Homebuilt Tahoe Part 3 - Baer Brakes Installation
In this month's installment of our homebuilt Tahoe project, we tackle slowing down the 5,300-pound SUV by way of Baer's easy-to-install and budget-friendly Alumasport big brake kit. Featuring one-piece drilled and slotted 14-inch rotors, red powdercoated two-piston calipers loaded with Baer high-performance brake pads, and the necessary brake line fittings make this upgrade an easy one. The Alumasport kit fills the void of performance braking without the $3,500 big brake hit to the wallet. We're not suggesting that $1,295 (at autoanything.com) for each axle is cheap, but what you get with this upgrade is improved stopping distances, a safer truck/SUV with large wheels installed, better looks, and the satisfaction of knowing you did the work yourself.
Looking back over the last two months of Tahoe articles, we added a performance suspension, larger wheels and tires, and pumped up the 5.3L with 95 more rear-wheel horsepower courtesy of a Magnacharger supercharger. Each of these modifications by themselves is reason enough to upgrade your brakes, however, once you add all three together it was an absolute must. Besides a standard size Torx bit, we didn't need any special tools to remove the factory brakes and install the new Alumasport kit from Baer, and in less than two hours, our Tahoe was stopping better than ever.
