700 series Bendix or Girling for performance?

Has anyone done testing to see which calipers have more potential. Yes I know to get something truly good I will need to do a true upgrade, but I have Girling on my 765, and bendix on my parts 764, so I want to put the best ones on my main car.

While I don't have comparative performance numbers for those calipers, my experience with maintaining the Bendix was continually frustrating. Best thing I did was swapping to Jumbo brakes from a 93 940. That gave a clearly noticeable braking performance boost, and far better troublefree reliability.

Pretty easy upgrade. The hardest part was figuring out which lines to use and which to plug.

Extra bonus: better bearings.

Drawback? Slightly higher unsprung weight. Haven't been able to notice or quantify this.

Also a better pad selection for the Girlings.

I would go with Girling just based on one bad experience with Bendix brakes.

Years ago I was trying to diagnose a braking issue on our 744. I came to find the caliper bracket for the Bendix brakes had literally warped itself. The new replacement bracket I ordered was noticeably beefier than the one it replaced. That led me to assume this wasn't an isolated issue.

91+ ‘jumbo’ brakes or retrofit the 302mm P80 cop duty brakes (been done).

Install 95 (only year we got them in the USA I forget?) 940 brake booster & pedal bracket?
Nice upgrade tho idk if there’s an easy answer there for youse 7/9 guise with manual trans pedal setups?…never crossed that bridge…

Idk what else to do recombining the Volvo junkpile on the TB-ch33p, most 7/9 brakes suuck for pedal feel/modulation compared to 240 or 164 setup w/fixed calipers on the 140 even…
…been a while since I had a 7/9 & did the wheel bearing, brake & booster easy bolt-on upgrades in those…
As BNE sez of 7/9s; ‘accordion bumpers; with brakes this bad, you’re gonna need em!’

There are also the very rare early girling alloy reinforced finned calipers for 700s…idk if you can get rotors worth a darn for them, but they have a little better pedal feel & fit under 14” alloys where clearance is tight if that matters?

Kjets On a Plane said:

retrofit the 302mm P80 cop duty brakes (been done).

Click to expand...

Another variation is 850 calipers, 302mm brackets, 305mm rotors from P2 V70 and longer bolts with a ~6mm spacer.

My vote is for the 850 brakes, for the cost and effort of doing it you can do it will all new parts for Sub $400 or less and the impovement is huge. While the late model Jumbo brakes are nice the 850 stuff is even better and barely any extra effort to make work. Ditch all of the two piston and dual hose options of the old 7 series and just go with a nice bolt on soluion. I had the dual hose option on my 1991 744T with dual piston and I ditched that for Wilwoods, both of my 945T wagons have the 850 brakes.

https://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=344357

So my final question with the upgrade, is will my 15" rims still work for the 850 upgrade"

302mm rotor option required a 16" wheel. If you use the 280mm rotor setup, you can use a 15" wheel.

Id avoid the 305 vs the 302. They are super heavy.

^This.

Tho I'm ~99% that P80 cop cars use 15" steelies w/factory junk-drawer common-enough/mass produced P80 302mm brakes, but IDK about 7/9 swaps w/different hubs/offset wheels or late MK2 95+ 960/S/V90 swaps (tho those use FWD offset wheels, obviously)?

IDK if those steels are unique to that application in Scandinavia or different from ours?
Steels are obviously thinner than alloys for the same strength.

280 is the standard P80 rotor, yeah?
What are the 7/9 sizes / ways to make those brakes or cars suck less or be less of a pig w/slow steering & numb terrible no-modulation brakes to drive?

15" wheels are kinda important for uh...those of us that um...do John Lane sorts of things with our cars (on a smaller scale) & are TB-?h33p-Budget™ .

has anyone done the 320mm oem setup instead of the 302mm on a 7/9?

Kjets On a Plane said:

^This.

Tho I'm ~99% that P80 cop cars use 15" steelies w/factory junk-drawer common-enough/mass produced P80 302mm brakes, but IDK about 7/9 swaps w/different hubs/offset wheels or late MK2 95+ 960/S/V90 swaps (tho those use FWD offset wheels, obviously)?

IDK if those steels are unique to that application in Scandinavia or different from ours?
Steels are obviously thinner than alloys for the same strength.

280 is the standard P80 rotor, yeah?
What are the 7/9 sizes / ways to make those brakes or cars suck less or be less of a pig w/slow steering & numb terrible no-modulation brakes to drive?

15" wheels are kinda important for uh...those of us that um...do John Lane sorts of things with our cars (on a smaller scale) & are TB-?h33p-Budget? .

Click to expand...

I too am waiting on someone to reply to your question. I have the calipers and brackets off a 94 940 waiting in a box, so I have to decide whether to go with what I already have or start gathering bits for the 850 upgrade. Given my wheels are dracos, 302+mm is not on the table

Incidentally, I also have been wondering about the 95+ 960/S/V90 swaps. Someone here mentioned doing it and that it involved welding new bits to the frame. But, it would open the wheels option bin without requiring spacers.

So, would any, say, v70 brake caliper + bracket work with a 280mm rotor in a 700/900?