The Aug. 08 Car & Driver has an article comparing brake performance of a wide variety of vehicles. They tested 3 categories: family sedans, luxury SUV's, and performance cars. Players included entrants from Honda, BMW, Porsche, Chevy, Cadillac, VW, Infiniti, and Nissan (possibly one or two more I'm forgetting). The test was essentially a bunch of back-to-back panic stops for each vehicle to see how the brakes performed when they got hot. The results were pretty disturbing. The Nissan Nismo Z and Infiniti FX50 both displayed FAR AND AWAY the most sudden and severe brake fade in the entire test.

This wasn't a case of the Nissan products not being quite as good as the competition. This was a case of BOTH Nissan products having brakes that essentially quit working completely in a fashion not exhibited by any of the other vehicles from any of the other manufacturers.

My initial guess is that Nissan must use a lower temp brake fluid that boils easier then the other manufacturers. The sudden brake fade displayed seems to me to be indicative of compressible gas in the hydraulic system as opposed to friction loss at the pad-rotor interface.

Have any of you encountered this sort of behavior from your Infinitis?

 

No, and I had to do two panic stops from ~70-75 within a minute of each other when some jack@$$ cut me off and then another less than a mile down the road.

 

I always thought our cars were known to have excellent non-fading brakes....plus car and driver is too biassed with their testing

 

Haha, it should be called BMW and Driver magazine

 

No kidding.

Maybe it's because the editors all all getting payouts for helping to prop up BMW sales figures.

I love how they have categories like "gotta have it" and nonsense like that... Gotta have it for who? certainly not me.

 

I've had mine on the track, with lots of twisties including a 100+mph into a 90 degree chicane, and experienced zero fade. Have NEVER experienced brake fade in my G.

My Maxima was another story...

 

well considering that i got the sports model with larger rotors, there's no brake fade at all hahaha,

i don't drive in any situation that needs constant slamming on brakes to experience it

 

+1000000000000000000...all my bmw enthusiast friends love car and driver...especially after they ranked the e92 M3 over the R35 GTR....which is complete horseshiz

 

Whoa people. I agree 110% that C&D need to get off the BMW crack. But BMW bias had nothing to do with this test. I wish I had scans of the article for you.

The test involved almost zero subjective analysis. It was 99% pure objective data and there was no “winner” chosen. There were about 12 vehicles in the test and only one was a BMW. The BMW also didn’t even come close to being the best performer in its category.

As far as the feeling better because you have the sport pkg. goes, the Nismo Z had big honkin Brembos on it and suffered the same sudden brake failure fate as the FX50. Granted it took more braking cycles to induce the Z’s failure but the sudden and total failure signature was similar in both cases and unique among all the other competitors.

I’m glad to hear that some folks have put their cars on the track and not experienced this. I doubt it’s something you would likely see in everyday driving since it required multiple repeated cycling through 100-0 panic stops to induce.

 

100mph!!! Who won the test?

 

Atleast it is good to know that I would have a few goes at 100mph->0 before the brakes fade into nothing.

But it's not like i do that all the time.

So one has to question, how legitimate is this test and for what purpose?

 

LiquidGx: 100mph!!! Who won the test?
Don't remember exactly who "won" for each of the the 3 catagories. They were all in the same relative ballpark except the two Nissan products that stuck out like a sore thumb.

This discussion would be far more fruitful if y'all could see the article. I'll see about scanning it this evening. Any ideas where I could host the images to post them though?

 

photobucket or imageshack

 

Every brake will fade if you intentionally drive like a nut. All it takes is full speed acceleration to 60 mph, slam on brakes till ABS almost engages, then rapidly repeat over and over.

Even on the track, no one does this let alone on the street. The stock brakes are perfect for the daily driver.

 

I think it was the nismo Z that had the possible brake fluid problem. The Infinity FX had premature brake pad failure with rotor scorching. In our cars we may have that same pad system and we may also have low temp brake fluid. Makes me nervous but 1 or 2 emergency stops should not pose a significant danger. Regardless of how unrealistic the test was, Nissan/Infinity still did the worst of the lot.