C5 Corvette Brake Package - AP Racing Rear Competition Big Brakes 4-Piston

You asked, we delivered. Essex and AP Racing have teamed up to create the ultimate rear Big Brake Kit for C5 Corvettes. Every component in the system was carefully chosen to provide unprecedented levels of fade-free performance, lap after lap, for even the fastest Corvettes on the track. Our system is built around real race parts, not modified street parts. That means no disintegrating dust boots or faded red paint. It also means that you finally have the chance to get your hands on technology that has traditionally been reserved for professional racers: Stainless steel ventilated pistons, anti-knockback springs, high temperature seals, 60 vane racing discs...the list goes on. We gathered quite a bit of customer feedback during the development of our system, and did our best to integrate as many customer requests as possible. As a result, our system offers a number of unique features not offered by other products on the market.

Features:
Retains factory parking brake
Clears OEM rear C5 Z06 and C6 Z06 wheels without a spacer
Designed to work with both Sprint (four piston) and Endurance (six piston) front systems
Every component designed to resist the heat of extended track sessions
NASCAR/ALMS Racing Series Technology for the street!
Easy pad replacement with-out having to remove calipers.
Lighter than stock calipers.
Many brake pad options, to choose from.
Brake Pads and Brake Fluid sold separately.

Kit Includes:
One pair AP Racing CP5040 anodized racing calipers
One pair 340x28mm AP Racing CP3864, 60 vane, heavy duty J Hook racing discs, with fully floating billet aluminum hats and attachment hardware
One pair caliper mounting brackets and hardware
One pair Spiegler Stainless Steel Brake Lines with abrasion resistant coating
Detailed installation instructions
Brake pads are NOT included with our system. Racing brake pads are a highly personal choice. Many manufacturers include a set of inexpensive, low quality pads with their brake kits. Rather than artificially inflating the price of our system with a set of pads you probably don't want anyway, we've decided to remove the cost from our system and allow our customers to choose the pads that best suit their needs.

DIFFERENTIAL PISTON BORES SIZED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE C5 CORVETTE, DESIGNED TO WORK WITH BOTH FRONT ESSEX COMPETITION BBK'S
The piston sizes for our system were specifically chosen for the C5 Corvette, which maintains proper factory brake bias. Our rear system can be bolted to an otherwise stock brake system with no ill-effects, negative impact on ABS, etc., or it can be combined with either our front Sprint or front Endurance Big Brake Kits. The vehicle's stock master cylinder can remain.

FINISH
The first obvious weakness when looking at aftermarket calipers is the finish. Most aftermarket calipers come in a painted finish, whether they are red, black, or gold. This painted finish is for corrosion resistance and appearance.

Unfortunately, for all of the compliments pretty colored calipers generate, there is an associated price if you drive the car in a track environment. That price is the chipping, flaking, fading, color shift, and general decimation of the finish in a fairly short period of time. I’ve seen OEM calipers such as these go from the as-delivered color to a nasty shade of brown in as little as one weekend. While this is typically worn as a badge of honor among our more hardcore customers, let’s face it…they still look terrible. More importantly though, all of those bits of paint end up in places they’re not supposed to, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Why does this happen? Heat. Paint and powder coat cannot adequately handle the temperatures that calipers hit when run on a track. Powder coat also has some notorious issues with shrinkage. The powder coat layer expands and grows when the caliper is heated. When it cools however, the powder coat doesn’t necessarily shrink in step with the caliper body itself. What’s left is a loose shell of finish hanging limply on the caliper body. That shell then cracks and falls to pieces.

Paint can also have similar issues depending on how it is applied. If you were to line up a few aftermarket calipers from the same manufacturer, you would likely see that the painted finish on each of those calipers is slightly different. Some have a thicker coat, some thinner, slightly different shades of red, etc. Painting is to some extent an art form, and must be performed in a tightly controlled environment. If it isn’t, you’re always going to see variation. A thick coat makes the part look soft around the edges, and is prone to cracking off in the same manner as the powder coat described above, leaving the underlying finish exposed. A part without enough paint will look uneven, and will not protect the underlying aluminum particularly well either.

In addition to problems with cracking, flaking, and uneven application, paint and powder coat also experience extreme color shift when heated. Red becomes maroon or black, gold becomes brown, and black just gets uglier.

Now let’s take a look at some real racing calipers.
The caliper we are using in the Essex Endurance Competition Kit for the Corvette is a special version of the AP Racing CP5040, with a unique specification just for Essex. This caliper was designed to be ultra-lightweight, stiff, and durable under all track conditions. The finish we chose is a hard anodizing. Hard anodizing is the business under track conditions.

When raw aluminum reacts with the oxygen in the air, a hard surface film develops on aluminum which prevents further degradation. The process is called oxidation, and you can think of it like rust. The anodizing process leverages this natural phenomenon, and takes it a step further to produce an extremely hard protective layer of aluminum oxide on the aluminum. It does so by running an electrical current through an acid bath, and dying it to the desired color. If you want to know more, Google it.

The result is a finish that is far more appropriate for racetrack use. Anodizing creates a uniform surface that is much more abrasion resistant than paint or powder coat. That means if you ding an anodized caliper with a box wrench when bleeding it, a big chunk of the finish isn’t going to chip off into your hand. While anodized calipers will still exhibit color shift, it will take a lot more heat to get them to change, and they won’t change as dramatically. They will go from semi-ugly grey, to a semi-ugly grey-brown. In short, they’ll look like the race calipers they are. More importantly though, you aren’t going to have bits of anodizing sticking to the sides of your pistons.

In keeping with AP's storied racing heritage, we decided to use a machined AP Racing logo, just like the ones on the calipers we sell to professional race teams. Please keep in mind however, that an anodized finish is not designed to be driven through road salt.

Okay, so we’ve established that paint and powder coat are not ideal choices for calipers that will be thrashed at several hundred degrees on the track. While the finish is the most blatant feature that people key in on, it’s actually not nearly as important as some of the other features in the caliper that allow it to operate efficiently at track temperatures.

BRAKE PADS IN A COMMONLY AVAILABLE SHAPE
The pad shape our CP5040 caliper is used by a wide range of r