POST UPDATED 1/8/2016 For New Front Brake Line Information!
I was originally going to do a complete how-to post for the 08+ brake upgrade but after reading krh2’s
sticky, I decided it would be a complete waste of my time. I really like doing how-to posts on here, but he did a great job on his posts for front and rear brakes so check those out if you haven’t already. Nice work krh2.
I shifted gears and instead decided to do a post, focusing on the parts required for the upgrade, and the why behind each part. I did weeks worth of research on-line and on this site trying to decide which parts to buy. A lot of that was trying to figure out what parts would work and what parts I really needed. Unfortunately money was a concern for me doing this upgrade. I would have loved to spend the cash for the frozen rotor upgrade but unfortunately it just wasn’t in the budget.
The basic idea behind this upgrade is to get bigger rotors, which means bigger calipers. Sorry to point the obvious out. But to be exact you are looking to increase your rotor size from a diameter of 320mm to 350mm and a thickness of 26mm to 30mm. The issue lies in the hub diameter. The hub diameter of the 2004-2007 Titans was 82mm, however in 2008 the hub diameter went up to 90mm.
Rotors
The main reason I didn’t do this upgrade years ago was because I refused to use the spacers seen all over this site to correct the difference in hub diameters. Don’t get me wrong, they look amazing and I’m sure they work perfectly, but for me personally something just didn’t sit right about it. I didn’t like the idea of needing a custom part, which I couldn’t easily order and replace if necessary. When I finally decided I was going to pull the trigger and do this upgrade I was determined to figure out why I needed these spacers. I was delighted to find out YOU DON’T NEED THEM. Let me explain…
It is fairly obvious that the bearing hub assembly in the 2004-2007 Titan is different from the 2008+ which is why you need the spacer. The Timken bearing used in the early model titans is an SP500701. If you check out their website you will get the following information:
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You will note that the same bearing is used in the Q56 and the Armada. This is the key piece of information you need. In 2006 it appears Nissan figured out that the Titan/Armada brakes sucked and they decided to fix the Armada first. When they did this however, they didn’t upgrade the hub assembly. What they did was the upgrade you are reading about right now. So if you search 2006 Armada rotors you will find that there are two options available. One option is for the Bosch 320mm caliper (same as 2005 Titan) and the other is for the 350mm Akebono caliper. Since they didn’t upgrade the hub this is the rotor you need to do a direct bolt up upgrade for the early model Titans with no spacer needed. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words so here you go:
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For anyone hung up on that 0.15mm difference, to put it into perspective that is about the thickness of a human hair and converts to .005”. It actually gives you better clearance to the hub. Trust me it fits. That rotor was meant to go with that hub assembly.
I chose to go with the Centric 120.42094 rotors. I went this way for a few reasons. First, after doing a lot of digging it seems in the snow/salt country smooth rotors are the way to go. This can probably be highly debated but that’s what I’m going with. Second, it turns out this centric rotor is a popular choice for other companies to buy and machine into drilled and slotted rotors. So if it is good enough for premium rotor companies its good enough for me. I also really liked the construction of the Centric rotors and the coating on all surfaces of the rotor that don’t contact the pad. The coating was a huge selling point for me. Go to their website and check out the description of their premium rotors. Regardless of what rotor your chose, select one for the 2006 Armada with 350mm calipers and it should work perfectly for you.
Calipers and Torque Members
The caliper purchase is pretty straight forward. Buy calipers for a 2008+ Titan. After doing a lot of research I ended up choosing the Centric 141.42145/141.42146. Centric seems to be a legit American company that cares about their products. Look at their website. They are either really good at marketing, or they are a good company that makes good products, or they are both. I haven’t used their products until now, but I can’t really find anyone that complains about their calipers. Their corrosion resistant coating was also a big plus for me.
I understand people wanting to go with new calipers directly from Nissan, but in my honest opinion this is a just a huge waste of money. The cost to buy new calipers is crazy expensive. If you buy a decent re-manufactured caliper, you are essentially buying a new caliper with a used body, and that used body probably came from a Nissan Titan (OEM Part). This decision is up to you, but the calipers I got from Centric look 100% brand new, and they were rebuilt in the USA not China.
