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I have never done turn 1-2 at LRP
I have never done the corkscrew at Laguna Seca.
It’s very likely I never will.
But I have had EMPI brakes on all four corners of my Speedster for eight years and 40,000 miles, and they are pretty much all the brakes I need for this car and the way I drive it.
They have not been trouble free, but they have never all-out failed. They actually stop pretty well, but there have been some annoyances that took a lot of time to diagnose and fix.
The first caveat is to use the right mounting brackets on the rears. EMPI makes two brackets for the same brakes - cheap ones made of stamped sheet metal and cast ones that cost a lot more. Guess which ones you want.
The cheap, stamped brackets that came on my VS were causing two separate problems, and it took a while to figure this out. The first was a horrendously loud ‘moaning’ sort of noise that was maddeningly intermittent. You could never make it happen when you were trying to suss out the source (front or back, left or right). It happened most often when the brakes were cold and you were coming to a gradual stop and got down to just a few mph, with your foot just lightly on the pedal. Think train horn loud. Wake the dead loud. Wife jumping out of the car loud.
The second problem was leaking rear axle seals. Which you would normally attribute to defective rear axle seals. Which you fix by replacing rear axle seals. Except that a year later you were having to do that again. And again.
Replacing the sheet metal brackets with the cast ones fixed both problems.
The cast brackets cost $90 each if bought separately. Yeah, $90 - for EMPI brackets! It used to be you could order the whole rear brake kit with the cast brackets for not much more than with the sheet metal brackets, but I don’t know about now.
The third problem has been what sounds like brake squeal while driving along but NOT touching the brake pedal - usually, when just entering a turn at 40-50 mph. It sounds like the caliper is not fully retracting and just skimming the rotor as some lateral force is applied by the motion of the car entering the turn. Again, this was almost impossible to isolate to either front or back (or one side or the other) and it was very intermittent.
I was eventually able to almost eliminate it by greasing the backs of the pads and any moving parts at the ‘touch’ points where the pads contact the caliper. This turned out to be on the front brakes (which are different calipers than the rears). My car’s front calipers are stamped ‘Varga’ but many that look identical are not. My wheels do spin freely with the front up on stands - with just a little friction from the brakes. (It is normal, BTW, for wheels and hubs on any car to be warm from brake heat after driving. Warm, but not hot or glowing red! And all wheels should be about the same temp.)
So, eight years of sleuthing later, I’ve got EMPI brakes that work OK. Keep in mind that our very light cars place relatively low demands on a braking system - unless you drive like @DannyP. These are loads that even EMPI brakes should be up to.
With most of the weight in the rear, you can’t really apply much brake without locking up the fronts anyway. I end up doing most of my slowing into a corner with the gearbox. My brake pads last forever. And descending long, twisty grades on our local foothill roads, I’ve never noticed significant fade, either. I do engage in some spirited driving, when the navigator’s seat is unoccupied.
Unless you wear a helmet and four-point harness every time you saddle up, the EMPI’s can be made to work.
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