GA70 Suspension and brake Upgrade:

[Quint]

What have people done with their GA/MA70s for upgrading the suspension and brakes?

are JZA hubs interchangable? Are they a suitable upgrade? 2 pot floating with larger rotors, correct?

Wanting to kit the car for track use with occasional street use. Does TRD produce a kit for the GA/MAs? Anyone kitted with a set? Thoughts? Happy? Unhappy?

Worried that a generic item such as a bilstien etc. will be designed for every car and wont take the supras unique nature into account, aka, heavy ass, or are there a line that work particularly well with the supras?

Basically, i need to upgrade my shocks as they are farked and get a better result than just repalcing with standard. Only have a vague nation about the magic that is suspension so have come to find a guru and/or people that have tried differant combinations with their supras and found a good solution. The engine nearly finished and i'm dieing to get to the tracks.

Budget is set at about 2.5g for suspension, brakes sway bars etc. (if applicable).

Lay your knowledge on me!

[MrOizo]

I like this post as i am looking into brakes also.

Have been advised the Mintex for performance.

Will get on to this early next year i think

[Toby]

I'll ask my gf's uncle what he was running in his 1uz supra, I know he did a fair bit of development, although his was a dedicated track car.

[the fallen303]

whiteline do swaybars for the supras, they're supposed to be quite good, sell on TM for $200ish.

bilsteins are good. the factory ones work really well, haven't heard anything bad about them. doctrd on here has a flatmate looking at selling a set from his jza70. if i didn't have koni's, i'd probably run bilsteins. just get a good set of springs to match, with a slight drop, and will work well. don't go too low though as even though looks cool, more than 1.5" drop will start to throw suspension geometry out and actually make the car handle worse.

brakes the facelift supras came with same calipers, but larger 297mm rotors. easier to get complete facelift hubs, as mounting points for the calipers are slightly different. we fitted legacy twin pot calipers to our jza70, made a bit of difference, also got stock rotors slotted.

from what i've found, there's nothing really out there for mk3's in ways of off the shelf brake upgrades regretably. hunt, dave thom and i have been looking into heaps of setups for our cars, but no joy. hunts going to custom adapters, willwood calipers, and big rotors. i'm looking into adapters, ls400 calipers, and not sure on rotors yet.

hope that helps.

[FLAWLES]

how different are they compared to mk4 brakes?

cause if they are anything like the jzx90/100 chassis you can by some adaptor bolts ( which are offset ) from the likes of night pager jp and use the rz supra 4 pots and disc's

[Quint]

hope that helps.

Gives me a starting point. aka, i'm farked, haha.

Was actually looking at a set of factory bilstiens to swap in. Will have to see if i can pick up the rotors and shocks off someone with a wrecked jza70 and see if i can upgrade the calipers to a twin pot as you were saying. Its a good starting point at least. I'm currently running springs with a 45mm drop.

Just to be sure, minimal to no adaption work is needed for a direct swap?

how different are they compared to mk4 brakes?

No idea, never had a look, though would be interesting to know. Someone will show up.


Toby, let us know what you find out, cheers.

[the fallen303]

ls400's are almost identical to mk4's, and no, they don't bolt on. the bolts are close as you say, but the caliper itself fouls on a lot of points on the hub. dad tried grinding bits off the caliper and hub to get it to fit with no joy. regretably the *a70's are pretty much the previous generation, where as the x90/100's, z30's, a80's, s147's etc are all very close to being able just swap everything around.

[Toby]

Toby, let us know what you find out, cheers.

His car was a mkII I think, he did do a bit of development with suspension but I don't think it applies to the ma70 in the same way.

He did say that until he got below 1.40 at Ruapuna mintex pads bonded to the original backing plates with some upgraded rotors were fine, after he went to semi's they would only last 4 laps before getting too hot.

The dude knows too much though and I got a bit lost in the intricate details

[blackmk3]

I did the "nightpager" upgrade on my supra, Nissan 4-pots with mk4 323mm rotors. Also got custom made braided lines made at the same time and the difference was incredible, much better than the stock supra brakes. Thats with EBC "red stuff" pads. Well worth it

It depends on how much "track use" your going to see and how hard it will be, standard face-lift brakes with a mintex 1166 compound might be enough? im sure Cat007 (aka Hunt) will chime in with his input as im pretty sure he ran these on his supra with face-lift brakes

IF pad upgrades wont be enough for you, I would start looking into a custom setup, do it once do it right then you will never have to touch the brakes again

I just got a set of white-line sway bars aswell, and whooo what a product the quality of these is amazing. I have two supra's and none go so i cant comment on the performance upgrade of them

I have a set of year and a half old bilstiens in my supra, and looking at changing really, wanting the adjustablility. the bilstiens can be adjusted but have to be sent away. and height adjustability isnt low enough...

