Mitsubishi Evolution IX - Project Evo IX

The Brembo GT kits comes with there own brand of high-performance pads designed for high-performance street and limited track use. There are a number of other pads available in just about any compound under the sun from many providers of racing brake pads. Brembo recommended using their pads first and then deciding if a higher level racing pad material is needed. The kit also comes with braided steel brake lines. Braided steel lines improve brake feel, as they don't expand when pressure is applied to them. Thus they transmit more force from the user's feet to the brake pads.

With the ultimate front brake kit now in place, our attention was turned to the rear of the car. We wanted to upgrade our rear brakes to keep balance between the front and the rear brakes, something ignored by many tuners and Brembo had a really cool off-the-shelf solution for us. The Brembo rear kit uses a four-piston rear caliper that uses a pad over twice the size of the stock rear caliper. A huge 328mm, or 12.9 inches, slotted rotor is bolted full-floating style to an alloy hat with an integral parking brake drum. Since the parking brake drum is hard-anodized aluminum, it's meant to be used only for emergencies or to hold the vehicle stationary when parked. For rally or drift use where the parking brakes are used to initiate slides, Brembo has a special order optional hat with a steel liner in the alloy hat. Our Evo is never going to see the dirt we hope, and who the heck would waste the Evo's sophisticated FWD system Evo by drifting one.

Since the four-piston caliper is so much larger than the stock caliper, the rear brakes ended up weighing 4 pounds more than stock. However, we think a total weight gain of only 2 pounds total for all four brakes is well worth having tons of braking power. It might seem that all of this brake system is overkill but if you look carefully, many expensive and exotic cars of about the same weight as the Evo have the same size brakes as standard equipment.

We bled our brakes and flushed the system with Motul RBF 660 brake fluid. Motul's RBF formula is one of the best fluids, performing nearly as well or better as ber expensive exotic stuff like the legendary F-1 brake fluid standards Castrol SRF and AP650. When brake fluid gets really hot it boils. Boiling fluid has bubbles in it that are filled with compressible gas. The compressible gas causes the brake pedal to drop to the floor. This is another type of brake fade that must be avoided.

Motul's dry boiling point is an amazing 660 degrees F. Motul works so well that our team's race cars need only bleed the brakes once a season, instead of the typical once a race. Most brake fluids absorb moisture from the atmosphere. When the brake fluid absorbs moisture its boiling point rapidly drops rendering it less effective. Even though the brake fluid is contained within the brake system, it still can quickly absorb a surprising amount of moisture from the atmosphere that is inadvertently drawn into the brake system. Some brake fluids can deteriorate greatly from this phenomenon with as little as one heat cycle of the brake system. Motul resists absorbing moisture from the atmosphere better than most brake fluids so its inherent high boiling point lasts longer than most fluids. If you do manage to boil Motul, surfactants in the formula cause the bubbles formed to rapidly dissipate and you get a recovery of your brake pedal feel.

Our stock brakes were powerful and inspired confidence. Our new brakes left us speechless. The pedal is rock solid and the brakes very easy to modulate with light pressure. Although we haven't had a chance to try our system on the track yet, we did test the system's balance twice in panic stop mode. Both times the gummy Nitto NT01's and the mighty Brembo brakes saved the bacon so there will be more segments of Project Evo to come.