Got the E9X PFC BBK to work on the F8X!

[oliviabrandon361]

Nice one....very helpful.....Great one....

[SYT_Shadow]

The taper you saw, was it radial or across the pad? Not sure I'm describing it properly... hot dog taper, or hamburger taper??

Edit: did you happen to record any temp data between the setups?

The taper was in the longer dimension of the pad


Oh yes we did a huge amount of temp testing with the alcons. Calipers are both just over 300F, front rotors are just under 1100F in the hot pits, rear rotors are 300F lower than fronts. Have not done any temp testing with the other BBKs

All 3 BBKs are used very similarly, same tires, same track times, similar power between the cars.

[r4dr]

The taper you saw, was it radial or across the pad? Not sure I'm describing it properly... hot dog taper, or hamburger taper??

Edit: did you happen to record any temp data between the setups?

[SYT_Shadow]

What didn't you like about the AP Radical rears? I'm really curious to see how you find the Alcon hardware.

I've put a season on the Alcons, all is good so far.

My biggest issue with the APs is pad taper. If you have a puny 16mm rear pad you'd better be able to consume it! Instead I'd get 5mm of taper wear between them, which is completely unacceptable.

Granted not many make their brakes go through the torture of my car, as it gets dual tracked at a high level, but if I pay top dollar I expect top performance.

Meanwhile I have dozens of pads that come out of the PFC BBK with essentially no taper. I've kept every pad I've ever consumed and can make a tower with the PFC ones.


The Alcons are beefier than the APs or the PFCs. The front rotor is 36mm thick vs the typical 32mm and all of that is in wall thickness, so it is really something. Less pad taper than the AP but more than PFC.


The AP rears are for sale after 4 events.

[r4dr]

I ran the PFC brakes on the F8X for a year along with AP Radical (5000R) rear calipers. The AP Radical is not up to par. I ended up swapping the whole kit for the new Bimmerworld-Alcon kit.

Out of the 3 kits my ranking is
1) PFC (no longer available new)
2) Alcon
3) AP Radical 5000R

What didn't you like about the AP Radical rears? I'm really curious to see how you find the Alcon hardware.

[SYT_Shadow]

Wow, looks great. I think there are a lot of options in terms of BBK for the F8x, I too have a CS and I was planning on upgrading to APRacing in the near future. Steel brakes are great, but I started to feel fade 5-laps into a ButtonWillow track day. Your post has me thinking now, thanks for sharing.

I ran the PFC brakes on the F8X for a year along with AP Radical (5000R) rear calipers. The AP Radical is not up to par. I ended up swapping the whole kit for the new Bimmerworld-Alcon kit.

Out of the 3 kits my ranking is
1) PFC (no longer available new)
2) Alcon
3) AP Radical 5000R

[WestBankM4]

The biggest issue with the F8X is the lack of brake cooling strategies. The front is so full of radiators that it makes it more tricky.

That said, the AP Pro 5000R series (9660/9668) are incredible pieces of hardware. I know lots of locals who have them on their 991 GT3s and rave about them. That being said, if you buy the F8X AP kit, send me a PM because I have some info you might be interested in for ring replacements.

Will do, thank you! I just picked up an E46 M3 so now I'm going all into it, but I'll wait for this coming summer to upgrade the F82.

Amazing machines.



Sent from my Pixel 5 using Tapatalk

[r4dr]

Wow, looks great. I think there are a lot of options in terms of BBK for the F8x, I too have a CS and I was planning on upgrading to APRacing in the near future. Steel brakes are great, but I started to feel fade 5-laps into a ButtonWillow track day. Your post has me thinking now, thanks for sharing.

The biggest issue with the F8X is the lack of brake cooling strategies. The front is so full of radiators that it makes it more tricky.

That said, the AP Pro 5000R series (9660/9668) are incredible pieces of hardware. I know lots of locals who have them on their 991 GT3s and rave about them. That being said, if you buy the F8X AP kit, send me a PM because I have some info you might be interested in for ring replacements.

[WestBankM4]

Wow, looks great. I think there are a lot of options in terms of BBK for the F8x, I too have a CS and I was planning on upgrading to APRacing in the near future. Steel brakes are great, but I started to feel fade 5-laps into a ButtonWillow track day. Your post has me thinking now, thanks for sharing.

[Geoff.T]

Awesome work. Those brackets look great!

[SYT_Shadow]

As many of you know my brother and I have a couple track M3s. This is our journey to get the PFC Z54 BBK from the E9X generation to fit the F8X. This works for all F8X cars including the GTS and CCB equipped cars.

We've owned the PFC brakes for several years now, and the experience has been so sublime over literally hundreds of track days that when we wanted to retire the E92 M3 from track duties and add an F8X, one of the fundamental questions was whether we could adapt the Z54 front kit to the F8X generation car. I will take a perfect personal record of performance over any other vendors promises.
We are currently using this kit in our E90 stroker with 500whp and our F80 CS and it has never failed to deliver.
We've also had experience during three seasons with PFC BBKs in S54-swapped E36s racing in AER. The performance in those cars is, like the E9Xs, flawless.

Back to our street+track cars, originally there was an E92 and a E90, both with PFC BBKs.
The front PFC Z54 BBK is an epic kit:
-front 28mm (!!!) >1inch pads
-zero knockback
-impossible to overheat without any cooling while doing WGI in the 2:04 range with a full weight M3
-rotor swaps are incredibly easy
-rotors last a really long time. Their rotors and particularly the mounting system make all other BBK rotors look like something designed by a 5 year old
-pads come out of the caliper with no taper wear. I have boxes and boxes of worn pads and all are flat
-relatively quiet on the street even leaving the PFC11 track pads in there permanently
-this is the kit for reference: https://www.bimmerworld.com/Brakes/B...Z54-378MM.html

Here are some pics









After some research and lots of confusing information we determined it was possible but we'd have to design brackets as PFC does not offer this kit for the F8X generation.
My brother and I are both engineers and were sure we could figure out the design.

We started with rudimentary measurements:




Then worked on the design in Solidworks


Got the prototypes 3D printed. There were many iterations!


Then came the optimization stage to lighten the bracket


The first real roadblock we hit was with fabrication. No one in the US wants to build a brake bracket even though it’s pretty simple and well established. One company wanted to charge us 2k for a ‘study’, ridiculous.
We then decided to contact Slonik/Slon Workshop as his M3 goodies are spectacular with exquisite attention to detail. He was up for the challenge and further optimized the bracket for us! It turns out Slon workshop has built literally thousands of brake brackets and is very familiar with them.

Finally we received the production parts, anodized in black and with a better mounting system than PFC delivers stock! Here it is on our F80 CS after the first track season where it again handled everything we sent its way without blinking.