The June 10 issue of Car and Driver (page 32) has a VERY interesting story about Nissan's Z car brakes. Seems they imbedded a Nisan NISMO 370Z into Virginia International Raceway's Turn One retaining wall. Seems like the car had NO brakes after a few hot laps. It proved to be the fault of the NISMO's presumably strong brakes (that weren't). C&D claims the Nissan officials in Japan weren't at all surprised.

Nissan claims that the stock pads were designed primarily for low noise and low dust not high performance driving. C&D claims that Nissan is now offering high-performance brakes on the Sports Package or the NISMO Z. These brake pads are used on Ford GT, Corvette Z06 and Lamborghini Galardo.

There are pictures of the melted pads on the rotors from the stock brakes. It also appeared that it isn't just the brakes, because the hi-po brakes offered did marginally better eventually offering little stopping ability when hot. The 21st stop caused the car to violently pull to one side as the brake fluid boiled. On the 22nd stop the car continued on for nearly a half mile.

C&D claims this is the first car they have tested that did this. The culprit is thought to be the lack of air ducting (or improper ducting) to the brakes.

Read the entire article for full details.

If you run track days against a Z, you might want to be very careful when you get in front of one.

 

I have to comment on the lack of awareness of C&D not noticing what was happening. I've had brake pads overheat and melt away and it was crystal clear that I had a problem before it got to the point of going off the track. Very few cars come stock with pads or fluid that are up to the task of a track like VIR. C&D should have known better.

Disclaimer - I haven't read the article of seen the pictures.

Les

 

The reason I even started this post is right after I got my SRT6 4 years ago, I took it to Willow Springs, The Streets of Willow Springs and California Raceway interior road course with lots of sharp 90 degree turns after 100-130 MPH straights and never had any noticeable fade. In fact my SCCA pro driver friend took it out (he is EXTREMELY aggresive) one time and did boil the brake fluid. As a result the brakes were mushy but still stopped (I replaced it with race fluid right after).

Here I am 22K miles later, and the original pads are still on and going fine.

It boggles my mind that a sports car sold to the public as a performance car (especially the NISMO Z) would have such inadequate brakes, AND Nissan knew about the problem.

 

Ever since Carlos Ghosn took over, we haven't been the same company...