I've disconnected the ABS, has new master cylinder, pads and rotors are good, solid pedal - but the brakes just don't seem to be as strong as they should be, the truck just feels like it is to heavy for its braking system. So I am wondering if others have felt this and if anyone has done anything that really improves the braking performance of these trucks.

Thanks Mike

 

D90 rotors and calipers up front. TONs of people have done it.

 

Vented front rotors will only help with brake fade from over heating the brakes, larger rear brakes will make it stop better, as will premium brake pads

Are d90 rotors larger or just vented?

 

Vented with larger calipers nd pads. Rears are the same as Discos

 

What are the preferred brands/ types of pads

 

Hi, I'm about to do a full brake job on my 98 Disco. If I swap out for the D90 rotors and Calipers, would they fit with the stock Disco 16 in wheels?

I assume the calipers bolt right up to the hub. Correct?

Thanks

 

Yes and yes.

I'm happy with Wagner pads.

 

The D90 conversion requires the D90 calipers (with slightly larger pistons), and the D90 rotors (wider because of the venting). Otherwise they should bolt up. Haven't done it myself though.

The other aspect of brake performance that I didn't see mentioned in this thread yet is the servo booster. When they start leaking, my experience is the brakes feel hard like no power. It's sort of a binary failure though, so might not be the OP's issue.

I have a new booster, new master, braided steel lines, new Discovery 1 rotors, new pads, and no stuck pistons. The brakes are adequate but certainly not awesome for the weight of the vehicle. Sometimes they downright frightening. The poor brakes is one of the reasons I don't prefer my wife to drive it. I mean, I want her to have something that isn't going to scare her, and I can't trust the Land Rover so I have another car for her.

The Land Rover design doesn't really lend itself to truly good brakes. For the weight of the vehicle, that would require something like the 15 or 16 inch rotors like we might see on a newer Range Rover. But those big rotors necessarily come with big wheels, 18, 20 inch and so on. Those wheels subsequently come with low-profile tires, which are anathema offroad, chiefly because you can't really air them down, which means your traction will always be very poor indeed. The latest Range Rovers try to make up for this with ultra-sophisticated electronic traction control, which works superbly but can never offer the same level of traction as an aired-down offroad tire.

So the brakes suck, but for a good reason, provided you're offroad. In traditional offroad driving technique, the wheel brakes are little used, perhaps because they always sucked. Yes, but the reason is because offroad your wheels can all have a big discrepancy in traction, so just the typical front-rear brake bias valve is never going to be spot-on. If you're on a hill one way or another, got a wheel in mud or ice or whatever, the traction picture is never equal and statically-biased brakes will rarely be just right with only one pedal. Engine braking is heavily favored, and that's one of the reasons a "low range" gearbox is valuable. 4x4's that are missing a low-range like the Freelander or Evoque have until now been considered totally lacking for offroad use, but that can all change with technology. Modern transmission designs are integrating as many as 7 or 8 ratios (which are actually more than the 4 speed with the hi-lo transfercase because there's less overlap or redundancy), and combined with wheel-brake/abs electronic traction control and hill-descent control, the systems are more versatile and better than a hi-lo range transferbox with a locking center differential and any kind of axle differential locks. It's easy to see that the Land Rover engineers conceived of this for the DII but the actual product fell far short. But if you look at a new Range Rover, they've obviously achieved it... everything that is, except the tires. If you want the tires, you have to go back to crappy brakes. Besides that, those good tires come with things like sun-roof ecu's patented by Rube Goldberg, Lucas-engineered power door locks, and a bizarre assortment of other stuff that could only have been conceived in a Solihull pub.

 

Was digging around on Atlantic British & found this kit - 9995GA. Does this have the larger brakes you are referring to? That's about $600.00 for the entire vehicle, right?

 

You would need the d90 rotors like that kit, and then the calipers stc1266 and stc1267. I don't have a recommendation on the vendor or price, but those look like the right parts for the conversion.

There's been some good deals on the calipers in the past, but you might have to shop for price and availability. AB lists calipers for $169 each but are out of stock. RN lists the calipers for $615 each, with Proline for $229 each. Both those prices are steep. They've been had for like $300/pr/range in recent times, even as the AB price suggests. But the differences between the products is unknown to me. AB tends to sell the "All Makes" brand some of which has proven to be crap. Some All Makes parts are from the same oem as "genuine" (so it's genuine crap) and other stuff is just crap. My experience has been that "Proline" brake parts are just as bad as the original parts, and not worse.

If I was doing the job for myself, I would make sure I was getting essentially reman Lockheed AP castings, and not some copies from China. But I don't really know what the different vendors actually sell. I'd be pretty confident ordering the Proline, but that brings the upgrade price above what it's worth to me.