You can see how much closer radial mounts can get to the mounting axis of the pads in this picture. We didn’t show it but the RB calipers also use vented stainless steel pistons with dust seals to help keep heat out of the caliper and the fluid. The RB caliper has bigger, taller pads which increases the pad volume and swept area increasing pad life. We are going to run the milder of the two different pad compounds that Figs offers. These pads have good bite, reasonable heat resistance, and low dust. They are a much more aggressive pad than the low-wear TRD pads we were forced to run and we think the pads themselves will offer a decent performance gain.
The Figs kit comes with 7075 aluminum alloy radial mount adaptors and DOT-approved braided steel brake lines. The lines do not expand with pressure like the stock rubber lines do and thus improve brake feel.
The Figs rotor is huge. It is 410mm in diameter and 35mm thick, up from the TRD kits already huge 405mm and 35mm thick rotor. The rotor annulus is wider than the TRD kit’s to accommodate the taller brake pads. The Figs kit has significantly more swept area than the TRD system. Figs rotors use a special iron alloy that is heat treated to make them very hard and long-wearing. The Figs rotors on our Project IS-F are 9 years old and have over 100k miles on them and they are still going strong! The rotors are coated in a corrosion-resistant black EDP coating.
The Figs rotors are fully floating. Having the rotor float eliminates cone distortion with heat and also makes the system more forgiving to the rotor-induced caliper piston knockback. We are hoping that having floating rotors will eliminate the tendency of the TRD rotors to warp. With our IS-F project, Figs rotors totally eliminated that car’s tendency to wear rotors extremely rapidly as they are currently on their 3rd set of pads and still going strong.
12 comments
I’m lost on why a radial mounted caliper is better when it has an adapter that bolts in the same as the TRD?
Yeah, technically the mount shouldn’t be much stiffer, but the caliper itself will flex less. Be interesting to see in FEA. To do it right you need a new hub. I always thought the radial design was too make it easier to install bigger discs on motorcycles. You can just shim it instead of needing new calipers.
The adaptor is bridged and many times stiffer than the OEM ears.
Very nice brakes. Really like the front rotor design. Does the master cylinder flex the firewall? There can be huge improvement in brake feel with a master cylinder brace, at least on compact cars.
Nice looking kit. How do you like the yellow stuff pads? I’m going to throw the blue stuff on my lx470 soon. I like their compounds and the fact that their pads don’t delaminate like other brands.
I haven’t run their stuff in a long time, they used to work well but wore fast and were dusty, these seem not to dust so far.
Hi Mike,
Two quick questions.
Do the Fig’s front pads have a similar coefficient of friction characteristics to the EBC’s?
If running a front brake upgrade such as this, with stock rear calipers, pads, and rotors, is it better from a brake bias standpoint to run pads with a higher coefficient of friction in the rear, if you find that the front end now tends to dive, with increased ABS activity under braking? Assuming that you do not want to add a proportioning valve to the system, and you have factory ABS and traction control present.
I don’t know the mu for the figs pads but the EBC is 0.42. The Figs pads don’t have tons of initial bite which is ok because the brakes have a lot of torque and I got the less aggressive of the two pads offered. The system feels like the pistons are slightly smaller than the TRD calipers. I would like to increase the rear pad volume for longer service life to match the fronts.
Not to be pedantic, but I think the yellows are advertised .48 while the blues are . 52. If you can get orangestuffs their mu is around .6
The Current EBC website doesnt list a Mu for the yellow which were recently reformulated. I found some old information that said .42.
How can I get these products 2017 Tundra
I mean we have links to Figs engineering in the story.