Project GR Corolla Street & Track Brake Upgrades

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:02]Mike from Moto IQ here and we're here today to talk about another installment of our project GR Corolla. The GR comes with pretty good brakes from the factory. It has 356 mm front rotors and 308 mm rotors in the back, four piston front calipers, and two piston rear. I mean, they're pretty good brakes right from the get-go, but there were some things we didn't like. Uh, one of them, the factory brake pads are awful. Um, they're they dust a lot and they also chew up rotors really quick. Like our car is not that old and our rotors have significant wear and the car hasn't even seen the track yet. So, you know, this is a problem. The brake dust is corrosive and it's also eating up the finish on the wheels. Even though we wash the wheels every week, um, they're turning brown and the powder coat on them is getting all pitted. So, you know, a lot of it's cosmetic, but uh you know, the excessive rotor wear is a bad thing. So, we're going to run through the brakes and do some stuff to improve performance and uh you know, make things a little cooler. Uh first thing is we have some Lambspeed two-piece rotors.

[00:01:13]Now, the stock front rotors are two-piece, but they don't float. Uh the Lambspeed is a two-piece rotor. It um the rotor floats. What this means is that it has some movement back and forth. And uh the advantage of this is when the rotor starts getting hot. If it's a fixed rotor, the rotor will distort like a cone and you'll lose brake area and you'll also get a mushier pedal because uh the brake surfaces aren't parallel to the caliper anymore.

[00:01:44]So most high performance brake systems and race car brakes do have floating rotors. So you could see like it has uh bobin bolts and it has floater clips.

[00:01:54]These clips are here so the car doesn't make rattling noises. Um if the rotors uh were really free floating, you would hear this chinging noise while driving down the street. So these spring clips prevent that from happening. These rotors are also lighter than stock.

[00:02:11]They're 2.4 lbs a piece uh lighter than the stock rotors. So, you get um better brake action and you get less weight.

[00:02:21]The the rear rotors are really cool, too. Um they're two-piece. The factory rotor is one piece and they have this alloy center hat. Saves a lot of weight.

[00:02:31]It is a floating rotor, so uh you don't get that cone distortion with heat. And these rotors are a whopping 4.4 lb lighter than stock. They're also 320 mm.

[00:02:44]Um, so they're 8 mm per side bigger than stock, so you have a little bit more swept area. Um, some of these things about these rotors I like is that they have um these uh slots. The slots help evacuate uh hot gas between the pad and the rotor face. So um you have better braking like the pad can act like a lubricant and cause some fade. Also, uh, we had these rotors cryogenically treated by CTP cryogenics.

[00:03:14]Now, we've heard that, uh, cryotreating can make your rotors last twice as long.

[00:03:19]Um, I don't have any personal experience with crying rotors. So, um, you know, this is my first foray into experimenting with cryo rotors, but, uh, you know, we we'll report about our experiences and see how much longer they last. And um you know, rotor wear wear is a bad problem on this car as it is.

[00:03:40]Uh so we're talking about brake pads and uh I was complaining to my buddies at uh CSG Counterpace Garage. They make some of the best brake pads on the market.

[00:03:51]They happen to have a uh street performance pad for the GR. So these are more fade resistant um than the stock pads. They're a lot easier on the rotors and they dust a lot less. So, I think this is just what we needed. Um, CSG also has a more aggressive, more track oriented compound um that's available and kept in stock. And if you're actually racing these things or doing time attack, they have about three or four other compounds you can choose from that they can uh make for you. So, uh, CSG, uh, they make some of the most excellent pads, actually, and they're kind of a well-kept secret, but, uh, we run their race compounds and some of our fastest time attack and, uh, Pikes Peak cars, and they work really well. Um, some of the stuff is they come pre-bedded and uh the material is really incompressible so you get good uh pedal feel and u in the case of here I hope we get better rotor wear and less dust. We're also going to be running um endless uh RF 650 fluid.

[00:05:04]Now I think this is one of the best fluids on the market. Has a really high dry boiling point. The wet boiling point's not too bad and it's uh you know cheaper than castor SRF so you could uh you know not be stingy with it and really flush your system. Um it's also less compressive than uh other fluids on the market so you get a really good pedal with it. It's probably like one of my favorite um brake fluids on the market.

