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Originally Posted by Perfectlap
Boy I could not disagree more. Aside from tires, if there was only one area I could upgrade on a car it would be the brakes. The ability to brake a few feet sooner could be the difference between saying "PHEWW!!! THAT WAS CLOSE!" and a seriously bad day that can't be undone. I once read a report that said that 70% of car accidents would be avoided if a driver had just one extra second of reaction time or half a car length.
The other great investment in Pcar ownership would be to enter a few autocross events with your local Porsche Club. After a mere twelve laps on an autocross course you have become a 1000% better Porsche driver on the open road.
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Taking your arguement to it's logical conclusion, why should anyone be even satisfied with the big Brembo 'S' brakes? Shouldn't everyone be upgrading to the PCCB ceramics for $13k? And even then, they could just as well come up that one foot short in an emergency.
So it really becomes a cost/benefit arguement, how much improvement per $ spent. To me, given the cost of the upgrade ($6k), it is not a good C/B. That is, unless you track the car, or need to make up for a feeling of inadequate brakes (which really isn't the case). I'm not saying you can't do the upgrade, if that's your thing, go for it. You can feel better, or think it's cooler, and that's OK, I'm just saying that the performance gain doesn't justify it.
But, even putting the big Brembos on a base model won't duplicate the stopping distances of the 'S' simply because to further improve brake response for the 'S' model, Porsche’s development engineers increased the transmission ratio of the brake servo by 18%, helping to apply the brakes in a shorter time and in the process reducing pedal forces. So, unless you also swap the vacuum booster, you only gain a couple feet at best on a converted Base model.
The base Boxster brakes have an average stopping distance of 119ft. vs the 'S' model's avg. of 112ft., vs the overall avg. stopping distance of all cars at an est. 185ft.. (source:
http://www.jmu.edu/safetyplan/vehicle/generaldriver/stoppingdistance.shtml ) . And this avg. assumes that the car is unloaded (except for the driver), has brakes in good condition, on dry, hard, approximately level stretches of highway free from loose material, in other words ideal conditions. Anything less, and the stopping distance increases. So, there are many times when (given differing circumstances) the Base car will outperform an 'S'.
So it is not at all inaccurate to classify the Base model's brakes as adequate, in fact, you can make the arguement, given that they're stopping distance is
⅔ that of an average car, that they are really more than adequate. The main advantage to the big Brembos is on the track, where repeated application of the brakes results in less fade than the single monoblocks of the Base.
You are correct that reaction time is critical to achieving the shortest stopping distance. Given an average car length of 15 ft., with either the Base or the 'S', you need to be on the brakes (@60mph) 7+ car lengths (7.4 for the 'S' vs 7.9 for the Base) before the car in front of you to assure you're not going to collide. But, you also need to factor your reaction time to this. At 60mph, your car is traveling at 88 ft./sec. With a reaction time of .75 sec. (considered avg.) you've added another 4+ car lengths (66') to the equation.
All the upgrades in the world won't improve this reaction time. Rather than spend $6k on an upgrade, most owners would be better served in improving their reaction times. If you spent 5 min./day on a reaction tester like this one for example: (
http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/index.php ), you'd most likely gain much shorter stopping times than simply swapping the hardware.