Words and photos
by Darr Hawthorne
07/16/07
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.
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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.
