For HPDE use, my opinion is that the 987’s braking system is pretty solid. A GT3 master cylinder to stiffen up the pedal, good pads, and good fluid get you to a great place. The biggest weakness is the ABS, which can be resolved but as far as I know, only for a fairly large price tag (maybe there’s a Bosch ABS swap for another vehicle out there to be done, message me if you find one!).
As you get faster, additional cooling becomes a must. I’ve got your typical GT3 front duct swaps, plus GT2/3 front radiator deflectors, and on the rear both GT4 RS and 997.2 ducts. With all these ducting, I’ve run some light “endurance sessions” of 30+ min straight push laps, and the system has held up fine, though they’re still hotter than I’d like them to be.
Swapping the nice Brembo calipers out always seemed like a lot of money to burn for minimal gains. This is where my interest in the Levinson kit comes in, all that extra mass is a big bonus for keeping the whole system cooler and shedding heat. I also am currently moving away from Ferodo DS1.11’s (since FCP won’t supply them to me anymore!) for Pagid Yellows, so the extra torque due to the larger diameter rotors may not hurt, time will tell. This is not a sponsored post, I purchased these, and as you’ll see below I did run into at least one big issue so far.
Track testing is upcoming in the next few months, stay tuned for that I will update this post when I have more information.
First off, you can see the kit does at least look very nice. Here are some comparison photos and we’ll get into the numbers and such later.
Now it isn’t night and day, but they are noticeably larger and certainly look nice. My hunch is Porsche undersized these as one of the many ways they tried to neuter the Cayman/Boxster so it didn’t beat out the 911.
I forgot to weight the rears, but the front Levinson rotors are 1.6lbs heavier than these lightly used Sebro rotors. Not insubstantial, but the aluminum hat definitely helps cut down on the weight increase.
Now to the install, Levinson offers these very nice studs, though the swap to a 12 point nut is a little annoying, since I don’t generally carry those sockets to the track. Spacing the caliper is accomplished with simple aluminum spacers (more on an issue I had with these, below). He also sends along these longer stainless lines, which replace the hardline out of the back of the rotor and run straight to the chassis side connector, bypassing the one mounted on the wheel carrier.
When you get to installing your kit VERIFY THE THICKNESS OF THE SPACERS. I was unfortunately sent the wrong ones. The difference was minor, so I didn’t notice while installing, but it caused the rotors to damage my freshly rebuilt and repainted (by PMB performance) calipers. This is incredibly frustrating since they were in mint condition. Luckily with the wheels on it’s not very noticeable, but still, that’s an unacceptable oversight.
The spacers should be 17.5mm, not 16mm as shown below.
Here’s what the Pagid Yellow (RSL29) pads I have look like with the rotors installed. I am interested to see how this wears, as they are RIGHT on the edge, even overlapping the beveled part of the rotor.
On the street bedding in, they felt okay. The real test is track use, so I’ll be back once I’ve got a good number of laps on these!
Lastly, replacement rotor rings were one of my concerns going into this, and still are to a small degree. Levinson sells these at a reasonable price, but small companies disappear occasionally, so what happens if they’re not still around to offer rings?
Rob was nice enough to share the schematics with me, he claims Paragon and Coleman Racing (I think, this site?) confirmed they would be able to provide them if needed. They will need to support Brembo H-Bobbin style hardware. Schematics below.