Installing the Fig’s big brake kit is pretty straightforward. First, you remove the stock caliper, rotors, and brake line. The dust shield interferes with the new big rotor. Since it is part of the parking brake assembly, you cannot remove it. We simply trimmed it to clear the big rotors.
Be sure to cut the shield a little more around where the stock caliper bolted in to clear the new Fig’s adaptor brackets.
As you can see here the difference in the calper size and the brake pads are huge. The big 4-piston caliper puts more even pressure on the pads and the staggered piston diameters help prevent taper wear. With the huge increase in pad volume, we think our premature brake wear is going to be a thing of the past.
At 400mm vs the old 345mm, the difference in rotor size is shocking! The new brakes have much more swept area and thermal mass.
2 comments
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.
The rapid rear pad wear on the 2009 to 2021 Tundra is a real problem, and the explanation here makes sense – the OE rear rotor is only 300mm and the small pads work too hard, especially when towing. The Fig’s kit changing the front to rear ratio to about 3 to 4 to 1 is the kind of fix that addresses the cause rather than just fitting a harder pad. My tip for anyone doing this upgrade is to follow the bed-in procedure exactly and to re-check the pad wear after the first few towing trips, since a bigger floating rotor only helps if the pads seat properly and the caliper hardware is clean.