The Brakes Thread... (Page 1 of 2)

Serj, thanks.

I hear posts going both ways.  Cheap pads work, cheap pads don't.  It doesn't matter what you have, as long as it works.

While race pads are more expensive, I do believe they last longer than street pads and that in the long run may be less expensive per race.

When I say a brake minimum, I am thinking good non-cracked rubber lines and at least 50% pad.  If you have run your car enough and have established a wear pattern, make sure you have enough material on your pads to last the race or that day if it's a two day race.  Like if you know you wear off 10% of your pad per race, you can safely go below 50%.

Most tech forms for DEs have some kind of brake standard.

Like the Zero tolerance Fuel Leaks, have a Zero tolerance for brake failures.

In other words, if your brakes fail or catch fire, your finished racing for the weekend.

If a part you have replaced with a new/rebuilt part fails.  Thus demonstrating you you have addressed the situation and got burned by a bad part, you can replace the part and continue racing.  Otherwise, you done for the weekend.

While a rule like that is an additional rule, it puts a burden on the teams.  If you are willing to take the risk, it's up to you.

My fear is that a brake failure is likely to lead to a bad accident.

When I put my car on the track, there is a liability factor that many people seem to ignore here.  If someone gets in a wreck in my car and they can show that it is was not adequately prepared, I can be found negligent and probably held responsible.

I really need to have guys sign a waiver. 

Even though we are on a race track, there is a concern that I could also be held liable for an accident with another car due to an inadequately prepared car.

The waivers we must check for Lemons say we won't sue the organizers or the track.

I understand that driving crappy old cars on a racetrack is exceedingly stupid and dangerous. In fact, I understand that just being in the area is stupid and dangerous. I've decided to do it anyway. If anything bad happens, I'm not going to sue the organizer or the track. Nobody else ought to either. I've read the rules, I understand them, I agree with them and I'll abide by them.

There is no protection within your team or with other teams.

In other words, this is all fun and games until someone gets hurt.

If that injury could have been easily prevented, there might be problems.

There are SO many parts on a $500 "race car" that can be bent, cracked, broken, worn out or simply loose that it's silly to put this much focus on brakes.

Our "tech" inspection is really just a "safety" inspection.  They're checking to see that you're not going to catch on fire due to fuel leaks, that your harness and cage are sufficient to minimize your likelihood of great injury or death in a crash, that your exhaust is secure and pointed in a safe direction, that your kill switch works should they need to shut your car off in an emergency, and that nothing major is falling off of the car that might pose a safety concern for other cars.  That's about it.

They're not checking the torque on your ball joints, inspecting all of your tie-rod ends, checking your wheel bearings, looking at your brake pads, torquing your wheel lugs or anything else.  This is CRAP CAN RACING.  A $500 car is EXPECTED to have some weaknesses in some areas and is EXPECTED to fail.

Is it a good idea for a team to spend some money on things like brakes and critical suspension parts?  Absolutely!  But, if they start failing tech for stuff that falls within the $500 budget, then they can't very well call it a race for $500 cars.

If a person is dumb enough, they should be able to take any $500 car off of CraigsList, put a cage, seat, harness and kill switch in it and go race it.  Period.  It would be foolish to do so... but that's the intent of this series as I understand it.

Loren, I agree with you on so many points of your post, particularly the part about the intent of the series. But the one hang up that I have about it really is that if anything, brakes should have a heightened level of safety check.

Consider this point. Nearly all the safety requirements on the car are there for the safety of the driver of that car and that car only. Nobody on the track other than the driver of the #20 MR2 is directly harmed or benefits if the cage fails in a rollover, if the belts are harnessed incorrectly so that the driver suffers spinal compression, or if the driver can't get out of the car within 30 seconds of the car turning into a funeral pyre. In fact, a quick review of Section 3 of the Omnibus Lemons Rulekit indicates to me that the focus of the safety rules is squarely to keep the driver of each car safe from the stupid things that driver can do to himself in that car.

However, there are 2 main exceptions to that. One is the anti-nerf bar rule, which is clearly in place to prevent ramming. That is, to protect not just the driver of the car with the nerf bar, but also to protect the other drivers on the track. The other is (or should be) the brakes rule. It's not only to protect the driver of that car, but to protect the other drivers by reducing the chance that they're going to get rear-ended at a high-speed delta v by another car that didn't put adequate brakes on their car and finds out first hand what brake fade means going into a high-deceleration corner (like diamond edge at MSR).

I really don't want to advocate the expansion of the rule set. But I do think that the importance of overhauling the braking system on 20+ year old cars gets underemphasized in preparing to run this race. Other things may break on these cars, but that usually only puts that particular car out of the race. If the brakes fail to operate, it's particularly easy for that failure to victimize someone else's ride too. Cheers.

PS Last year at tech at Houston, they did check the torque on our lugs. No joke.

Don't get me wrong.  Brakes are good.  I'll always insist that any race car I'm driving have race-quality brake pads and fluid at a minimum.  I like brakes.

But, for those who are proposing that tech inspection should look more closely at brakes... what exactly would you have them look for?  Do you want them to poke a flashlight in there to check pad thickness?  Almost everybody runs new pads, you're not gonna catch much there.  Do you want them to DISASSEMBLE the brakes so the pads can be inspected... and assume that the tech inspector can visually tell the difference between a low-end race pad and a high-end parts store pad?  Test brake fluid somehow to ensure that it has a sufficient boiling point?  Are you going to ask for receipts proving that the pads and fluid are race-grade?  Gonna verify the grade of the caliper mounting hardware and that it is all properly torqued?

