Go Tuning Unlimited

Yes or No????

 

meh, unless you're doing some serious canyon carving or tracking your ride, save that 1000 towards your next car that will perform out of the box.

 

I really wanted to get that kit, but with 61/39 weight distribution I don't believe it will actually help anything. The most important benefit of disc brakes over drums is cooling, I'd be surprised if you're overheating the drums. I think I saw people on this forum saying they changed the fronts three times and the rears were stilll good, so the factory brake bias is pretty heavy towards the front too.

I'd be looking at better front discs/pads, and braided stainless lines. Or at least, I will be when the wife stops complaining about all the car parts showing up in the mail...

 

The drums on my Fit-EV are about twice as wide as my GD, and about an inch bigger in diameter, also 5lug and independent rear suspension not the anchor beam..

 

As much as I approve of this item it should have been offered on the Fit from Honda from day one. They are standard on the Fit RS from Japan why not offer it here , Torrance ?

Rant over

 

Probably not worth it for performance reasons. Mostly for bling and knowing you don't have drum brakes.

I'm in the process of gathering parts to swap our GD. At 190,000 miles the original shoes are just now needing to be replaced. $12 could solve that issue or I could spend $700 piecing together a rear disc kit. Easy choice...if you're crazy!

 

You’re no fun at all.

 

haha

im just looking at it from a wider perspective. no sense modding a Fit unless for competition or something. honestly putting a lot of money into the Fit is a big waste of money. id mod it 'just enough' to make it yours and keep the rest stock.

 

Getting 190,000 miles out of the rear shoes shows how little the rear brakes handle stopping. Adding disc brakes to the rear will gain little if anything. They will add lightness to ones wallet.

Too bad Honda cheaped out by leaving the rear disc brakes off. Still a nice car & those drum brakes will work better for handbrake turns.

 

I agree! Little to gain. However, nothing to lose except time and money.

It will be interesting to monitor rear pad wear once the swap is done to see if the rear starts doing more. I will be using more aggressive pads and rotors along with upsized front rotors.

I'm not expecting much, if any improvement, but it's fun to try.

The change to EBC rotors, Hawk pads, and ATE fluid when the car was new made a dramatic improvement.

 

This all brings up a question that might not have an answer- is the brake bias so far to the front because that's what works for the weight distribution, or is it because they didn't want people to think about brake technology at least 50 years out of date every time they had a service done?

Think about it, with some numbers I just made up for the sake of argument, if the stock USDM brake bias is 95% front but the chassis could handle 75% or even 60% front bias, how many people in the target demographic would ever notice? The worst effect on performance would be to add understeer if you're trail braking, which almost nobody buying a car with drums would bother doing.

If the disc brake conversion changes the brake bias in a way that causes the rears to wear significantly more than with the drums, it could improve performance more than just the cooling effect. Of course, this is all meaningless speculation without real numbers, or the experience of someone with a spare $1k and time to go to the track.

GAFIT, I wish you had a GK, but I would still love to see your results.

 

Good points and questions Hasdrubal.

To your point, the Fit nose dives under even moderate braking. German and Ford European models stay much flatter. I prefer that feeling.

I owned a Jetta and the rear pads wore out before the front.

One other thing to throw out there...
Good working ABS negates the safety aspect of too much rear brake bias to a large degree.

Has anyone tried adding a proportioning valve to a Fit?

 

Dont waste your money! Save it for a real car. Don't get me wrong, this is a fun car to drive, but seriously this is more of a "throw-away" car after you've driven it to the ground (whenever that may be) to save wear and tear on your "real" cars. Upgrade the creature comforts (i.e tinted windows, steering wheel cover, maybe even an RSB) and enjoy. Unless of course, you enjoy spending large amounts of money.

 

I don't know about waste, I have two kids now where I used to have an NSX. I miss that car, but to be honest I'm getting as much enjoyment out of the Fit with better wheels/tires and exhaust work, and so far I've spent less than half as much than I did for just the supercharger on the old car.

You could also say that life is too short to spend several years of it driving a car that isn't fun.

 

You might want to check part numbers for the master cyl between a drum rear & disc rear Fit. Your master may not play nice with the rear disc brakes. I don't know just wondering.

 

I can honestly say I’ve never owned a “real” car by your standards.

 

I am wondering the same thing. Won't really know until I do the swap and see how the pedal feels and how much effort is required to engage ABS. Not sure there ever was a GD Fit with rear disc brakes from the factory?

Everyone that I've read on here so far that has done the swap with the T1R, Fastbrakes, and pieced together kits said it was fine with the stock master cylinder.

I picked up a new master cylinder really cheap since my car has 190,000 miles. Figure it won't hurt to change that out, but it's just a stock replacement. Caught it on closeout at Rockauto for like $20.

 

Heck $20 you stole it.

 

Ok, this is probably where the whole thing will end, but Scarebird Brakes sells caliper mounting brackets for the GD and GE models. They don't know if it will work on a GK without having one to test. I would let them use my car, but they're in New Mexico.

https://scarebird.com/index.php?rout...tegory&path=67

I'm new, so I don't know of any forum members there, and the last post in the regional sub forum is from 2014. Does anyone know of a forum member in New Mexico? I'd rather use USDM parts and a conversion kit for something like this- if the JDM discs and pads aren't common size with something available here, I'd be dependent on importers that might not even be in business by the time I need the parts.

Edit-sent a PM to Colonel Panik, last person to post in the NM forum. If anyone has other users I might bother with this, happy to hear it.

 

You could reach out to Fast Brakes also if you haven't already.

Both Scarebird and Fast Brakes at least have some interest in the Fit market.

I placed my Scarebird order on Aug 25 and am still waiting for the adapters. My understanding is that they recently moved which caused order delays.

Fast Brakes just did another run of adapters for the GD as well I believe. Just throwing that out there if anyone is in need since they aren't listed on their Site.