Baer Brakes, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2024, has its origins in racing and made its name with replacement brakes for Pro Touring models. But last year the Phoenix, Arizona-based company expanded its Modern Truck & Off-Road Division with the launch of the BIG Claw product line.
To look deeper into how BIG Claw delivers improved braking for a fraction of the cost of a BIG Brake kit, we spoke with Baer’s director of braking systems, Rick Elam.
“The modern truck and SUV market is huge, with more than 40 million vehicles in operation,” Elam says. “A SEMA report reveals that at least 25% of those vehicles are modified with larger wheels. But people don’t always realize that bigger wheels and tires add a lot of rotating mass to the vehicle, which reduces braking performance.
“When Baer first began testing the BIG Claw concept with a Chevrolet Suburban, we found that larger, 20-inch billet aluminum rims were 30-pounds heavier per corner than the standard, 16-inch rims,” he continues. “In the case of the Suburban, those aftermarket rims lengthened the stopping distance by 15 feet. But with our first shot at what later became Baer BIG Claw, we took 20 feet off the stopping distance. That’s back to stock performance, plus another 5-foot improvement, just by increasing the rotor diameter and retaining the stock brake pads.”
Elam adds that swapping to a stock-size aftermarket rotor rarely nets a noticeable gain in braking performance: instead, it’s a more aggressive pad that’s stopping the vehicle faster. “Many customers are looking for better performance but do not want to upgrade to a full brake kit,” he says. “BIG Claw is for them.”
In simple terms, BIG Claw is a performance brake kit at a fraction of the cost of a regular big brake kit with calipers. BIG Claw starts at $695, where a typical Big Brake kit might be in the $2,000 range.
There are two principal elements to a BIG Claw conversion. The first is a brake rotor that is of a larger diameter than the stock disc. That increases the torque and leverage of the brake.
The BIG Claw rotors are not adapted from a different vehicle: each is purpose-cast for the application. Late-model, half-ton pickups from Ford, GM and Ram are all covered, as are Jeep Wranglers and Gladiators, and Ford Broncos.
The precise rotor diameter increase is tailored to individual vehicles. For example, for the GMT800 truck (1999-2004 GM pickups), Baer replaces the stock 12-inch with a 14-inch rotor because most customers use larger wheels on those trucks, according to Elam. But on the Bronco, the size only increases by around an inch, to 13.5 inches, to still fit within the 17-inch wheel that most customers use.
All BIG Claw rotors are cast with directional vanes. In contrast to the straight vanes typically found on OE rotors, this provides a longer vane design to increase the stability and durability of the rotor, which is also drilled right behind the vanes. Combined with the increased rotor area, the result is a better heat sink, enabling the brake system to be pushed harder without the driver experiencing brake fade during repeated braking.
The second part of the package is an anchor bracket that relocates the caliper and enables the brake system to accommodate the larger-diameter rotor. While mirroring the attachment points of the factory anchor, the caliper relocation bracket, which is unique per application, has extra material to shift the caliper further out onto the larger-diameter rotor, to make full use of its extra stopping power.
The caliper itself is unchanged, accepting factory or factory-replacement pads as before, as well as retaining the factory slide pins, anti-rattle clips, and other caliper hardware. Of course, a more aggressive pad like a Baer Claw pad can also be swapped in, for an even greater performance gain, but is not included in the kit.
Besides the performance improvement, BIG Claw provides an attractive rotor for owners to show off behind those open, upsized wheels.
Shop Baer BIG Claw Rotors here.
The kit is also designed to be easy to install, with no need to crack a brake line on the caliper, bleed the brakes, or make any other modifications to the system – ideal for tire and wheel shops that wouldn’t normally do brake work, or for enthusiast owners to do the installation at home.
Says Elam, “All that’s required is to loosen the brake caliper and set it up out of the way, as if you’re doing a normal pad and rotor swap. You then unbolt the factory anchor; remove the factory rotor; put the BIG Claw rotor on; reinstall the BIG Claw anchor bracket; and remount the caliper right back into the new anchor. It requires a total of eight bolts to install front and rear, and it should take about 45 minutes to do the entire vehicle – all to net a substantial brake improvement over a direct-fit rotor.”
When testing BIG Claw on a late-model Ford Bronco, Baer was able to net a 16-foot improvement when stopping from 60 mph to zero by adding the larger rotors and keeping the stock pads in place.
In 2025, Baer is expanding the BIG Claw product line with the launch of BIG Claw HD. As the name suggests, BIG Claw HD will apply the BIG Claw approach to heavy-duty trucks. It is designed to improve the braking performance of three-quarter-ton trucks in work applications, including towing, as well as in demanding leisure use such as RVs and pulling campers.
The principle is the same as for regular BIG Claw kits. The HD rotors are all about an inch bigger in diameter, front and rear, and are designed to fit within many factory wheels. The main difference is that the rotors have a slotted zinc finish instead of slotted-and-drilled zinc.
“Slotting and drilling have strong appeal to half-ton owners because of how the rotor looks through the open wheel,” explains Mark Fowler. “But for the HD, we prefer to add a little more mass to the rotor by not drilling it, to make it an even more robust product for work trucks. We feel that on heavy-duty trucks, the brake systems are going to get taxed even more, by towing trailers or when coming down mountain grades, for example. Eliminating the cross-drilling creates a better heat sink, enabling the brake system to absorb some more heat without starting to fade.”
BIG Claw HD has been in development for the past year and will be released soon, beginning in July with kits for GM and Ford late-model HD trucks:
Kits for Ram HD trucks will follow in August:
Looking further ahead, Baer is also working on some bespoke brake-pad designs for the BIG Brake HD applications.
“Heavier vehicles also tax the brakes more heavily,” says Elam. “We can increase the mu – the friction in the pad – which will make the vehicle stop better, but it creates a lot more dust and noise. That’s not popular among many half-ton customers, but drivers of three-quarter-tons are more open to that so long as the pads perform well, because a lot of them use the truck for work. We are currently working on some higher-friction pads for the three-quarter-ton market to help the brakes handle the extra weight of those vehicles.”
Baer’s BIG Claw product line will continue to evolve in response to customer demands. Elam says that anyone with feedback on BIG Claw brakes can call Baer’s technical sales specialists on 1-602-233-1411 to share their suggestions and ideas, which will be relayed to the product development team.