What exactly is tech supposed to be looking for on braking systems???

At most, they're gonna stick a leg in the car and feel the pedal.   99% of the time, cars will have a firm pedal going through tech.  It's 5-10 laps into the race where the ill-prepared will start having brake problems, and there's little that tech inspection can do about it.

Brakes are NOT an area to save $$$$...... 

I'd say real RACE pads with race brake fluid at the absolute minimum.....we did that and steel braided brake lines...for some reason I just don't trust 25+ year old stock brake lines????

Sergio,

Poke, poke, let me see if I have this straight.  Four races, between 3 different SHOs with different brakes each time.

For anyone unaware of SHOs in Texas, Sergio has one of the most successful SHOs down here.  Not only has his engine lasted a whole weekend, it has actually run 2 whole races.  For most SHOs I think that brakes outlast the motors. 

Regarding Inspections and Failures:

This is from the TWS tech form and PCA is similar:

_____ _____ Brakes – Rotor and pad condition. Recommend that pads be new
                    or near new to start event, 40% Minimum.
_____ _____ Brake Fluid – System flushed WITHIN LAST 6 MONTHS. Proper fluid
                   level; premium fluid recommended to avoid boiling.
                   ** Date of last flush: ___/___/____
_____ _____ Brake Lights – Functional and visible brake lights.

http://www.texasworldspeedway.com/Techn … n_Form.pdf

I don't have a perfect solution but I have recommended pre-race tech inspections.  Which is basically what you are supposed to do for a DE event.

Mostly, I'd like to see good pads with a fair amount of material, clean fluid and fresh rubber stuff.  Preferably with fresh calipers and things but depends on the age.

Since it seems so hard to find a way to inspect the brakes, I have also suggested a Zero Tolerance for brake failures.  Your brakes crap out, your done for the weekend.  Like fuel leaks with no second chance.

Funny how all you guys swear everything is good enough or don't seem to excited to adopt a plan like that.  If your brake solutions are so great, you should have no problem. 

Here's an example of why this concerns me, from Chumpcar:

La Familia, on 02 November 2009 - 03:52 PM, said:
I have a mental picture of your Audi in T2 with sparks shooting out of the LF wheel at around 2am, just after you passed me on the front straight. Five turns later I watched your tail lights keep going straight at T7 while the other cars made the right turn. Bummer!

Flying Squirrell replied:
Yea that was me it was amazing how well the brakes were still working long after metal to metal. I was adding metal to the disk and pushed the piston thru the backing plate on the pad.
when they failed at T7 it was sudden and total loss of braking ability. I think i melted the seals and lost hyd pressure. I didnt hit the tirewall too hard so the only body work that was damaged was the front spoiler, The brake repair took much longer.

Posted Later:
I was told the seals didnt fail, I wore enough of the piston away to allow it to come out of the bore. I had never seen a failure like this.

That tire wall could have been you.

Here's the huge kicker, the guy knew the pads were gone and continued racing metal on metal until he had total brake failure!

Every one states RACE this and RACE that... In reality a guy in an Alfa could buy race pads that still fade/wear/bite worse that the stockers that came on say a C4 Vette or a Fox-Body stang with a five lug conversion. By no means am I endorsing using the AutoZone specials but there should not be an enforced QUALITY. Hawk Blue Race pads on EITHER of our cars will bite FAR too hard for the weight of our cars and cause our newbie drivers to flatspot our tires. I would much rather them use their legs a bit more than burn my damned rubber cause they can't modulate the pedal.

I do agree with the fluid though. EVERYONE should be using a DOT4 fluid.

besides what Loren mentioned above, it's a band-aid.  the real problem is a lack of common sense.  a rule is simply a band-aid.  enough band-aids and maybe we can someday have a Lemons rulebook that rivals the SCCAs!

won't that be fun?

(although i'm sure no one has ever had a brake failure in an SCCA race, right?)

i think that not only is such a rule effectively unenforceable (and there are few things worse than an unenforceable rule), but the knee-jerk solution of "more rules" is something that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.  i know my team's brakes are good b/c we don't skimp on them.  a rule won't change anything we do, but we don't need a rule to tell us we need dependable brakes in an endurance race.

To Loren and Buzz,

I don't have a great solution to the problem.  Yes, a Zero Tolerance rules would be hard to enforce.  Maybe the pressure of having one would adjust some attitudes. 

I don't think doing nothing or just analyzing is the solution either.  This type of problem solving has failed NASA (the space guys) very publicly a few times.

Checking rubber lines for cracks and pads for depth does take time but it is possible.  Tech could go more smoothing if we had pre-race tech checks done for things like the brake system.

I didn't get to worried about this until I had two other Z teams come to me in need of pads, a caliper and a line between the two of them during the race at No Problem. 

I try to help out anyone I can and don't want guys to be afraid to come up and ask me for help so don't let me scare anyone away. 

Some friends gave them a caliper off their broken car.  I think it cars was the 5th place finishing 280ZX with a nicely machined motor.  They went out of their way to go fast and did almost nothing to make the car stop.  This is far to typical.

Regarding brake failures in the SCCA.  It probably happens and those are more experienced drivers racing on a less congested race track.  Sure, there are experienced drivers in Lemons but plenty have no experience.  So now the new guys don't know what they are doing and have no brakes.

Amen

Brake Fluid Tester