[s-cars] Brake upgrade?

[Kirby Smith]

One refinement: The sintered metallic-ceramic padded brake shoes GM made
for NASCAR racing in the '60s worked even when red hot.  I used them in
my Corvair by slotting the Chevy fronts to accept the parking brake
cable so they would work on the Corvair rear, and used the rears on the
Corvair front.  Chevy also sold precision ground drums to go with them. 
There were also aftermarket companies that sold sintered metallic brake
shoes, e.g., Metalmaster.

The drive to disk brakes was poser performance because few street cars
ever had to brake enough times to overheat metallic shoes in drum
brakes.  Only in mountain driving would even asbestos brakes overheat in
non-performance driving (read speeding through the twisties).  But once
disk brakes made it to performance cars, they were progressively seen as
a necessity for all cars.

Note that wet asbestos brake shoes were worse than wet disk brakes, but
I never had a problem with wet mettalic brake shoes.  For one thing, the
braking material wasn't one piece of wrapped material, but a set of
pucks, more on the self-actuating shoe, and fewer on the trailing shoe. 
Because of self actuation, drum brakes did not require power assist, at
least on my 2700 pound vehicle.

kirby's 0.02 drachma


Fred Munro wrote:
> 
> This is a problem common to all disc brake systems, Bob, the braking
> surfaces get wet when it rains. Not like the good old drum brake systems,
> eh?  - they stayed dry unless you drove through standing water 3 feet deep,
> but even dry the braking performance was , umm, "marginal" at best :o) Up
> here in the Great White North they are using a road salt which acts like a
> lubricant after it dries on the rotors, so after you drive in heavy road
> spray and park the car for a while, you effectively have no brakes for the
> first 10 seconds of application - quite disconcerting to say the least.
> The effect of rain should be reduced by drilled or slotted rotors which give
> the water someplace to go when the pads put on the squeeze. On stock rotors
> something like the ATE Powerdisc might be effective. The BIRA kits give you
> more braking torque from the larger rotor diameter, so the effect may be
> reduced. One of the reasons I'm going to a BIRA System 3 is the winter
> braking problem I mentioned above.
> 
> As to pads, my gut feel is that non-dusty pads would tend to be less
> aggressive and may not work as well in the rain. The pads I have on my car
> now make no dust at all and they suck big time with road salt spray. I've
> haven't noticed a problem during the summer in rain, but we don't get the
> torrential tropical downpours you southern boys do :o)
> 
> HTH
> 
> Fred Munro
> '94 S4
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com
> [mailto:s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com]On Behalf Of Robert Myers
> Sent: February 6, 2004 11:43 PM
> To: s-car-list at audifans.com
> Subject: [s-cars] Brake upgrade?
> 
> Hi Y'all,
> 
> Today, while driving through rather heavy rain and equally heavy road
> spray, I found myself unpleasantly surprised a couple of times by applying
> the brakes and finding them to have rather limited initial effect until the
> pads/rotors got dried off a bit.  The reason for the problem is quite clear
> and no significant problem was present due to my not pushing too hard for
> the conditions present.  However, the experience was still a bit
> disconcerting.
> 
> My question: would a brake upgrade to something like BIRA system 1 or
> system 3 solve the wet brakes problem?  Is there a pad material which would
> minimize this behavior under very wet conditions while still giving
> satisfactory dry weather braking with minimal dust?
> 
> _____
> 
> Osama bin Forgotten.
> 
> Bob
> *****
>   Robert L. Myers  304-574-2372
>   Rt. 4, Box 57, Fayetteville, WV 25840 USA  WV tag Q SHIP
>   '95 urS6 Cashmere Grey - der Wunderwagen   ICQ 22170244
>   http://www.cob-net.org/church/pvcob.htm
> *****
> 
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