Testing Fastbrakes’ Bigger Brake Kit
By Mike Kojima
Fastbrakes is an Arizona company whose claim to fame is making affordable brake upgrade kits for many cars and having applications for niche models like the Nissan Sentra SE-R. Since some of us race SE-Rs as they are a cheap and sturdy platform, we have a lot of experience with Fastbrakes’ upgrade kits for the car.
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| The new larger Fastbrakes kit uses the Superlite caliper instead of the Ultralite. The Superlite has more brake pad choices and has 39% more pad area. The pad friction material is 25% thicker as well. This means longer life between servicing. We used rally Hawk DTC30 pads which worked really well for our relatively light car. |
In the past, Fastbrakes made two kits for the Sentra B13 and B14 (1991-1999 models) an 11 inch solid rotor kit and an 11.8 inch two piece rotor kit. Both kits used the Wilwood forged Dyna Lite caliper, which is a nice compact 4 piston caliper with 1.38″ pistons.
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| The Superlite caliper has a forged body, internal fluid passages and a bridge bolt which is the primary reason why it is stiffer than the Ultralite. The stiffness is one of the reasons why the brakes have better feel and less pad taper wear than the Ultralites. |
These kits work awesome on the street as they are much bigger than the wimpy stock brakes. For racing the Fastbrake kits are also great. Not only are they bigger than the stock brakes, just about every racing brake pad compound is made to fit the Dyna Lite caliper. Pads for the Dyna Lite are ½ the cost of high performance pads made to fit the stock Nissan calipers as well. This is perhaps the biggest selling point as the savings on brake pads will pay for the brake upgrade in a few races.
