Stopping Power

[PokEngineer]

Hey guys. New to Infiniti ownership. Just bought an 04 G35 sedan with 46.5K miles. Absolutely love the car! The only complaint I have is it doesn't have great grab in the brakes. Haven't pulled off the wheels to look at the pads yet, but judging from how the rest of the car has been taken care of I'm guessing they've been changed fairly regularly. Rotors seem to look ok.

So my question is if I'm looking to improve brake performance what do you guys recommend? I'm not taking the car to the track so don't need to go all out but would definitely like to get some higher quality pads and maybe rotors. Thanks for the advice.

[Poyzinous]

well, you may need to have a brake flush and bleed done, because the brakes are actually stronger than most cars in its class. from 70 to 0 a G35 will stop 10 to 30 feet shorter than a TL, a 3 series or IS (pre 2006). You can do what I did and install Nismo pads from the Z. Part number 41060-RNZ35.

[joe603]

Welcome to NICO!

Poyzinous knows what he's talking about!!

If you want to spend the $$, you can upgrade to Brembo brakes, or another aftermarket setup.

[Junior G]

Hey guys. New to Infiniti ownership. Just bought an 04 G35 sedan with 46.5K miles. Absolutely love the car! The only complaint I have is it doesn't have great grab in the brakes. Haven't pulled off the wheels to look at the pads yet, but judging from how the rest of the car has been taken care of I'm guessing they've been changed fairly regularly. Rotors seem to look ok.

So my question is if I'm looking to improve brake performance what do you guys recommend? I'm not taking the car to the track so don't need to go all out but would definitely like to get some higher quality pads and maybe rotors. Thanks for the advice.

03-04 non-brembo coupe and sedan brakes suck for the most part.Get yourself a nice set of Hawk pads and a nice set of cross drilled or slotted rotors and that should help.On top of that look into buying a set of Stainless Steel brake lines and upgrade your fluid.Believe it or not the lines and higher grade brake fluid will show a decent improvment in brake reponce

[marlin29311]

Quite honestly you can greatly improve your braking power by upgrading your tires - at 46k, do you still have the OEM tires on them? What kind do you have now?

Your brakes only work as well as your tires grip - I would check this first.

[PokEngineer]

I'll have to check when I get to the house this afternoon on the rating, but it's got fairly new goodyears on it (around 10K miles).

Where would be a good place to pick up some reasonably priced rotors? Is there a preference on slotted or drilled? Can I go ahead and upgrade the pads to see how much of a difference it makes and go back and buy rotors if necessary?

Thanks again guys.

[Pauls98SE]

What are you going to be doing with the car? Any auto-x or racing events? Cross drilled are wasted money for the street, all they do is look good.Slotted or oem style are all you need.

Definitely agree with the fluid check/change, new pads and ss lines.Getting ready to do fluid change and ss lines on my 05 sedan.

My $.02 worth - but I have talked with some guys very knowledgeable in brakes and that is the advice they gave me.

Good luck.

[Nazc0]

i have the same car with twice the miles and i think it stops greati just changed the pads and it stops great for me never have a compaint in the brakes

[telcoman]

Hey guys. New to Infiniti ownership. Just bought an 04 G35 sedan with 46.5K miles. Absolutely love the car! The only complaint I have is it doesn't have great grab in the brakes. Haven't pulled off the wheels to look at the pads yet, but judging from how the rest of the car has been taken care of I'm guessing they've been changed fairly regularly. Rotors seem to look ok.

So my question is if I'm looking to improve brake performance what do you guys recommend? I'm not taking the car to the track so don't need to go all out but would definitely like to get some higher quality pads and maybe rotors. Thanks for the advice.

I had new OEM brake pads and rotors turned at the dealer 2k miles ago

They saved my a$$ and my G yesterday when traffic came to an unexpected short stop on the Garden State Parkway. I had to slam on my brakes with the first panic stop since owning my G. I stopped just before hitting the vehicle in front. The Audi behind me fortunately had a left shoulder as I was in the left lane. The front fender of the Audi was at my drivers door. The woman thankfully knew how to drive and no accident resulted. Had there been no shoulder my G would probably have been headed to the junk yard?

Don't scimp on brakes or tires. Your life and others depends on both.

Telcoman

[Poyzinous]

What are you going to be doing with the car? Any auto-x or racing events? Cross drilled are wasted money for the street, all they do is look good.Slotted or oem style are all you need.

Definitely agree with the fluid check/change, new pads and ss lines.Getting ready to do fluid change and ss lines on my 05 sedan.

My $.02 worth - but I have talked with some guys very knowledgeable in brakes and that is the advice they gave me.

Good luck.

Kinda backwards on the rotors. Drilled rotors can be resurfaced so they have a longer life span. Slotted rotors can't and so they aren't the better long term solution.

