PBR Brake Failure

[Cheyne]

A couple of weeks ago at my last race of the season I had brake failure after 8 of 50 laps at Blackhawk Farms Raceway. The pedal went to the floor and the ABS was kicked in, but I went off in 7 and back on. I keeped going since they worked fine in 1-5, but in corner 6 they failed again and I went straight off. I pulled in and parked the car. This past weekend we finally got to the pulling the brakes off the car as part of a conversion from SCCA Touring 1 to Grand-Am Cup GS and here are some pictures of what we found. The right front PBR caliper was bent and starting to crack. I have been told on the 2nd lap of the race my right front was glowing in corner 1. I was running PFC 01's in the front and the calipers are the orginal calipers that came with the car and this was the 5th weekend on them. At Blackhawk I run laps around a 1:21, but have dipped down to a 1:19. As part of the conversion ot GAC we are switching to Alcon's Big Brake kit from Hoerr Racing.

 

[Juiced-03]

OUCH!!!! Gives me the chills just looking at it!

 

[fiveoguy]

Didn't know there were any mustangs running in T1...how did you do against the Chevy's?

 

[Cheyne]

Very bad. I had the only Cobra in T1. It didn't matter much as we had planned on moving on to Grand-Am Cup GS in 2005 anyway. It would have been nicer to be closer to the Z06's, but at most track I ran between 4 and 5 seconds off the pace of the front runners. Also on my part the car was hard to get used to as I had not driven a production based/dot tires car on the track in about 10 years. The last 10 years I have spent in SCCA GT1 first in a Camaro and then a Olds Cutlass and going from 750hp and 2600lbs to 400hp and 3780lbs wasn't the easiest move. Steeda is coming out with a T1 kit for the Cobra, but it would be better if the Cobra was moved to T2 against the 350z, Camaro's, M3's and Caddies.

Cheyne

 

[BenD]

Ah! the braking problem

I too experienced a weakness in that department, especially against the Ferrari's, Porsche's, M3's and Vipers. My pads simply started to fail. The binding material started to fail and I lost friction, but not peddle pressure. That's referred to as "Outgassing."

The answer to the brake dilemma is 6 Piston Baer's with drilled and slotted rotors on the front and 4 piston drilled and slotted rotors on the rear. Very importnat too is racing pads front and rear. Baer offers "Pre-burnished" pads. That's one of the "Buzz words" that tells you that they are racing pads. They have to stand 1400 degrees F. Duct cooling to the fronts are another mod that I'm going to do for next season. I have the power to pass them on the straights, but they can go harder and deeper in the corners....next season will be a very different STORY.

Tires, tires, tires, don't skimp here like I did. There is only one tire and only one for serious Road racing. Hoosier R3..will literally jerk the head off your shoulders in cornering.

 

[Cheyne]

Under the GAC rules we are restricted to a 4 Piston caliper. Our choice is the Alcon kit. This was made for two reasons. One I have used Alcon's in most of my GT1 cars. The 4 piston's (B-Type) are a little small, but everyone in the class is restricted to the same size calipers. This past year we used PFC pads, but we are switching to Hawk HT14's for the front and Blue for the rear due to a deal with Hawk for near to free pads. We ran the Hawk pads at the Runoffs and they made a huge difference over the PFC 01's that we had run over this past season.

For tires I if I had a choice I would run the Goodyear GS-CS tires. I ran Hoosier R3S04's until the Runoffs and while the Hoosier is a great tire for the first 1/4 of a National race (35 minutes) but they fall off when they are needed most. The Goodyears take a lap to come in, but they are great for the whole race. In Grand-Am Cup you run the Hoosier's. We also had a similar problem in GT1 with the Hoosiers vs. Goodyear.

Here is a picture of my last car at Road America last year. Nothing beats 700hp and a 180mph at Road America.

 

[BenD]

No restrictions like that

Cheyne


I run in the USSpeedway Series held at PPIR 5 times a season. No brake restrictions or power restrictions.