OEM Civic Big Brake kit upgrades. ( Very informative )

THE BRAKE SYSTEM:

Pedal – Brake Booster – Master
Cylinder – Hardlines – Prop. Valve – Hardlines – Brake Hoses – Caliper –
Brake Pad – Rotor.

How to upgrade your stock system (simplest to
most complex):

TIRES!!!!!!! Your car will ONLY stop as fast as
your tires allow before they slip.
Spend the money on tires. ITR
brakes on your ABS civic with shit tires will not stop as soon as stock
brakes with great tires on your ABS civic because the ITR brakes will
lock up the wheels.

First off, your stock rotors…unless you are a
professional racer, worrying about CONSISTENT lap times in the wet with
a full stripped racecar, you do NOT want drilled or slotted rotors.
Your best rotors are blank cast iron rotors, such as OEM ones, or Brembo
blanks. F1 cars do not have holes in their rotors, nor do rally cars.
If you must have bling, go with slotted, but do not use drilled.

DO
NOT use drilled rotors on any street Honda, this is why: http://www.honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=1437507

Pads
For
pads, your OEM pads will work well, but ceramic pads will work better,
and metal usually work best. If you have some cheap pads and drilled
rotors, put back on your blank rotors and semi-ceramic pads, and you’ll
brake better. Some people THINK drilled and slotted rotors work better,
but this can be braking feel, opposed to the actual minimum 60-0
distance the car will do with ABS. The truth is that drilled and slotted
rotors decrease surface area where the pad contacts. The same pressure
from the piston to the pad is applied to less area, thus increasing the
pressure. This means that drilled/slotted rotors heat up quicker. Now on
a road this may be beneficial if you live in a cold area, but when your
braking consistently, they are going to fade sooner, and those holes
don't do crap for cooling, the rotor's surface and vents are going to
provide a lot more cooling surface area than a few extra holes will net
you. This so called improve braking CAN be percieved from the increased
nose dive or lurch forward from a stronger initial bite onto a cross
drilled rotor.

Wheel Style
Wheels can affect
brakes. If for example you are using the >94-01 Integra brake setup
with steelies and wheel covers, and you have metal pads on a track, your
brakes could be fading. Using bigger, open spoked wheels can help let
the heat radiate from the rotor and the caliper. Remember that both are
heatsinks (the NSX has grooves in it to up surface area for this
reason.) On a high speed driving day with triple digit temperatures,
just letting the heat radiate out can cool the brakes faster, though I
cant say how much because there are so many factors. Even the new
Maybach 57S has more open wheels to cool its brakes, and even the old
Taurus SHO had wheels designed like a pinwheel to pull air out of the
brake area (yes this does work.)

Brake Booster
Upgrading
your brake booster to the Integra (or maybe other) sized one has the
only drawback of pushing the MC forward, so the hardlines aren't going
to be in the same place as they were. So bending hardlines may be in
order. What a bigger booster does is the same thing as increasing the
pedal length, it increases the force on the MC linearly. Like it may may
push on it 40% harder or so at any given point. So this basically makes
your foot do less work. This is for people who have a really soft foot
and want to make their car brake 'harder'. This can be done, but given
the weight of the civic chassis, if you use the right sized MC with its
paired caliper, no upgrade to the booster is necessary. It gets to the
point where its just personal preference.

Master Cylinder
relative to the Caliper
When you go to bigger caliper than
use a larger piston, you are pushing more fluid through the brake lines.
Therefore, you should want a larger master cylinder to push this more
fluid.

General rule is…with your stock Civic DX, with the stock
front calipers, keep your 13/16” MC. Any bigger and your pedal will be
too stiff.
With EX/Si calipers, use a 7/8” MC from a 96-00 EX or
99-00 Si because of the more fluid going to a larger piston.
With
ITR/Legend/Vigor/Accord V6 or Integra DA or DC calipers, use a 15/16” MC
from a 98-01 Integra LS to accommodate for the even more fluid. Any
smaller of a MC will cause the pedal swing to be too long.
With NSX
or Legend GS calipers that have two pistons, or an aftermarket caliper
with multiple pistons, you’ll want a 1” MC because of even more fluid
required to push all the pistons. Get the 1” MC from a 98-01 Integra GSR
or ITR MC as it bolts onto the EK brake booster.

When changing
out a master cylinder, be sure to 'bing bleed' it first. This involves
having fluid in the resovoir and pumping it unconnected to allow fluid
to fill the internals. If you don't do this, you can still bleed the
car, but you may be at it all day, since air pockets may stick in there.
Research bing bleeding before you attempt this on your own.

A
bigger caliper usually has a bigger bracket, thus holds a bigger surface
area pad. This is generally better, and that’s why on a Civic, you swap
on an Integra caliper, because the piston is bigger (more fluid, that
doesn’t help) but the pad is bigger, and the piston disperses its energy
over more area because of a larger contact surface with the shim.


Now,
an ITR brake system on a Civic with crummy pads, drilled rotors,
stainless lines and old, water absorbed brake fluid may stop just as
well as an Integra GS brake system on a Civic with good tires,
semi-ceramic pads, new fluid, and blank rotors. This page is telling how
to upgrade, and yes, with the same other factors, you will have a
shorter 60-0 distance and less brake fade. But there are many other
factors of your brake system. If you have air bubbles in the lines, it
will suck. So don’t complain if you went to an aftermarket kit, or a
5-lug full ITR suspension and don’t feel like it stops as well as your
civic did bone stock. It may be worse, may be better, but I can’t tell
you exactly HOW much worse or better it is without knowing everything
specifically.

BRAKE SOFTLINES

Brake
softlines, or brake hoses, are the rubbery hoses that can flex since the
hardline is bolted to the frame and the brake moves up and down with
the wheel. Honda uses rubber lines as OEM. They are very durable, and
unless you take a box cutter to them directly, or are in an accident,
this brake hose won't leak out the sides. They will leak if you get dirt
on the contact point where the softline and hardline meet if you make a
dirty mess when installing. Make sure the surfaces are clean. Now many
people will attest to having a firmer brake pedal with stainless steel
brake lines, and this is true. Though they flex from the hydraulic pedal
same as rubber OEM hoses, they do flex less.

Stainless steel
brake lines affect pedal feel, not 60-0 distances. They make the pedal a
bit less soft because the stainless braided lines flex less than the
OEM rubber hoses, and affect pedal modulation, but on an ABS equipped
car, testing the before and after 60-0 distance will show no difference.

If
you do choose to use steel braided brake hoses, be sure to get some
that come with some kind of coating outside the steel mesh. Any track
racer will tell you that this mesh can get dust and grit in it, and this
can cause wear to the brake hose inside this steel mesh, possibly
causing wear, or even a leak. When connecting a banjo bolt for any
reason, be sure to always use a new crush washer. Crush washers are a
one time use part. Its annoying to spend the money and change em out
whenever a caliper is disconnected, but you don't want a leak. Any leak
in the hydraulic brake system will squirt fluid at a high pressure, and
thus less pressure is going to the actual brake to stop the car.