[Chazzy J]

So I feel there's a definite lack of a BBK for our Mazda3. And trust me, this is not an endeavor I would go alone. So me and my buddy (Service Manager at my Mazda dealership) have done a lot of initial research and we know the EVO X Brembo brakes are actually a direct bolt-on for the front bracket of the Mazda3. He's already done a lot of the mock-up and has confirmed this will work - at least on the front.

I'm going a step further though and going with Brembos all the way around. Also converting to a hydraulic e-brake. I managed to find completely re-furbished Brembos on ebay for $825. I'll need to re-paint/powdercoat them to red, but I couldn't pass up the set. This is uncharted, I get it, but I hate seeing all of these Mazda concepts with Brembos on them, however, there's nothing on the market (exception CorkSport and a $3100 Brembo front brake kit).

With any luck we'll get this to work and actually have an affordable option for the Mazda3. This will be a slow moving thread because we're going to chip away at this over the winter. I hope to have the whole thing finished by Spring of 2018. Plenty of updates along the way though.

12/11/17

Parts Ordered:
- Evo X Brembos Front and Rear $825
- Hawk Brake Pads $190
- Drilled and Slotted Rotors $360

Total investment so far: $1375


12/15/17

Very rough dry fit based on feedback that we were going to need to work with ridiculous offset (Post #8 ). I'm please to announce that the front calipers do fit. Minimal clearance, but they do fit. See post #10 for details and pics


12/21/17

Ok. So mock-up went quite well last night. As we knew, the rotors were going to be the determining factor in all of this. We did a dry-mount on the front and rear. The fronts are actually going to prove to be the "challenge" based on the rotor hat offset and where the caliper mounts. The rears are actually going to be quite easy from a mounting stand-point. See post #19 for pics and details

 

[muchikori]

those look real good. im really interested how this goes. please keep us updated

 

[Davidval18]

@Chazzy J, Only the legend could do something like this!

Which Drilled and Slotted Rotors did you get? IMO $360 does not sound to convincing for a full kit of 4 "quality" disc rotors. (if 4 is the case)

Just to put into perspective I have DBA T2 Slotted Front Rotors and they cost me without shipping approx. 385USD and these are top notch quality disc rotors.

 

[DCNOS18]

Looks pretty neat. Glad to see you doing both front and rear!

 

[cvmg333]

This is very interesting, will follow this thread

 

[Chazzy J]

@Chazzy J, Only the legend could do something like this!

Which Drilled and Slotted Rotors did you get? IMO $360 does not sound to convincing for a full kit of 4 "quality" disc rotors. (if 4 is the case)

Just to put into perspective I have DBA T2 Slotted Front Rotors and they cost me without shipping approx. 385USD and these are top notch quality disc rotors.

Haha. You are definitely right on that my friend. I left the brand name out on purpose. They're not bad, but I'm sure I'll be replacing them in 12-18 mo. Kept the cost low on purpose until we've got the whole thing put together. I will definitely be going with a reputable set of StopTechs once we get the exact sizing figured out

Not even sure if 345x28 is exactly what we need. We'll get it all figured out though. Thanks for the interest guys

 

[omgitsnao]

Good luck with the project!

Another option maybe MS3 or CTS V brembos. The CTS V ones are pretty cheap and my friends are working on a kit for the MS6. I'm sure they will make them for the MS3 as well.

 

[LiX]

Not even sure if 345x28 is exactly what we need. We'll get it all figured out though. Thanks for the interest guys

That's a wrong size for Evo X calipers. Front rotors are 350x32, rear rotors are 330x22.

You can trust me, as I have changed several pairs on my Evo X

Another thing that you should consider is that your wheels will not clear the Brembos. Calipers have opposite pistons and because of this they stand out much more than single piston Mazda caliper. Stock Evo X wheel size is 18x8.5 +38 offset.

 

[Chazzy J]

Not even sure if 345x28 is exactly what we need. We'll get it all figured out though. Thanks for the interest guys

That's a wrong size for Evo X calipers. Front rotors are 350x32, rear rotors are 330x22.

You can trust me, as I have changed several pairs on my Evo X

Another thing that you should consider is that your wheels will not clear the Brembos. Calipers have opposite pistons and because of this they stand out much more than single piston Mazda caliper. Stock Evo X wheel size is 18x8.5 +38 offset.

That is awesome information. Thanks for the heads-up. Just received the calipers yesterday. They are indeed huge lol.

Me and my guy will be doing a dry fit next Wednesday checking sizing and clearances. That'll give us our initial assessment. I will report back with findings/pics

 

[Chazzy J]

Did a quick dry fit today. I'll say the aftermarket Mazda M011 wheels are a blessing. They're the whole reason this setup is going to work. Fortunately the design on the wheels and slight "spidering" design of the spokes allows for a lot of additional clearance. As you can see, the face of the Caliper is damn close to the spokes, but we'll worry about tolerances of that degree once we get everything mounted and any small modifications taken care of.

