AtomicLabMonkey |
2005-05-31 09:02 AM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dean
A pasenger in your car should have little sensation of when your foot comes on and off the brakes as you enter and exit a braking zone. They will know you braked because of the pressure on the belts, and the deceleration, but the actual transition points will be hard to pinpoint.
You caused the brake fade, not your brakes, or the fluid, or the pads. I doubt there is a brake system, even F1 Carbon-carbons that cannot be overworked. Look at the WRC drivers. They have puny brakes compared to yours, yet they last 2 or more stages of some of the hardest driving imagineable. Heck, they can loose only tenths of seconds due to poor brake performance by managing what little they have left.
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For a student who is still learning, this is good advice. I don't think it applies very well to actual racing though. I am frequently a passenger in our racecar, and I can feel perfectly well when our driver applies the brakes. He gets on it very aggressively and rides it all the way down into the corner right on the threshold. He is also very quick and outbrakes almost everyone else on the track. Smooth is fast - up to a point. After that point, when the driver is skilled enough, controlled aggression is the only thing that will wring the last few tenths out of the car.
I also disagree with the last paragraph - because the brakes on our racecar work just fine! We have no issues because it has huge rotors & calipers, high temp race pads & good cooling. These are sprint races I'm talking about too, driven at 110% - not an enduro setting where the driver is taking it easy at 90% to save the equipment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeK
On a related note, my brakes sucked. Nick, Eric and I all suffered bad brake fade. Eric and I ended up bleeding again saturday night, which helped for a session or two, but now my pedal is almost to the floor again, and my rotors are warped or have pad material stuck to them or something :(
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If you're generating that kind of heat, you may have to bleed after every session to keep the pedal firm. It's a pain, but at least you will still have brake response. Do you have any kind of cooling ducts? If not, you should rig some up. Most likely you just have uneven pad material deposits on the rotors, if you're feeling a shudder.
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