[Quint]

It depends on how much "track use" your going to see and how hard it will be, standard face-lift brakes with a mintex 1166 compound might be enough? im sure Cat007 (aka Hunt) will chime in with his input as im pretty sure he ran these on his supra with face-lift brakes

Might be worth a shot. 4 pots on 323mm is probably a bit excessive, i'm starting at a pretty low level, My engine is a pretty standard 1G, with just the basic mods to max out the standard ecu and get rid of some of its lag so ~240hp at the best (will dyno it once its actually running). Nice starting point to work on 'driving' and get some good quality seat time, increase my skill and then look at upgrading the motor again. Hoping to put a package together that will out perform the motor so when i upgrade i can still run the same set up with maybe a few further tweaks.

Sounds like bilstiens with face lift hubs, upgraded pads and whiteline sway bars will be a good setup to look into.

[blackmk3]

I definatly think so, they will be a good setup for quite a long time, specially if the supra of yours looses a few kilos....

[Quint]

Now to find a wrecked JZA70 supra... *sigh* If anyone knows of one. Let me know!

Wieght is definatly an issue, i'm gutted i managed to piece together a 100% perfect interior... i suppose i can set it up in the spare room and pretend, haha.

[the fallen303]

strip interior out, remove sound deadening thats stuck to the chassis, if desperate, strip felt from carpet, then refit the interior. the plastic trims don't really add much weight at all. sure the seatbelts, seats, mounting point etc add quite a bit (belts and mounts were over 10kg when i stripped mine out) but then the interior does start to look quite messy. if you want to stay with stock seats, the lightest are the prefacelift ga70 seats, as they're all manual, no motors.

[MrOizo]

Now to find a wrecked JZA70 supra... *sigh* If anyone knows of one. Let me know!

Wieght is definatly an issue, i'm gutted i managed to piece together a 100% perfect interior... i suppose i can set it up in the spare room and pretend, haha.

Thinking about it i still have the front hubs from a JZA70 front cut i got some time back - complete hubs... have a bit of rust on them though.

Let me know if you are wanting them

[Looonie]

Lol @ weight saving & supra...

Oxymoron anyone?

[postfach]

For 2.5k you should be able to get a set of bc coilovers, whiteline front and rear sway bars, some new rotors and a set of decent pads. You could get lucky and find a pair of the facelift MA70/JZA70 calipers (the difference is in the mounting lug on the caliper itself, NOT the hub).

Put it all in at once and you'll be blown away at how different your car feels.

[Py7h0n]

I have a set of JZA70R Calipers and very good condition disks

[cat007]

Just to 'chime' in here

the 1166's I was running - I think are fine if you go to the track once in a blue moon.

I completely destroyed mine because I was running a full race slick so the heat being put into them was a LOT more than the stock caliper's could dissipate.

I'm currently setting up some Wilwood 4 Pot calipers (ask Bazda on here to see if he can still get them cheap) and Ferodo 2500 pads (streetable pad but can take a thrashing on the track I'm told) and 324x32mm Nissan 350z "track" rotors. I'm using the cheaper brand, not DBA's as DBA's were stupidly expensive and the cheaper ones just aren't slotted and are about $80 each (so I'll take a spare when I go to the track, just in case )

Stainless brake lines aren't TOO important but they do help pedal feel.

Brake fluid is a biggie though. Don't just chuck in some DOT4 crap from repco. Talk to the guys at racebrakes - Steve there might be able to get you a good price on some Penrite stuff - which is supposed to be up there. Or if you want, spend a stupid amount and get some Motul RBF 660

I'm having to make up my own caliper adapters, as they aren't a direct bolt on. Which means I'll need a cert for them but it'll be worth it.

Here's what happens when you run full slicks, and stock rotors with the Mintex 1166 pads and are too stupid to listen to the tell tale signs of a soft pedal and just want to get past that stupid fraser :

http://www.youtube.com/user/5UPRAH#p/u/9/yyPrrEpFP1I

[Py7h0n]

As I remember you were running cheap nasty fluid and that was the cause - not the stock rotors or the M1166's?

[cat007]

Nah I was either running motul rbf600 or the penrite sin stuff. Which are both compatible to each other

it was the overheating of the rotor then pad which caused the failure. Hence why I'm sorting brake ducting before the next event