Brakes

[Mux213]

Jeroen,

That is bad news Good luck with job hunting!

[rikard]

NoHachi Wrote:Mux, its just a myth. Most of the people claiming increased feel have changed their brake pads at the same time.
Even acording to the people at goodridge here in Delft, they are mostly bling and designed to take line pressures never encountered in brake systems. At THOSE pressures they would expand less then normal rubber lines.

Just remember: rubber lines ARE breaded. Cut one in half and have a look.

I remember when I put steel braided hose on my old MK 2 RS 2000. The pedal got a lot harder and felt a lot better, did not change anything else on the brakes at the time.
I did the same thing to my old EK9 Type r civic race car and it got rid of a lot of pedal travell, especially during extreem use.
I know it doesn't make much of a difference on a road car but under extreem brake use it makes a lot of differance.
The steel braiding is only on the outside offcourse as the inside is still the same rubber hose with "string " in it
It also protects your brake hoses from getting damaged/cut. Have seen a few rubber brake hoses in my time which were cut/split by rocks or other sharp objects and it hapens very easily

[Ian.G]

Bad news about the job m8 - hope you get sorted soon

I have RX7 calipers on mine - it has re-drilled civic vented slotted rotors on it - would be nice to get some bells machined up so I can just get AP disks when they go (thats a long time away as they are new). Unsure of pads.

On the back I have S13 200sx disks and brackets to re-locate the stock rear calipers. Nothing special pads.

All lines are braided.

Stopping power is good, and you can really feel the limit of lockup quite well. At the mo there is bit of slack in the pedal so I need to flush the lines and get some SRF in there. Will check all the solid lines too as I've not had the car long - it was MOT'd about 2 weeks before I got it so hopefully they should be ok.

Master cylinder looks quite new too.

I think its quite important to experiment with brake components to improve feel. On our Westi we run AP Racing motorsport spec 4-pots with opposing piston sizes, separate bells and disks. The master cylinders are also matched to the rest of the brakes for improved feel. They are amazing. I've had AP 4 or 6 pots on 4 of my cars now.

T3 do a big brake conversion



these are dynalites - pretty good calipers. They also appear to have apposing piston sizes so some thought may have gone into choosing those. Ran a set of dynalights on an old westi (equal sized pistons) on our old XTR2. not bad.

Its easy to over-brake a car - and the hachi is light so I don't expect you should take things too far.

[20vWill]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the stock AE86 brakes. They are more than adequate to perfectly control and stop the lightweight car. Harder pads are needed to prevent fade for fast road/track use and grooved discs are a nice mild upgrade, but not really necessary.

If you feel your brakes are poor, then you most likely need all calipers rebuilt, fresh hoses (ALL wheel lines and the axle line), fresh master cylinder and new fluid (DOT 4 is fine) at least every year. Boosters normally last pretty well. New discs and pads are cheap enough so are well worth replacing if you're keeping the car.

Regarding the Braided hose vs standard rubber:

Braided hoses give a firmer pedal than stock rubber hoses. But bear in mind that the braided hoses you just bought and fitted are brand new and the decayed rubber hoses you just took off are 20 years old...

I think NoHachi has a point - if both were new, feel would be very similar though I expect my Goodridge hoses will last longer than new OE Toyota ones.

[robokill]

Well still the brakes aren't that good on a hachi there good enough but when you want some more its nothing.....

They brake fairly light though i can lock my front i did it a couple times (not good for your tires though.

I think if you stay below 190 bhp you can easily go with the standards only change the pads (and if not replaced replace the discs)

Only thing i'd like to do is a rear ventet disc upgrade en get me some big brakes in front (in a year or so)

[Mux213]

Robo,

What does the power of the engine have to do with your braking power? Only thing I can think of is that on a track you may end up going at higher speeds and at higher speeds the brakes may not be able to (near) lock the tires. But if the brakes are capable of locking the tires at top speed of the car, it doesn't matter if you reach top speed after an hour or within a minute, braking will work just as good.

Another thing I am wondering about but that hasn't been discussed here is the responce time. Smaller pads or less 'sticky' pads grip the disk brake less effectively. This means more force is needed to get the wheels to lock.
But thats more an upgrade in pad types. Though bigger calipers will hold bigger pads.

I wonder though if bigger pads won't have the adverse effect that they take longer to heat up. This is a plus in the sence that you wont get fading, but it's a minus when the pads don't heat up at all and especially for race pads that means they do not obtain their best effect as they are to cold. (you brake, pads are cold, heat up quickly due to friction but you loose that time, then they start braking good, stop braking, pads cool to quickly, etc.)

Also the bigger the pad, the more friction, the less pedal movement is needed to obtain the same braking power. Pre is faster reaction to your foot input, Con is less precision in braking.

Mind you, I'm no expert so I might just have told you guys alot of BS

[NoHachi]

You're ok on those points. Biggest reason for big brakes is brake feel. Totally subjective.

Things like initial bite etc etc are all things a driver can adjust to, no real problem there.

What robo discribes is a PERFECT example of the way people do not think rationally about brakes. He mentions the brakes are fine in normal traffic, but crap for spirited driving. Yet they seem to be powerfull enough to lock up the tires any times. that means that they CAN reach the max.usable brakingforce needed. I'm guessing he has a tire problem, not a brake problem.

To be honest: the brakes on my brothers AE86 are totally rebuilt with renewed callipers, pads, lines, MC and fluid. They still feel like crap though. Maybe they need another bleed and fresh fluid. Air stuck in the lines sucks. A big brake kit isn't going to change that.

[mo-racing]

the only thing that comes to mind when i hear about pedal feel is "flex".

flex of the floating calipers, flex of the firewall where the breakbooster is mounted. maybee breaklines as well but not that much.

take a look at the caliper when flushing the system. it moves and bends the bracket.

[robokill]

No hachi i always have a tire problem ;-) i drive a Hachi :-)

well anyways my brakes are fine maybe ivan should drive my hachi to feel the difrence :-)

Ivan when do you have the time :-)

[NoHachi]

@Mo, true. But single Pot floating callipers don't have that much flex. Its real easy to make the bracket nice and chunky. You do see it with multi pot callipers.
Flex in the firewall could be a problem. i once drove a citroen visa where you could see the firewall flexing during braking. it was horrible...

Most problems are with old fluid, pads, air in the system etc..

Al this talk about brakes, while there was a set of cheap alcons on ebay recently and yet no-one picked them up. Although i believe it was a german ae86 driver that got them in the end.