And Junior, go out and test the non brembo brakes for yourself. They wear out fast and are dusty, but they perform very well.

[tollboothwilley]

Hawk HPS pads or Project MU NS pads(i prefer these) are a good upgrade. Better fluid (Motul or ATE SuperBlue) SS lines (stoptech) and better rotors (www.ocautosports.com) all work together nicely.

[pfarmer]

Hey guys. New to Infiniti ownership. Just bought an 04 G35 sedan with 46.5K miles. Absolutely love the car! The only complaint I have is it doesn't have great grab in the brakes. Haven't pulled off the wheels to look at the pads yet, but judging from how the rest of the car has been taken care of I'm guessing they've been changed fairly regularly. Rotors seem to look ok.

So my question is if I'm looking to improve brake performance what do you guys recommend? I'm not taking the car to the track so don't need to go all out but would definitely like to get some higher quality pads and maybe rotors. Thanks for the advice.

There are a lot of opinions in the professional world about rotors. The biggest benefits for either cross drilled or slotted are degassing. That is the gasses produced by the brake pads tend to form a boundary layer between the pads and a stock rotor (depends largely on the pad). If this occurs either cross drilled or slotted rotors are designed to help remove the gasses.

If going with cross drilled I would go with ones that have the holes casted in them instead of actually being drilled to prevent possible cracking at the holes. If going with slots, which is where I would lean towards between the two, you may want to be aware that as they age the slots will become shallower and possibly more prone to warping than cross drilled. They also become less efficient at removal of the gasses.

Some experiments show that either cross drilled or slotted rotors may actually raise rotor temperatures in some situations, but then some others have shown a decrease. Either seem to show very little difference at the caliper.

In wet climates there are some claims that the drilled rotors provide some benefit in removal of water vapor.

By far the majority of what I see are for stock types of cars on tracks and not on the street. Many race cars lean more towards removal of material for weight savings if done at all and generally make a lot of other provisions for heat removal.

A lot of discussion goes on now that the best choice for street use are simply high quality blanks, maybe blanks with some sort of advance vane design between halfs for better rotor cooling. With these blanks to prevent the gas boundary layer from forming the you want to select pads that don't produce the large amount of gasses that some do. Most modern pads don't use material such as asbestos that used to cause a lot of outgassing, the primary reason for drilled or slotted rotors.

Many street users who go this direction spend large sums of money on exotic types of rotor material for their blanks and high quality brake pads. While I see this as beneficial the best bang for the buck is probably upgrading your brake lines and fluid.

The upgraded brake lines can be of benefit under nearly all driving conditions, the fluid mostly under more extreme cases but then the cost for upgrading is not all that great since you probably should be doing a full flush anyway when replacing brakes.

So if the stock rotors measure ok for wear then I may just have them turned and then install a high quality set of pads with new upgraded lines and fluid. If not then replace the rotors and do the rest.

If you plan on doing this yourself my previous estimates showed that you can come close to buying new high quality rotors for the differerence in labor cost in resurfacing you OEM rotors and having a shop do the rest of the work.

Perry

[PokEngineer]

Great info. Thanks again!

[adren77]

I would say you need to have your brakes looked at.

I owned a 04 sedan and the brakes were awesome... better than any other car I owned.

If you want to improve performance, I would get a Brembo kit... but you will need to get new rims.

[Tampa G35 Sedan 6MT]

You could also buy the rotors and calipers from a 2005-06 sedan and that will be a great improvement!

RED_DET did that on his sedan before he upgraded to brembo's

DJ

[Pauls98SE]

Kinda backwards on the rotors. Drilled rotors can be resurfaced so they have a longer life span. Slotted rotors can't and so they aren't the better long term solution.

And Junior, go out and test the non brembo brakes for yourself. They wear out fast and are dusty, but they perform very well.

Sorry - what did I get backwards. I said nothing about lifespan. If OP is going to use life span as big part of decision, then I would have to stick with the OEM style rotor for typical DD use and occasional track. Which I believe is what OP was looking for.

[grovefromnh]

When putting in new pads, if you first put them in an old toaster oven outdoors and bake them at 350 for 30 min they will already be outgassed. when done baking, shut off oven and let cool down naturally. Do NOT open the door as the cold air will make them brittle. As a 30+yr sportscar racer, I found this to work great. Pads are ready to go with no further bedding in

[gwoods]

That is a great idea!

Ebay has plenty of drilled slotted rotors for the G sedans. I'm on my second set and they have held up great. No cracks even under racing severe enough to melt pads and melt the 'zinc' coating off.

If you can find them get posi quiet ceramic pads. They are okay for some track use and awesome on the street!

I've been buying 4 rotors and a set of posi quiet pads for about $350 every year. I run a 2 sets of pads through each set of rotors and then they are sufficently warped and grooved and I drop them off at the metal recyclers.