The NISMO Clubsport wheels had barely been on the Z for a week before I decided to address what was behind them. The stock brakes are perfectly adequate for street duty, but once you see those little silver calipers peeking through 19-inch NISMO spokes, you know they need some company that matches the rest of the build.
I grabbed the Z1 Motorsports Forged Street Big Brake Kit - their red calipers are cross-compatible with Akebono, and the kit comes with sprinkle-slotted rotors and stainless steel brake lines. The whole package is a serious step up from the stock hardware.
The install spanned about a week of evening garage sessions. One thing I ran into right away was the rotor shields - the larger Z1 rotors wouldn't clear the stock shields, so I had to trim them. I used a sheet metal nibbler on my drill and ran it around the edges to remove the outer lip. I put a plastic bag over the hub assembly to keep the little metal bits from getting into anything they shouldn't.
As I swapped each caliper I capped the hard lines to keep the brake fluid from draining out. I definitely did not want to purge air out of the entire system.
The before and after really tells the story. Those stock silver calipers look like they belong on a Sentra compared to the Z1 units. The red calipers fill out the wheel wells and look right at home behind the NISMO wheels. I used Motul RBF 600 to refill and bleed the system - no sense putting budget fluid behind a big brake kit.
At 1,550 miles the Z is already getting the brake setup it deserves. Time to put some miles on them and see how they bed in!
