If you own a 2009 to 2021 Toyota Tundra, you are probably aware of the rapid rear brake pad wear, especially if you go offroad or have higher power like a TRD Supercharger. The Electronic LSD uses the rear brakes to prevent one tire fire and the traction control and stability control all use the rear brakes. Couple this with the rear brakes having tiny and highly loaded pads, meaning you will most likely be replacing the rear brake pads at a 2:1 ratio. When you have big front brakes like a TRD kit or like us, a Fig’s Engineerings front kit that ratio becomes more like 3-4:1. We checked our pretty new EBC Yellow pads that we installed about 10k miles ago and saw that they were 2/3 worn while our front brakes were hardly worn, we said enough!
For a couple of years, we have been bugging Fig’s Engineering to develop a rear kit just for this issue, and we were stoked when we got a message from them saying that they had done it and were sending us the first production kit for evaluation!
The Figs rotors are huge. They are 400mm in diameter and 30mm thick, which is a lot more than the OEM 345mm and 18mm thick rotor. The rotor annulus is wider than stock to accommodate the taller and longer brake pads. The Figs kit has significantly more swept area than the OEM brakes and about 2.5 times more pad volume. Pad volume is the biggest factor when it comes to long pad life. Figs rotors use a special iron alloy that is solution heat treated to ensure an even distribution of alloying elements and a consistent microstructure. The heat treatment makes the rotors very hard and long-wearing. The Figs rotors on our Project IS-F are 10 years old and have over 140k miles on them and they are still going strong!
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. The rotors are coated in a corrosion-resistant black EDP coating. The Figs rotors uses captive nuts to ease assembly and disassembly. The friction rings are back-mounted on the hats for better air circulation. The black coating will help keep the rotor from rusting and dumping rusty water on your nice clean wheels after you wash the car!
If you look carefully, you can see the slots allowing for thermal radial growth here under the bolts. On the one-piece rotor, this growth would be constrained by the cast-in hat and would cause uneven growth between the inner and outer face of the rotor causing it to distort like a cone. That is not going to happen here. The Figs rotor is slotted with oval vents inside the slot. During hard braking, the slots sweep the hot zone of vaporized pad material improving pad bite. The vents in the slots give the hot gas somewhere to go. The slots and vents also help the pads bite better under wet conditions.
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It’s worth mentioning how improved towing performance will be now as, even with a weight distribution hitch, the rear will still take more of that weight than the front and cause the front to let go even sooner in a panic stop situation.