Torque Members and Bolts
I seemed to find a lot of questions on this site regarding upgrading the torque members for the brake upgrade. Here is the bottom line with this discussion… buy a semi-loaded caliper that comes with the torque member and you are good to go. The centric calipers listed above come with the torque members.
As for the bolts, the 2005 Titan used the 41005-7S00. The 2008+ used the 41005-ZC00A. At first my technical justification was that when Nissan upgraded the brakes in 2008 they upgraded the bolt, therefore I should upgrade the bolt. Nissan probably paid an engineer thousands of dollars to analyze these bolts so I’m not going to second guess this decision for $20, right? Once I got the bolts I looked at them both and it turns out the head markings are the same on both bolts which is 10.9. I won’t turn this into a class on bolts but 10.9 just means that the bolt has an approximate max tensile strength of 1000MPa. The bolts are the same material, size, pitch and length. So then why the different part number?! Drum roll please… the old bolt has a plain hex head and the new bolt has a hex washer head. That’s the only difference. Sorry to disappoint. So if you upgrade to the 41005-ZC00A, you can toss the washer that came off your truck when you removed the 41005-7S00.
Brake Lines
Update 1/8/2016
I could probably make an entire new post dedicated to the brake lines on this truck after what I have gone through, but I will keep it here in the spirit of the brake upgrade. If you read the original post from last year I originally decided to go with the Goodridge stainless lines. For some reason I was never completely satisfied with these lines, and it nagged at me until I decided to do something about it.
If you are new to this post, you need to know that in order to perform this upgrade the safe way you need new brake lines because they need to be slightly longer. If you read further down in the replies to this post you will see a way to modify the early model brake lines to make them work. This decision is completely up to you.
I probably played with the routing of the Goodridge lines a dozen time and never got it to the point where I really felt they were safe. After about 6 months I found that both of the brake lines had damage to the casing on the brake lines due to rubbing on the ABS sensor and the tight bends these things have to do to work on the truck. The banjo fittings on the end of the Goodridge lines are a standard fitting that have absolutely nothing to do with the Titan setup therefore they will never fit like they should. They also don’t have an anti-rotation tab to lock them into the rotor like the original lines.
So anyway my research project now officially began. At this point I felt like I had a few options. If you look at the rotors section of this post, you can do the same type of research for the brake lines and this is what you will find:
There is a period in there where Nissan made a line that for the Armada which is basically what you will need if you do the Titan upgrade if you do not want to go with the updated 08+ lines and brackets (more to follow on that). I purchased these lines and they worked just fine, but because of my OCD I wanted these lines in stainless steel and nobody makes them. I found a few custom shops that were willing to take on the project and I bought a set of 150.42108/150.42109 and sent them as sample lines to one of the shops. The guy made me a set as close as he could get them with parts purchased from brakequip and sent them to me. Unfortunately, the end banjo fittings were different enough that they still were not giving me that OEM feeling I was going for.
At this point I decided to start looking into the full blown brake line upgrade to the “08+” lines. I started with the lines and again I just had to have them stainless for some reason. I bought a set of 150.42119/150.42120 lines and sent them to the same shop. The guy again tried using stock brakequip fittings and made me a set but they were not even close. At this point the guy at the shop was looking at this as a fun challenge and was awesome about trying to get this right. At that point he said that if I was willing to sacrifice the sample lines, he could cut the fittings off them and weld up new connectors and make exact replicas of the OEM lines. My response was “yes please”. About 1 week later I had these beauties in my possession and they were PERFECT.
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So here is the technical information you need to make the rest of the upgrade work if you are going with the new style OEM lines. Regardless if you go with custom stainless lines or the 150.42119/150.42120 (OEM rubber style) you will need the following items to make the upgrade work. Thank you to mattwag for saving me a ton of time with this.
The old bracket is held on by one bolt. You take that bolt off and install the new bracket with it. It is very easy to change this bracket out. After that all you need to do is remove the old lines and install the new ones. The copper washers in the table above are for the banjo fitting on the caliper, and the lock nuts are for mounting the new brake lines to the new brackets. The new brackets come with the bolt installed so all you need is the lock nut. Here is a picture of the old vs new brackets.