And for those of you less familiar with brakes, those are the stock rotors. The aftermarket rotors will obviously be much larger and fill out much better

We did check the rears too, those will definitely require a bracket. Only took a quick glance at that though. More to come on the rears when we spend more time on them. For now, we're concentrating on the fronts.

See pics below! Woot woot! (and yes, they will be repainted red to match the Soul Red shade of the car)

 

[LiX]

These pics looks promising You might be veeeery lucky with these wheels

 

[muchikori]

o.o that looks amazing o.o

 

[Chazzy J]

These pics looks promising

You might be veeeery lucky with these wheels

Understatement of the year right there. Lol. Thanks for the info though! I feel much better now that we confirmed that

 

[LiX]

Understatement of the year right there. Lol. Thanks for the info though! I feel much better now that we confirmed that

Yeah, I just want to see them mounted on the front with the rotors in. If this successfully happen without fabricating brackets then there are some cheaper alternatives from the Mitsu world

For 17" wheels - Evo 8/9 Brembos with 320x32 rotors.
For 16" wheels - Evo 4 Akebono 2-piston calipers, similar to Mazda's caliper, but with extra piston and 294x24 rotors. That option will retain stock 16" wheels for the winter.

 

[Chazzy J]

Yeah, I just want to see them mounted on the front with the rotors in. If this successfully happen without fabricating brackets then there are some cheaper alternatives from the Mitsu world

For 17" wheels - Evo 8/9 Brembos with 320x32 rotors.
For 16" wheels - Evo 4 Akebono 2-piston calipers, similar to Mazda's caliper, but with extra piston and 294x24 rotors. That option will retain stock 16" wheels for the winter.

Completely agree, we should have the dry mock completed next Wednesday and I'll report back with pictures and items of note.

On the plus side, we have very easy access to a machine shop for anything needing to be milled, etc. We do plan on doing a very light "MAZDA" etching on the front caliper in place of the Brembo, as well as light etching of the Mazda Logo on the rear caliper (since the face has the circular area on it - figured the actual Mazda Logo would look more natural). So in light of that, if the face of the caliper needs to be shaved after we have the dry mount complete, then we'll take of that then -- but as you said, the pics do look promising.

Side note: we almost evaluated the old Mitsu world of the VR4 brake package, but these Evo X Brembos were easy access during the initial research, so we went this road.

I appreciate the knowledge of cheaper alternatives too. Thanks mate.

 

[CerealKiller]

Thanks for posting all of this information. I'm really excited to see how it turns out.

I was parked next to a Hyundai Elantra a while back and it had red Brembo brakes on the front... I was like wtf? All that braking power on a crappy little car with no power...
CK

 

[Chazzy J]

Guys...they're HUUUUUGE....lol. Thought I opened up a box with train parts in it. lol. The pics don't do them justice...

Mock-up is tomorrow evening!! More to come!

(sorry for the sideways pics....you get the idea though)

 

[zs_3]

Following, I've been looking for a big brake kit for my hatch.

 

[Chazzy J]

So here it is! All mocked up and nowhere to go! See post below for the gory details

 

[Chazzy J]

Ok, so the front is going to be more challenging than originally thought. And it's not even from a functionality standpoint, that's actually quite easy. But due to the rotor hat offset and mounting location of the caliper, we actually (believe it or not) need a BIGGER rotor -- haha. I'm guessing about 360x32, but there will need to be some guess and check.

So let's for a second pretend the 350x32 were to work (which I guess technically it can, but the caliper isn't making maximum contact via the brake pads if we use that). In this case, because of the offset in the rotor hat, we need to provide about a 10mm spacer by the mounting bracket and then compensate that with yet another hub spacer to allow for caliper clearance on the wheel spokes (simplistically said). We can probably get away with just mounting spacers, but caliper clearance is going to be the primary issue at that point. Regardless either way you look at it, a wheel that is 19x8 with a +45 offset will literally sit flush with the front fenders, so adding any sort of a spacer runs the risk of the wheels sticking out on the front fenders -- not something we're going for. So in short: we need a new rotor (still determining exact size), and there remeasure the rotor hat offset and get a feel for what the true fit is going to be.

For the rear, this was actually stupid easy. We knew a new mounting would be required, but we weren't sure how complicated that mounting bracket was going to need to be. Turns out not very complicated. The EVO rear rotor fits on right over the stock hub (after removal of the splash/dust shield) and the caliper sits on basically the same X/Y axis as the stock caliper, just further outward obviously due to the larger rotor. So the bracket will be very simple for that.

So what's that spell for the e-brake? Well that will need to be modified to continue to work. While we know exactly how we're going to modify it, the research behind it still needs a little more time (although it's pretty straight forward). Onward and upward.

At this time, we're going to fitting this onto a Mazda 6 and getting the Spacers and brackets made for that first...

I don't expect another update for a while -- we just needed to get the mock-up done first before we start involving the machine shop etc. Still looking good, but fabrication is involved -- not sure we could be able to sell this as an out-of-the-box set up because of the e-brake modification that has to take place.