'03 3/4 ton Burban Brake Rotors and Calipers

[The Butcher]

Ok, not a K5 question, but I figure you guys might want to chime in anyway.

I have a 2003 3/4-ton 4x4 Suburban with a 6" suspension lift and 35's. I can tell my brake pads are gonna need replacing soon, and that got me to thinking about going ahead and uprgrading the rotors and possibly the calipers as well. Most of the caliper kits I have seen have been in the $3,000 range, and there is no way in hell I am going to spend that right now. I was thinking of something under $1000 that would increase my stopping power. I noticed someone (Stillen I think) makes an oversized rotor and caliper braket kit for about $550.00 that increases the rotor size and the contact surface of the pad and rotor by about 14%. This is a vented (not drilled) rotor. The cross-drilled and vented rotors I had on my 1999 K2500 sub did make a difference in stopping ability, but it seems most everyone frowns on drilled rotors these days b/c they warp easily. Anyone know of a simple (ie not terribly expensive) upgrade for late model Chevy brakes?

It stops fine with the factory rotors and pads, but I am going to start towing my K5 once in awhile (if my freaking mechanic ever finishes fabbing my tow-bar/receiver hitch setup on the front of my K5), so I would like a little more stopping power. While towing my dually on a tandem axle trailer a couple of weekends ago I noticed that my sub doesn't exactly like to stop very quickly, so while the Blazer isn't as heavy I would still like more stopping power.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[Pookster]

I posted a while ago all the brake rotor sizes-

Pretty much, drilled and slotted only help vent gasses. You can get slotted, drilled in my experience has never warped, but they did start getting fractures. Slotted is ok. If your good with a grinder, you can slot your own. Just mask off the slots you want with tape, and grind away.

More aggressive pads are probably the answer that you are looking for. If your still running 16" wheels, your options are somewhat limited in what size you can move your rotors up to. The other options is to replace the cast caliper with a stainless steel caliper which is more rigid.

Your tandem trailer didnt have brakes on it? When my trailer brakes are connected, I hardly know I have a load connected, its pretty good.

If your flat towing the blazer, it might be worth the money to get the brake buddy rather than play with the brakes on your truck. The brake buddy attaches to the brake pedal of the blazer, and activates it when you decelerate. A lot of the RV people swear by them.

http://www.brakebuddy.com/products.html

The product is about 1000 bucks, so its within your budget. Its pretty much a one time investment, and you can move it from vehicle to vehicle.

 

[The Butcher]

For $1000 I'd rather put it into an upgrade for the sub since it is my daily driver and I would get more use out of it.

Forgot to mention I have 18x9 KMC wheels. (325/65R18 Nitto Terra Grapplers for tires)

I called Stillen and they have a cross-drilled rotor and upgraded "metal-matrix" pad available. The rotor is the same size as my stock rotors, but obviously cross-drilled. They make them for front and rear, but I was thinking about only doing the front. Any thoughts on that? The ovesized rotor and bracket kit is only made for the 1/2ton right now, not the 3/4 ton.

The only other option they had after that was a $3500.00, 6-piston caliper/rotor kit. I laughed at that b/c that is how much it cost to by my Blazer. The brake kit seemed a little pricey when I put it that way!

I didn't seem to have any problems with warping on my previous drilled rotors either, but I did notice the occasional crack around some of the drilled out holes. Didn't seem to affect stopping power though.

Thanks for your help. Any other suggestions?