not impressed with brake pads recently. The disco has the later type pads, and the minibus has the same pads as the earlier discos. Neither of them brake as well as I'd like. The other day I pulled the pads on the minibus and cleaned the calipers and greased the pad edges with a smear of copper grease, so they're not sticking in the calipers.
IME you'll get a noticeable improvement in pedal feel, and a massive reduction in brake fade with the EBC Green Stuff pads. rpetty much whatever vehicle you fit them to.
On or around Sun, 04 Dec 2005 17:49:37 +0000, Tim Hobbs enlightened us thusly:
it's not so much firmness in the system, but actual friction that seems to be lacking. The pads seem to "go off" after a bit of use. Initially, they take a few miles to bed in as you'd expect, then for a while they're OK, and then the performance seems to degrade - most likely thing is probably heat in the pads affecting the friction material, I imagine - I do quite a lot of low speed and steep hills, so the brakes are more likely to get hot.
Might be a build up of gunge, oil etc on the pads. Pads are a bit like spark plugs, they need an Italian service every so often.
70mph with a foot on the brake and throttle at the same time ( be careful though, left foot is used to a heavy clutch ), until fade or a burning smell occurs. Max a quarter of a mile under any circumstance though, don't want to warp the discs!
Be aware the brakes will take a considerable time to cool and grip again. And that your brake lights will be on, so best to pick a nice deserted bit of road for this.
Isn't that waggly thing between the front seats supposed to be the main brake, the centre peddle for when you don't anticipate correctly. B-)
I came down Hartside (A686), lovely driving road, several bits where you can see well ahead around a number of sweeping bends, nice straight bits, the odd hair pin. All down hill, around 1300' in 5 miles or so. Used the peddle rather more than one should and had virually no foot brake by the time I got to the last series of bends. Used more of the waggly thing after that...
On or around Sun, 4 Dec 2005 20:31:36 +0000 (UTC), "TonyB" enlightened us thusly:
sounds a bit brutal to me... The pads didn't look contaminated, on the bus, when I had them out the other day.
I think I'll look into better pads, first. The disco, for certain, doesn't stop as well as it used to when we first had it. Mind, the back pads need doing on that, almost out.
On or around Sun, 04 Dec 2005 21:13:33 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Liquorice" enlightened us thusly:
BTDT. but in general... some hills don't suit engine braking - too slow in a lower gear and too fast (and need brake in addition) in a higher one. I don't in fact use that much on the brakes, certainly never actually get fade or anything, but it's all low-speed and thus less cooling.
interestingly, the rear drum brakes on the minibus snatch like a bastard initially when cold or damp, but having been used a bit, they behave more normally. Mebbe they need new linings as well...
Whip the drums off and chamfer the leading edge of the linings - like we was all taught to at mechanics school in the old days, and like they don't teach no more.
I never did anything even remotely mechanical at school or during my working life but I picked up the habit of chamfering leading edges over
50 years ago, when I used to struggle to keep my ancient motorbike working. At that time you bought un-drilled linings and had to drill and countersink the rivet holes yourself but, over the years, pre-drilled linings became available, followed by pre-lined, exchange shoes, the first of which were riveted and then bonded ones came along.
I continued chamfering with all the motorbikes, cars and Series Land Rovers I owned over subsequent years, and must have breathed in a quite a bit of asbestos dust along the way. However, I didn't do it on LR hand-brakes, where I thought a bit of extra bite would be a bonus.
I don't know what the angle should be, I just filed away until it looked right and didn't remove too much of the contact area.
Was it all necessary? I don't know, but maybe an expert on here will tell us. Possibly it dates from the time when linings were sometimes rather badly and insecurely riveted to the shoes, and chamfering reduced the chance of them becoming detached. I remember wondering when I first bought pre-lined shoes why they were not pre-chamfered. Maybe the linings had been attached so well that there was thought to be no need..
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