How to cook your brakepads!

[KinLoud]

Background - I have a 1983 AA63 Carina racecar with a gen3 3sge. Originally it had a tired bluetop 4age. I raced 2 seasons with this motor. I used Metal King brakepads. After a season of racing they would be about 1/2 worn but I would replace them because they would be quite badly tapered.
When I put the 3sge in, I changed to Mintex 1166 brake pads. I presumed that they would last a season also.... they did but only just!!! More power=more speed=more braking=shorter brakepad life. I had promised myself that I would put the thicker supra brakes onto the car when last season finished, but I never quite got around to it. I will have to do it now!!!

When I was geting the car ready for fridays trackday at Taupo I didn't even think about looking at the pads as I presumed they would be ok.
Ewan came to Taupo with me and drove my Carina as well. We did about 120km around the old short track (now with a rebuilt sweeper!)
After a couple of sessions each the car began to get a bit twitchy under braking as if the brake bias was changing... It was changing! Due to the front pads getting worn down to metal!
The funny thing was that even with metal to metal the car was lapping the fastest it had all day!! Ewan was driving when the pedal went nearly to the floor at the hairpin. The metal backing plate had worn/melted so much that the piston began to pop out of the caliper and so it leaked lots of fluid as Ewan pushed the brake pedal!


Left front outer pad with big impressions in it from the caliper


Left front inner pad with a big lip of melted metal


Right front outer pad with a bit of pad remaining where the backing plate buckled away from the disk


Right front disk with bits of backing plate welded onto it


Left front caliper with piston popped out


Seeing as friday was Ewan's birthday as well as a trackday at Taupo, I made him a present, a couple of rooted brakepads in a little picture frame.

Ken
Ham
021 408 863

[bluemaumau]

good work

[adikt]

thats impressive
hows that new sweeper?
and hows the new track looking?
boss got to race on it on sunday. lucky bastard

[Santa'sBoostinSleigh]

all class on the frame

[Adamal]

The frame is an excellent give. Well done on a set of brakes well rooted

[RomanV]

Sorry Ken, but I think I've got you beaten.

Car in question: My sisters 80s Honda shuttle (from ages ago)

Problem: Poor braking performance

Symptoms: pedal goes almost to the floor, car doesnt stop well.

Diagnosis: Well, when she brought it over, one of the brake pads fell out when it came up the drive.

I think that THIS might have been part of the problem.





Thats a $1 coin next to the disc, for a scale reference.

Brake disc thickness is approx. 3mm.

[2LTR Rona]

Brake disc thickness is approx. 3mm.

Dam sure those things dont have the thickest disc's to start with but thats just dam scarry

[Leon]

That's not a brake disc, that's a feeler gauge.

[the fallen303]

hgow did you like the sweeper ken? dad took his mk4 down there a week or so ago, and he said it's really flat now, no camber, so it's difficult to go round it as fast as you used to.

good work on the brakes

oh, and happy birthday ewan!! lol

[KinLoud]

Lesson about the day... if the brake fluid drops for no apparent reason it's probably because one or more brakepads has had the remains of the friction material fall off the backing plate and so the piston has moved to take up the slack!!

the fallen303
The new sweeper... I like it a lot. It took me about 15 laps to understand how to drive it well... it's still a double apex corner with the slowest part of the turn about midtrack just over halfway between the 2 apexes. It is like a 3/4 scale version of the old sweeper. the radius of the first half of the turn is smaller but the exit is almost the same
It has a bit less camber, but I think that the camber never really made a lot of difference to the speed out of the old corner as the fastest line was in from the edge of the track where there was less camber.
It's new tarmac which takes a couple of months to weather in and I think it will be a bit slippery in the wet until then.
There were 3 Lotus Elise's on friday. One killed it's motor quite early on but the other 2 were fanging around most of the day. I was amazed that the drivers of these lovely little cars were able to get heaps of understeer in the sweeper!!!
They seemed to be entering the sweeper mid track under heavy braking and then turn the steering wheel as far as they could, this led to the car sledging around the corner with the front tyres squealing.
Shame when a lovely car gets driven like it's a tank!

Ken
Ham
021 408 863

[mr_monkey]

When topgear tested one they had the same problem IIRC. Then the test driver from lotus came along and amazed them all.

-nathan

[touge rolla]

damn and i thought i had done well to get my brake rotors to remain glowing red almost a minute after stopping the car after a drive in the hill one night. but both of you put that to shame

[Bling]

damn and i thought i had done well to get my brake rotors to remain glowing red almost a minute after stopping the car after a drive in the hill one night. but both of you put that to shame

going by your location, I can understand why they would be glowing if you were travelling between chch and akaroa mmmm nice fast road that one!

[Mr Revhead]

bloody hell ken!!


mmm lotus's are cool

[beeker]

my last puk' practice day

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b239/ ... kePans.jpg
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b239/ ... Rotors.jpg

PS Broke the t50 today !! 3 days before Targa. Hope the untested spare is good.

[10k 20v]

haha, well, i don't think too many can say they have moulded the cacking plates to their calipers. The only way to slow her sown going into the hairpin was a compression lock, only about 4 secs after braking hard off the straight. M best b'day ever

[PizzaBoy]

Looks a lot like my pads from the Toyspeed trackday at Manfeild last year (remember my Integra that braked like it had ABS at the end of the day Ken?)

I did a quick pad change and went back out to see what my spares were like... Had to stop after 2 laps as they were smoking whenever I hit the brakes, and I still needed to drive back to welly that day

I can recomend Ferodo DS2500 pads from racebrakes as well, they've done a few events at Manfeild and Taupo and have very little wear even after pulling up the car from 180+km/h after the 100 marker at Manfeild

[BlakJak]

very little wear == very little braking force???