Awesome Performance!!

[Keeper of The Kitten]

(Note: when I say road surfaces have improved, that's the material, not the shoddy maintenance schedules and utter contempt shown by councils for motorists...)

[Keeper of The Kitten]

The stopping distances in the Highway Code are stupid. The urban myth is that they're based on the original Ford Anglia? You can't tell me that braking hasn't improved since then?!

I remember a certain Mr Clarkson remarking it was based on cars even older than that, 1950s ...and to be honest many of us are old enough to have seen very old copies of the Highway Code and other than metrication, the stopping distance data hasn't changed -brakes, dampers, tyres and indeed road surfaces have all improved dramatically since that data was gathered. Dry weather stopping distances for every production car are superior to the data in the Highway Code. I suspect most big trucks can stop in shorter distances than those quoted.

[Azman]

Yarp

[Jamo]

Now this is proper brake porn.......

[S2central.net]

1.5g !

This smilie must be what happens to your eyeballs under braking



Paul

[dan_b]

I did some rough calculations and got in excess of 1.5g on that grippy surface coming in to roundabouts and junctions. Took delta velocity and the approximate number of car lengths covered. I was a bit conservative.

1.5g?


I like that grippy stuff on junctions they're putting down everywhere now - ultra high friction tarmac, definitely a good thing to be doing to improve safety at junctions (unless you see it as an opportunity to brake even later!). Costs over 10x as much as normal tarmac though.

We must be able to sort out a brake test session at a meet somewhere?

[4WheelDrifter]

Has anyone got a straight 2 mile long private drive?

[Lee]

I did some rough calculations and got in excess of 1.5g on that grippy surface coming in to roundabouts and junctions. Took delta velocity and the approximate number of car lengths covered. I was a bit conservative.

It would be great to do a comparison just out of interest. We could either use time or distance covered. I guess a stopwatch with a repeatable timekeeper could do just the trick. Must be the same piece of tarmac though. The test would have to be done from a high speed to see how the brakes are performing well with high heat loads and to reduce timing errors as much as possible.

[Rusty]

Clarkson showed that a 911 stopped in under 1/2 the distance at 70mph and that was a couple of years ago! I'm sure that some of the new carbon stuff would be awesome when up to operating temperature!

[dan_b]

Lee - Maybe you haven't got the time. But have you thought about measuring your stopping distances, and comparing them to the ones in the Highway Code? Might be worth a laugh.

I personally would be very amused (and interested) to do this with all of the cars here on the forum, with both stock brakes and the myriad different brake upgrades that we've done. The stopping distances in the Highway Code are stupid. The urban myth is that they're based on the original Ford Anglia? You can't tell me that braking hasn't improved since then?!

[Lee]

What if you got something stuck in there like a bit of gravel or something- just concerned it might do something nasty to either the caliper, or the wheel?

Had that already. Wondered what that regular clunk was when leaving the car park once. Never had it since.

I still can't get my head around floating discs! Are you using the calipers from your old "small" setup?

Same calipers, just disks are 2mm larger and 4mm thicker than before.

Let us know how you get on the EBC Reds on the back, happy to help.

Thanks. I think I have ruined one of my wheels due to the excess swarf!

[4WheelDrifter]

Lee - Maybe you haven't got the time. But have you thought about measuring your stopping distances, and comparing them to the ones in the Highway Code? Might be worth a laugh.

[dan_b]

What if you got something stuck in there like a bit of gravel or something- just concerned it might do something nasty to either the caliper, or the wheel?

I still can't get my head around floating discs! Are you using the calipers from your old "small" setup?

Let us know how you get on the EBC Reds on the back, happy to help.

[Lee]

Oh, forgot to answer about the clearance issues. There isn't much clearance but the parts that run close will never touch under use. Its the disk that expands the most and I have seen 1.5mm radially change in the disk to bell mountings so the floating bit is doing its job.

[Lee]

Nowhere to work on the car, suffered the flu and currently working daylight hours. Am going to try this weekend if I get a spare hour! Thanks for the short loan of the pads...I will see if they make a difference (my rear disks are undersized and overheating on the track as is).