What setup does the Bakkie use? I take it that it's an improvement to the early 1200 coupe type brakes my 94 ute has?

Edit - whoops I meant 84 ute

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It uses the Girlock one posted above. It's a huge improvement, the disk is much thicker, and the pad contact area is probably more than twice as large, plus the calipers are far more meatier than the standard 1200 ones.

I'm not sure when your ute's switched over to the bigger/better brakes, if they ever did, but I think our bakkies switched over directly from drums to these ones. The cars had disks long before the bakkies. I saw a 85' 1200 bakkie for sale the other day, and it still had drums, my car is far older than that and it had disks...

Unfortunately I dropped the old struts of at the wreckers before taking comparative pics, but will try to get some when I go by there again. But as a reference, the old pads had a contact area about the size of a match box, while the new ones were twice + bigger.

Those look like 180B calipers. The matchbox sized pad ones sound like those poxy opposing piston type used on B310's. I dont think AUS delivered utes ever had disks factory

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They might be, but I'm only now becoming familiar with Datsun brakes and stuff, I used to only fiddle with my VW's(I don't own one anymore). Also the old calipers sat behind the disks, and the new ones in front of the disks. This should help with heat dissipation. The older ones looked like they were made from 10mm steel plate bent to shape, and I seem to remember that they had two pistons...

Hey, these look the same as what I currently have on my car.

I also upgraded to the 2005 model bakkie's front struts and calipers after 2 or 3 times that brake fade almost let me end up in hospital.
As kulula said, these calipers as definately better in that they have bigger brakepads and are now at the front of the strut and not the back like the old GX ones.
The disc's have a brake area of 460mm and a thickness of 14mm.
My original GX discs was about 3mm larger brake area and 0.8mm thick because I think it was overskimmed. GX discs are no longer available here in South Africa. The bakkie's one's are like R60 (south african rand) at any parts store. Cheap a$$.
I will test again soon to see if brake fade still occurs. This time in a safer environment where I can afford a mistake or two.

PBR bought out the Girlock brake business in about 1983 or so
Everything was then branded PBR in Australia but export products still carry the Girlock name in some markets
Seth Efrika being one of them