The old chesnut... my old Ford Ka's brakes were good enough to lock up the wheels on a dry road if applied hard enough, so surely they're good enough for 'emergencies'. For the odd emergency with a sudden hard stop, you're unlikely to be worried about fade, surely? Low-fade brakes come into their own when you're doing lots of hard braking, I always thought?
Now ABS, that's a different matter. I genuinely think most new cars should have ABS as standard and genuinely for emergencies.
Care to tell us what car this is?
Nissan Primera GT P11 '97
In that case, forget about 'upgrading' the suspension - it's absolutely fine as it is, ffs!
Also..... it's a popular car to mod with the 'riceboys', and not desperately cheap to insure as standard, so you're going to get stung by modding it.
"Depresion" wrote
And what company doesn't? Does Xerox make photocopiers because they are good for our health?
Now you are just being silly nothing you could do could ever make a Cinq less safe than Fiat already did.
For which you can blame insurance tax (hey, I've got a great idea, let's make everyone have insurance, and then tax them for it!) and ambulance chasers.
Bloody no win no fee scum of the earth compensation claiming always someone else's fault something for nothing mentality has meant that insurance companies, who used to be just robbing bastards, are now charging more and more, but making less and less.
Er, no.
:)
An emergency means one single emergency stop, from any speed that the car is capable of (ie, 100mph to 0mph, worst-case-scenario in a Ka) - and you'll find they're more than upto the job. It's when you try the same thing again straight away (as you would on a racetrack or whatever) that you'll run into problems !
Agreed.
Luckily, it's soon to be mandatory that all cars sold within the EU, have ABS fitted.
Yeah, that's me :)
If you have a serious crash tomorrow, and the Police investigation determines that it was caused by your car being defective, then you are in DEEP SHIT !
The insurance company doesn't NEED to ask you when your shocks were last replaced - it's common sense for you to keep your car in a roadworthy condition !!!
Or do like thousands, and just don't buy it.
just don't come in here looking for sympathy when you are pulled.
:o)
Conceded. Given most B roads round here are getting that way what with ridiculous speed humps and neglect I do sometimes wonder why I bothered. Still it keeps my speed low, there's a thought, I wonder if they'll take that into consideration. No thought not.
This is a special case, sure. Extreme example of a car with drums at the front, it would be quite feasible that the brakes can't lock up the wheels and the braking effect is much less than it could be even stamping down hard.
What people often mean by underpowered brakes, is brakes that have less servo assistance and mean they have to stamp down hard to get them to work. This is because they compare them with another car that has a more reactive pedal.
In your particular case it's like that safety improves if you could uprate the brakes, because they are old designs.
I've got classic insurance with a modified car here, if I can remember to get a note of the details. Not expensive, being a classic policy.
"Handling" is not the same as "grip."
Almost by definition, lowering the car beyond the normal point will increase grip at the expense of handling, making it more likely to crash when you get into a spot of bother. Lowering it below the point where the control arms work effectively means it will react sharply and unpredictably over minor imperfections on the road surface.
As an example, a formula one car has appalling handling. But it does have stonking grip.
You won't improve an F1 car by lowering it in any sense at all.
Lowering the centre of gravity increases the likely hood of it sliding as opposed to tipping and changes the handling character of the car. It doesn't as far as I'm aware affect "grip" at all, that's purely down to friction between the road surface and tyre rubber. "grip" levels will obviously change given the same road and car tyres depending on what your doing at the time but the fact it's lowered won't.
Odd. My Cinquecento's brakes suffered from fade down modest gradients, the lad's braking set up is top banana in this respect, and the ABS keeps up pointing in the right direction, too.
That's only the case if you've had your suspension-geometry properly checked out (which you may well have done - you seem to know what you're doing).
Most lowered cars, are simply lowered. With getting a full geometry check, your suspension settings will be well and truly shafted.
Also, I believe that if the springs and dampers aren't matched you can f*ck things up. Grip isn't just soley based on the friction of tyre to tarmac, it has to do with the way the wheels behave over bumps and imperfections in the road, if the tyres keep bouncing off the road as the suspension isn't pressing them down hard all the time or the dampers aren't keeping this effect in check properly you'll lose grip.
A good choice of springs matched to good dampers and I dont see why you can't make the suspension perform grippierly than the car manufacturer did (who was probably building down to a cost) even if you're loweing.
Trouble is, I reckon a lot of people lowering their cars are doing it more for looks than performance. I know you can royally bugger the cornering ability of some mid 80's - mid 90's Peugeots by fitting bad aftermarket suspension bits as they actually used reasonable quality stuff in the 1st place.
Douglas
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