[00:05:37]For our calipers, we got some stuff from 555 Engineering to really make the stock calipers awesome. Now, the first thing we got from 555 Engineering was some titanium heat shields. These go behind the brake pads. Um, titanium has really poor thermal conductivity, so um, the heat has a hard time going through these to get to the pistons and the fluid of the brakes. They're a little bit thick, so you have to put a few hundred miles on the pads, so there's enough room for them to slip in. But other than that, um it's an easy install. If you have some miles on your pads already, they'll go right in. But, um, you know, I'm talking about brand new pads. The next parts are really trick. They convert your GR calipers into Highbuck Racing calipers.

[00:06:31]Now, uh, the first thing is these, uh, titanium pistons. uh like the heat shield. Titanium has low thermal conductivity and uh these give some standoff to the uh the seals so you have like uh a little bit space so they don't get affected by the heat so much. Uh the other thing they have is they have these holes drilled around the top just like you see in really expensive race calipers. Uh these holes let some air circulate around to help uh keep the heat from getting past here and they take away some um material room so there's less uh metal to transfer heat.

[00:07:12]So these pistons really help keep the heat out of the fluid. Uh finally uh we have these uh high temperature seals and uh dust boots. These uh seals are a high temperature material and they're not going to degrade with heat as easily as the stock parts. And you get to keep the dust boots. This is kind of an advantage because most of your racing brake calipers don't have dust boots cuz they catch on fire and char and cause trouble. So the dust boots are made out of silicone, which is a uh high temperature rubber, much higher temperature than the stock material. Uh this way, uh you could have keep your brake dust and stuff out out of your uh piston area, save your seals, but still not have the uh melting and catching on fire stock boots like um your calipers come with. Now, a lot of race calipers, they do away with the boots for that reason, but the abrasive brake dust can go right in and eat up your seals. So, I really think this stuff is really good.

[00:08:20]It's a good advantage on the track and it's even okay to have on your street car. So, here we are with our brake upgrades on the car. So, this is the lambspeed rotor full floating that we talked about. The caliper has the CSG pads in. The CSG pads are really thick.

[00:08:38]They try to give you the most pad material for the money, but the downside of that is you have to take out the stock anti- rattle uh plate shield thing that goes behind the brake pads. We'll see if this makes more noise, but they give you every bit of friction material you could possibly fit into the caliper.

[00:08:56]Um, so we're going to drive this maybe a couple thousand miles on the street, and we'll try to fit the anti- rattle um shields in. Uh, we also have the 555 engineering titanium heat shields that go in here and we'll drive the car a little bit more so they'll let the pads wear so we can fit those in here too to uh keep the heat out of the caliper itself. The uh titanium 555 engineering pistons, they're in there. They work the best with the titanium heat shields, but even the pistons help keep heat out of the caliper and help protect the seals and the uh the dust boots on the stock caliper. So, in the rear, we have the uh Lambspe big rotors that are much lighter. They look a lot cooler than the stock one piece rotors, full floating.

[00:09:49]Uh the caliper, uh we didn't do anything to it, but we do have the CSG pads in here. Uh, most of the brake work is done in the front, so you don't need to do as many things to the rear, but um, I would say these rotors look better with a cryogenic treatment and the different pads. They're going to last longer, and these pads are going to last a lot longer and dust a lot less than the stock Toyota pads. So, that uh, finishes up our brake upgrades. Now, we've installed this stuff in Project GR already, and you know, the stock GR has pretty good brakes to begin with, but the addition of the CSG pads and the 555 engineering internals, oh my god, they're awesome. Uh, the initial bite is better. Uh, the pedal feel is a lot better. The pedals are firmer and the brake pads have like a continuous mew.

[00:10:43]They don't have any um like too aggressive bite or falling off toward the end when they start getting hot. And best of all maybe is they make maybe 1/4 of the dust of the stock pads. And the dust they make is easy to wipe off. It's not that nasty black sticky stuff. So it's a win-win situation. You get good track performance. You get better feel on the street. You get less brake dust.

[00:11:11]And the CSG pads. so far have been really quiet. Like they don't squeak or squeal so far. Um we're really impressed with all these changes and uh we think all of them are well worth it. So if you like this content uh be sure and subscribe, give us a like. Um we don't really have any site sponsors, so um if you want to help us out, you can follow the link below and give us a donation and help us produce this content. I hope you find our GR content good and I'll uh see you next time.