NA/NB Stage 5 Big Mama Jama Brake Kit

For those that need even more heat capacity and stopping power over our Stage 4 kit, the Stage 5 is a 6 piston upgrade. We use these on our V8-powered track cars and can attest to their great pedal feel.

For the rear rotors, you have your choice between StopTech high-performance slotted rotors, Centric premium plain rotors, or our favorite, two-piece Wilwood rotors. The two-piece rotors have slots (and aesthetics) that match the front rotors, and they save 1.7 lbs in total! None of them will rust (on non-friction surfaces) and they’re made to tighter tolerances than others. There are a bewildering array of brake upgrades for the Miata. We’ve tried to simplify things for you by only specifying the best components.

To start, here’s a specific list of what’s included. There are lots more details below the list. 

• Front big brake kit with brackets, stainless steel brake lines, six-piston Wilwood calipers, and two-piece Wilwood Spec-37 rotors
• Rear big brake kit with brackets, stainless brake lines, and four-piston Wilwood Powerlite calipers. Choose built in (not very strong) parking brake, separate parking brake caliper (fully functional), or a separate drift caliper (no parking brake). More details below.
• Rear 11″  rotors (choose plain, slotted, or lightweight two-piece rotors)
• Optionally, a brake proportioning valve (read more below). 

Wilwood makes the calipers in these kits, but they are not Wilwood kits. This particular mix of components – especially the rear – is exclusive to Flyin’ Miata. There may be less expensive options out there, but there are none better. And when it comes to brakes, you want the good stuff.

All of our big brake kits use Wilwood Dynapro calipers upfront. This caliper is stronger and stiffer than the older Dynalite found in many kits. The advantage is a firmer pedal and easier modulation with a much better pedal feel – and of course, it means that more of your braking effort goes into braking instead of just deforming the caliper! We also supply our own custom stainless steel lines which have fewer failure points than the Wilwood lines often found elsewhere.

The 6 piston caliper even has staggered piston sizes for more even pad pressure and longer pad life. The pads are larger as well, which means more heat capacity. These calipers saves up to two pounds per corner.

The piston sizes in the calipers have all been chosen for compatibility with the Miata’s master cylinder. There’s no need to change out your master cylinder. As an added bonus, pad changes are almost ridiculously easy on the four-piston kit. There’s no reason to run a compromise brake pad, just pop in your track pads when you put on your track wheels. The standard pad with the kit is the Wilwood BP-10, a street, and autocross pad. You’ll probably want more aggressive front pads such as our BP-20 or BP-40 for track use. We’re unable to remove pads from the kit. 

The calipers are wrapped around a 2-piece rotor specifically designed for this application. This rotor is unique to Flyin’ Miata’s kits and is a slotted rotor made in the US from Wilwood’s proprietary Spec 37 compound. This metal gives a very long life as well as dimensional stability under rapid temperature changes. It’s the best rotor we could find, so we made it standard on all our kits.

The rear setup is exclusive to Flyin’ Miata and puts a light and stiff Wilwood caliper in place of the stock unit. In addition to sex appeal, swapping the stock (flexy!) rear calipers for the stiff Powerlites makes a big difference to the stiffness of the overall system, improving pedal feel and your ability to precisely modulate the braking even more than the front-only kit.

You have three options for the rear brakes:

• Built-in parking brake. This is the least expensive and lightest (drops about 3 lbs per corner!), but the parking brake isn’t very strong.
• Separate parking brake caliper. This kit puts two separate calipers on each rear wheel, a four-piston Powerlite for your foot brakes and a mechanical MC4 for your parking brake. There’s a slight weight penalty over stock (about .5 lbs per corner), but you get a real parking brake and the stiff Powerlite caliper for your foot brakes. Note that if you choose grey calipers, the parking brake caliper will actually be silver. It’s not dramatically different than the grey of the Powerlite, but it’s definitely not a perfect match. 
• Separate drift caliper. This kit includes a two-piston Dynapro caliper (2.4 sq in piston area per caliper) and a four-piston Powerlite caliper for each rear wheel, along with the pads and hardware. Please note that it doesn’t include any hydraulic parts to actuate the drift caliper (it includes everything for the foot brakes). 

For the rear rotors, you have your choice between StopTech high-performance slotted rotors, Centric premium plain rotors, or our favorite, two-piece Wilwood rotors. The two-piece rotors have slots (and aesthetics) that match the front rotors, and they save 1.7 lbs in total! None of them will rust (on non-friction surfaces) and they’re made to tighter tolerances than others. Again, stainless brake lines are included as are high-performance brake pads.

To ensure that you’re using these brakes to their fullest potential, we also offer an adjustable brake proportioning valve, which is strongly recommended for cars that don’t have Sport brakes (optional on 2001and 2002, standard on 2003-2005) AND ABS. If you have Sport brakes without ABS, or ABS without Sport brakes, (or neither), the adjustable proportioning valve kit will decrease your stopping distance (when properly adjusted) by letting you dial in the perfect balance regardless of your car’s setup. Only Flyin’ Miata offers this option.

You can choose red powder coat or grey hard anodizing as a coating for the calipers. Bear in mind that the hard anodizing is un-dyed, which means that the final color can vary from caliper to caliper, due to differences in the forgings themselves. This difference can be especially noticeable between different caliper types, e.g., the front Dynapro calipers and the rear Powerlite calipers that we use. We can’t accept returns for calipers that have different shades of grey. If it’s important that your calipers match each other perfectly, you’ll need to choose the red calipers. 

Will they fit your wheels? Probably, if your wheels are 15″ or larger, but don’t assume – unless you know for sure, please check with our templates:

front 

rear with built-in parking brake