Too deep in the corners warr...

 

Warr,

So just one side pad wore down to the metal, and these where brand new pads? What did the other side pads look like? Worn down almost as much? Which pad wore down to the metal, the inside one in the caliper or the outside one?

Do this... Next time you drive to work or drive home from work, park, and check to see if one wheel is giving off more heat then the other. You might have a sticking piston.

 

Not to highjack Warr's thread, but I have an ATE Super Blue question/comment that may relate. I recently did one track day at the Thunderhill (ambient temp about 60F) with new Endless pads and Mits brake cooling guides on the lower front susp. arms and this combination worked much better for me than previous track days with stock pads and fluid. No fade or soft brake pedal in 6 20 min. track sessions.

However, it seems as though the front pads are not completely "releasing" since my track day as the front brakes feel "hotter than they should" even after a drive without much use. I just bought a Motive bleeder and was going to bleed all four corners this week, but now I am wondering if the "gooey" situation Machron suggests with the ATE fluid might be a factor in my front pads seemingly being slightly engaged even with no brake pedal applied. I was hoping bleeding would alleviate this.

Thanks,

Mark

 

Anything is possible, but if you weren't getting any fade on the track you probably weren't boiling off the fluid.

 

Going back to your earlier non-brake related posts, your suspension is keeping you from the top spots. The stock suspension cannot deal with the grip generated by the 710s.

You are losing time in transitions. Every slalom your car is bouncing off the left bump stops and then the right ones. That is a lot of time left on the course.

I don't know how serious you are about auto-x, but stock suspension makes your car severely underprepped for SM.

 

Wow warr ! Go get some !

That's pretty good, it's not as easy as it looks.



.

 

That's encouraging to hear that about the RT-615's, I've been scoping them out as replacement tires for the Advans. What was the temperature at the track? My coworker with a Miata is running RT-615's on his car and at the last track day we were at (well over 90 degrees outside) he felt they were overheating later in the day and that his lap times were getting slower as a result.

 

I thought this was happening to me as well...but it's just that the heat was overpressurizing them so I had to let more air out.

 

It was between 90-95 ambient temp and very dry (low humidity in an arid area), but the track temps were probably a little higher. I don't believe anyone measured. I'm sure that by the end of a full day, these would have trouble, but they're just street tires. I didn't intend on them holding up to how fast and hard I drive, but they still did very well. I could tell they were getting greasy later in my sessions, because I'd take turn 4 (refer to vid in La Junta thread down below) the same way as earlier, but I'd push a lot more. It's possible that they were just getting overpressurized like Machron said, but that's not something I can adjust in mid-lap.

I'm very pleased with how this tire performed and am elated to have them as my daily driven and drag tire for less than $600 total.

 

Yes, I agree completely and understand what you're saying. The car is not setup nor designed for auto-x. It's mainly setup for drag, since that's all I really know and since I've only been getting power mods from sponsors, but I'm more interested in auto-x and road racing, so my goal for this year was to be as competitive as possible in the local SM class (Rocky Mountain region) while learning to master my stock suspension. I consider the stock suspension to be very good, and I'm very new to non-linear racing, so I figured it would take a while. Concurrently, I've been working my way up through the NASA HPDE classes in hopes of getting my Time Trial license before the year ends.

After all that, I plan to do a good suspension over the Winter along with some lightweight 17X9s with 275-width V710s to see if I can be much more competitive in SM while winning a few NASA events in TTA. As it stands now, I'm 4th overall in SM (7pts behind 2nd place, but 80 behind 1st) and have beaten all the TT cars at both NASA events so far, so I'm excited about getting a proper suspension/brake/tire setup to go with the power that is already there.

 

Cool man. Glad to hear you are getting into the auto-x and road racing. I agree that the stock suspension works well with street tires. Especially on a road course. I have been on stock suspension(not stock MR Bilsteins) with V710s auto-x-ing for the past year and I finally got something different to lessen the body roll(stock legal Ohlins Sport Suspension, see the A-Stock sticky). Keep us posted on the suspension setup. I know you'll love it once your on it.

 

Warrtalon - upgrade to Motul RBF600. I have been driving on Motul for the past year and half even in winter with snow and my car is a daily driver. Last year, I flushed the fluid in october and then did not bleed or flush till early april. I was on stock lines too. I did not have any problems and this was the second winter i did this.

 

KZ, I will try that.

As an update (brakes-related), I went back to PMI road course in Pueblo for an open track day just to get some practice. Luckily, the Evo shop who ran the event brought some in-car lap timers, which I found to be extremely useful. Instead of seeing a lap report sheet at the end of a long session, I got immediate feedback on my laps so I was able to see what was working and what wasn't. Sometimes you think you're fast when you're not and other times it's the opposite. This data combined with a little more skill/experience from my last trip there in March helped me to improve quite a bit:

- Previous best lap - 1:45.5 (on V710s) - Ran a bunch of 1:46s, but that was my only 1:45.
- Today's best - 1:45.7 (on my RT-615s again!!) - Also ran a 1:45.9 with a passenger and many 1:46s

So, in 80-ish degree weather on my street tires, I basically matched my best previous lap ever, which was on race tires. I was only hoping to pull 1:47s, which is still quite fast, but when my first lap was a 1:47.3 with a pause to pass someone, I knew I was in business. I ran multiple 1:46.1s with mistakes, and the 1:45.9 was while teaching another Evo owner some of my techniques (passenger). I was amazed when I saw the 1:45.9, because I did that while talking and pointing out apexes/lines/shift-points/etc.

However, following my theme from La JUnta, after half a day of running on my street tires, my brakes started to screech. I had put on my stock rotors and old pads from before the recent brake upgrade, because the pads disintegrated at the track 3 weeks ago and took out my new rotors. Well, this time, the pads just wore all the way down (1 year old) and were touching the rotors again. Oh well, had to drive home without being able to put on my race tires again. That's ok, because we have our next NASA event in July, and I'll have my replacement rotors/pads by then.

 

WooHoo another drag racer who is now enjoying the steering wheel and brakes

 

I used Valvoline synthetic brake fluid in my car druing the HPDE. It's got a 502* BP, which I didn't have any problems with, and costs about half as much as the Motul. You can get it at Auto Zone, too (which maybe you can Motul also, I don't know).