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Living in the north country I had a feeling I was going to snap that small little metal brake line that the new brake lines attach to. You can see what I’m talking about in the picture below. These lines are only about 6” long and attach to a hard mounted block on the frame. They are dirt cheap which to me was a nice insurance policy because that get bombarded with salt and snow. The part number are 46240-7S210 and 46242-7S210 right and left respectively and cost $2 each. I broke both of them so I’m glad I had them.
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I’m happy to say that after about a year, I finally feel like I have 100% safe lines on the front of the truck. This is nothing more than my opinion, so take it for what it is worth, but I think the front Goodridge lines are flat out DANGEROUS and I am ecstatic that they are off my truck forever. Many people have no problem with them but I do, and in my personal opinion if you do this upgrade you should go the OEM 08+ upgrade route. I’m very very pleased with this and feel they are just so much safer. They way the new lines are mounted there is zero way they can get pinched or rub against anything. It is the way the truck is supposed to be. Again this is only my opinion but I feel like the picture below shows why I’m maybe slightly qualified to make this claim. I spent a year and went through several set of lines and several different options and I landed on 08+ OEM. I’m going to keep the discussion below regarding the Goodridge lines if anyone still decides to go that route. I think they are great lines for the rear sets, but again I do not recommend installing them on the front.
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If you go the Goodridge route, you will see two options for the Titan. The Goodridge 22118 is the 6 line kit and the Goodridge 22116 is the 5 line kit. Ignore all of the talk about VDS, go out to your truck, and look at how many brake lines there are on the back of your truck. If you look at the rear axle there will either be one line going from the axle to the frame or two lines. This is the guaranteed way to get this right… just go look. Here is a diagram that shows the difference between the systems. Look at piece number 4.
Here is what you get with the Goodridge 22118. Comes with everything you need to do the entire truck. Again I don't recommend using the front brake lines. If you decide to install them on the rear and you live in snow/salt country I highly recommend checking out this link to see what you might get yourself into:
Broken Brake Lines
Brake Pads
Good luck with this one. The Hawk LTS pad seems to be talked about a lot on this website, but I feel like if you poke around you will find just as many people that hate them, as there are people that love them. This, combined with the price was enough to scare me off. I currently have powerstop brake pads on my truck, and I don’t have any complaints about them, so I figured why mess with a good thing. This time, I specifically went with the Powerstop Z36-1286. These pads seem to be similar in description to the Hawk LTS, however I knew from my own experience with them, that dusting was not an issue. I wish I had a more technical answer for this one but unfortunately the pads are something you have to decide on your own because they are the #1 thing that will change the way your truck stops. You have to look at how the different pad materials perform, and pick your pad based on that. Do some research on pad material vs performance and pick something that suits your driving needs. I wanted low dust and I don’t tow a lot so this wasn’t a difficult choice for me.
Cost and Pictures of The Parts
So here is everything boxed up for the Front Brakes
And here are the parts for one side laid out so you can see what they really look like. Keep in mind i ended up not using those front brake lines.
And finally here is a breakdown of the cost for this job. This has been updated to reflect the 08+ brake line upgrade. This includes the cost of the basic brake lines not the custom stainless ones. Total without the core deposit is $305.
I spent hours online shopping around to get these prices. I waited for 20% off deals with some of the companies. I got free shipping on everything except the rock auto purchase. I also had to do some price matching with Summitt. The biggest kicker was the rotors. I don’t know how or why but Amazon had a ridiculous sale going on and I got the rotors for $24 each on closeout. They are normally way more than that. Bottom line is if you look around and shop for deals you can lower your…. Bottom line.
Summary
Holding the calipers and the rotors in my hands it is just night and day difference to what is currently on my truck. The best word I can find to describe the new parts is that they are “substantial”. They feel like truck brakes not Nissan Altima brakes. If you think my comparison to the Altima brakes is silly you will be shocked to find out the 05 Titan brakes are only a tiny bit bigger than the Altima brakes.
With the 08+ brake line upgrade complete I can now officially say i absolutely love this entire upgrade. This post was a ton of work so I hope that it is helpful to people and I hope you enjoy it. If you see any mistakes send me a PM, and if you have any comments or questions leave them below.
