You Can Never Have Too Much Brake

I’ve owned ten or eleven trucks since passing the test for the California driver’s license at age sixteen. The list ran from showroom-new to vintage ‘60s iron. All of them have been Chevys. All of them shared one thing: the lack of repeatable stopping power. They might have stopped the truck fairly well on the first aggravated attempt, but faded righteously immediately thereafter.

My daily driver is a 2002 GMC Sierra 2WD short bed. It’s got factory ABS-assisted discs on all four corners that are fine for normal driving, but the Jimmy doubles as a tow vehicle. I use it to drag small trailers. I use it to haul heavy, full-size loads, too, like our ’64 Chevy II to the dragstrip. At times, and usually when I least expect it, brake fade has indeed become an issue.

Once the OE rear caliper has been removed you’ll be using the OE brake piston and new OE pads in the final assembly. Baer supplies a longer mounting bracket for the 14-inch rotor we used at the rear.	Add the contents of one of the supplied lube packets to the mounting bracket and attach the supplied rubber caps.

When I add a capacity load or tow a trailer, the stopping dynamics get a little dicey, so when the guys at Baer Racing talked to me about its DecelaRotor system, a direct OE replacement for the assembly line brakes, my ears got big. The directional Baer discs feature counter-rotational drilling and slotting used in racing brakes, features that are designed to eliminate out-gassing produced by the braking process and to minimize stress cracks.

Here's What's New!

Fit the OE brake pads into the new bracket and re-use the OE retaining clips.	After putting the new rotor on the axle flange, re-attach the new assembly to the existing rear backing plate.	Before replacing the piston assembly, the piston needs to be compressed to allow for spacing of the rotor.

Next, attach the piston to the new bracket.

On a trip to Arizona, I stopped at Baer headquarters in Phoenix. A Baer tech had forwarded a precision template to check caliper clearance for my 18-inch, 6-spoke American Torque Thrust wheels. While the template Baer sent fit the wheels on paper, once at the shop, we discovered that the clearances were just too tight to fit matching fourteen-inch DecelaRotors on the front spindles. We scaled back to the 12-inch rotors.

If you can handle your own brake work this DIY job is a scintillating 2 ½ to 3 hour Saturday afternoon driveway project. On the road the new, oversize rotors looked great, but I wanted to create a test that could easily happen anywhere. How well do they stop? For empirical data, I found a straight, traffic-free stretch of pavement, hooked up the G-Tech, and got with the program without the trailer. While the stock brakes work well the first time, they tend to fade appreciably with every succeeding attempt. The best 60-to-0 reaction was 124 feet. With the Baer set-up, I was able to pare that down to a 117 repeatable feet.

For the seat-of-the-jeans portion of the test, I towed a loaded trailer and made three consecutive panic stops from 70 MPH going down the deserted Conejo Grade on northbound highway 101. The rotors had an immediate effect, without nagging break fade or lane hopping from swerving. I know I’ll never regret this pragmatic decision. You won’t either.

Everything fits well and is ready for installation of the wheel.	With the wheel on the axle and brake assembly, you can see how important it is to use the Baer wheel template. The 18-inch wheel just fits on the rear!