ 20K miles: 17.1

Difference of 4.1lbs each or 8.2 lbs total for rear




While my main goal was weight reduction, they do look much better than the OEM rotors.

Steeda Stainless Braided Brake Lines

My car's almost three years old, so I decided to upgrade the brake hoses while I'm doing the brake fluid flush. I liked how the hose upgrade felt on one of my past cars, so I decided to go the same route with a set of Steeda Stainless Braided Brake Lines.

Stock brake hose



Steeda brake hose



Side by side



Steeda hoses look much better and feel more solid over the stockers.

I had issues with both of my rear hard line flare nut threads. Fortunately, I was able to put stock hoses back on and drove to a shop to get them tapped. Search on the Internet showed that I'm not the only one with this issue, so keep an eye out for this when you are swapping your rear hoses.

Motul DOT 5.1 Brake Fluid

My original plan was to use Motul RBF 600 brake fluid. However, research showed that racing brake fluids have higher viscosity and can interfere with ABS and TC. Since my car's a DD, I went with Motul DOT 5.1 with low viscosity formula for ABS use. While it's dry boiling point (516F) is lower than RBF 600 (594F), it's still an upgrade from DOT 4 minimum standards (446F).



Three 500ml bottles should be plenty for a flush.

Driving impression

I went through the second part of the rotor seasoning process today. It consisted of four stops from 60 to 15 MPH at 50% effort, again at 75% effort, then six hard pedal stops (without triggering ABS).

As expected, stainless steel braided hoses provided a slightly firmer brake pedal feel with less pedal effort required to slow down.

Even with stock pads and repeated braking, I never felt any brake fade and was able to bring the speed down each time with confidence.

I didn't do any brake tests with my stock setup for comparison, but I found an article that showed that EradiSpeed rotors were good for reduction of about 10ft in braking distance and had better fade resistance over stock 13.9" rotors. The article also has a step by step directions on how to do rotor swaps if you haven't done one before.

Great job.
Now it's time to paint or powdercoat those calipers to look as good as those rotors.

Bull Run said:

My car's almost three years old, so I decided to upgrade the brake hoses while I'm doing the brake fluid flush. I liked how the hose upgrade felt on one of my past cars, so I decided to go the same route with a set of Steeda Stainless Braided Brake Lines.

Stock brake hose

Steeda brake hose

Side by side

Steeda hoses look much better and feel more solid over the stockers.

I had issues with both of my rear hard line flare nut threads. Fortunately, I was able to put stock hoses back on and drove to a shop to get them tapped. Search on the Internet showed that I'm not the only one with this issue, so keep an eye out for this when you are swapping your rear hoses.

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Push that piece of rubber hose up to the frame mounted fitting on the front hoses. It's purpose it to keep the hose straight and out of the way.

Optimum Performance said:

Push that piece of rubber hose up to the frame mounted fitting on the front hoses. It's purpose it to keep the hose straight and out of the way.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip! Fixed now.

Awesome write-up and reasoning behind each mod! Thanks man!

JSCOTT0812 said:

Awesome write-up and reasoning behind each mod! Thanks man!

Click to expand...

Agreed. Great write up. The 4 pistons are plenty good for the Ecoboost in my opinion. I have DBA slotted ones and they are good but I think I’m gonna going this route when it’s time to replace them.

Cost & part #s for rotors?

Cobra Jet said:

Cost & part #s for rotors?

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Front 14" rotors (base GT/EB PP) are $745/pair and rear 13" ones are $695/pair. Note that the rear ones are labeled for GT only but they will fit EB PP.

I recommend going through a reseller with a discount code and free shipping.

http://baer.com/EradiSpeed-Rotors-2015-Ford-Mustang/

For anyone who does a lot of track use I would advise against the Baer 2 piece rotors. They are 2 piece but they are not a true floating 2 piece design. This means that has the steel disc and aluminum hat heat and cool there is a possibility of cracks which happened to me. For a daily or for good looks they will do the job.

I know girodisc and AP Racing are a true floating setup.