NA/NB Stage 2 Little Big Brake Kit

A great street or autocross package. Only Flyin' Miata offers a caliper upgrade that will fit under 13" wheels or stock ones - and only Flyin' Miata offers a rear caliper upgrade that retains the parking brake (although that requires 15" wheels). This is what Keith runs on his street Miata, and he loves it.

Up front, we replaced the stock single-piston iron caliper with a light and stiff aluminum four-piston Powerlite caliper. That's responsible for a 4 lb weight loss per side. It's compact enough to fit around the small Miata discs, but is nice and stiff and gives even pressure across the 5 square inch pad. Since the 1.38" pistons are properly sized, the stock pedal feel will not change. Porterfield, Hawk, Carbotech, Performance Friction and Wilwood all offer a full range of pads to choose from.

In the rear, we install a version of the same caliper with 1" pistons. This rear setup does generate more braking power than stock, so you will see a shift in balance towards the rear.

You have two options for the rear brakes:

• Built-in parking brake. This is the least expensive and lightest (drops about 3 lbs per corner!), but the parking brake isn't very strong, definitely not strong enough for drifting. There's a 3 lb weight loss per side here, for a total weight loss of 14 lbs of unsprung weight.
• Separate parking brake caliper. This kit puts two separate calipers on each rear wheel, a four-piston Powerlite for your foot brakes and a mechanical MC4 for your parking brake. There's a slight weight penalty over stock (about .5 lbs per corner, so 7 lbs of weight loss for the entire kit), but you get a real parking brake and the stiff Powerlite caliper for your foot brakes. Note that if you choose grey calipers, the parking brake caliper will actually be silver. It's not dramatically different than the grey of the Powerlite, but it's definitely not a perfect match. 

Weight note: The drop in weight quoted here assumes that you're sticking with the same diameter rotors that you currently have. If you go up to a larger rotor size, the weight savings won't be as significant due to the increased rotor mass.

What really makes the caliper special are the custom alterations that allow it to work with a handbrake. This makes it eligible for many race classes that require a functional parking brake. That's right, it's SCCA legal.

The kit includes a brake proportioning valve so you can dial in the perfect balance for your car. 2001-05 ABS cars use electronic brake distribution, so you'll want to delete that option.

We ship the kit with Wilwood BP-20X compound pads in the front, which are a good street/autocross choice and will even stand up to track use. The rears are a BP-10.

This version is designed to use either the stock 10" 1994-02 or stock 11" 2001-05 Sport rotor size (rotors not included). If you have a car with different rotor sizes, all you'll need are the correct rotors to install this on your car. If you want to mix and match rotor sizes - say, 10" front and 11" rear - go for it.

This kit will fit under a wide variety of wheels. The parking brake means you can't use factory 14" wheels, but most 15" wheels should fit. The 11" setup tends to fit a few more wheels due to the placement of the caliper. Don't make assumptions, unless you know for sure, use our templates to check.

Front:
10" 1994-02
11" 2001-05

Rear:
10" 1994-02
11" 2001-05

These are "Type III anodized", which is a harder and more dense anodizing than the old Type II. The old anodizing could also change color under very hot temperatures, which is not a problem with the new process as no dyes are involved. This makes the new color a grey, which can vary slightly from caliper to caliper. 

The kit includes:

• Wilwood Powerlite 4-piston calipers and Wilwood BP-20X pads front
• Wilwood Powerlite 4-piston calipers and Wilwood BP-10 pads rear
• stainless braided lines front and rear
• FM proportioning valve kit (if selected)
• parking brake cables 

Please note that both the front and rear brake lines are unique to these calipers. If you currently have stainless lines for stock calipers, they will not work.