[DeTomaso] Brembo carbon brakes

[Thomas Borcich]

Pat and all, your comments totally makes sense, SoBill sent me an email saying the Brembo Max rotors appear to be high carbon content cast iron pieces? That makes a lot more sense to me also considering the price...what I read wasn't too clear, it was a similar forum to this. Wasn't sure if there were new break throughs in fabbing carbon fiber as I'm not a chemical or mechanical engineer. What I read was they were a lot lighter, I assume from the high carbon content (a bold guess on my part???). None the less,  if there is weight savings, that would be a benefit...of course then there's the time and effort to figure out hats, mounting offsets, pads, etc. Let's hope they make a Mustang bolt on upgrade that would work for some of us?

I might give Brembo customer service a call and get some clarification.

Tom




From: patrickhals at skynet.be
To: JDeRyke at aol.com; tborcich at msn.com; guson at home.se; phavlik at pris.ca; cengles at cox.net
CC: mikelDrew at aol.com; teampantera at yahoo.com
Subject: Brembo carbon brakes
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2009 14:29:36 +0100










The ADA 9628 LM car runs vented carbon disks, with 
carbon brake pads.
It also runs race AP steel vented and drilled 
disks, with std race pads. ( present configuration ) The weight saving per disk 
is , IMHO, more than 4 pounds per disk. They are amazingly light ( like any 
carbon fiber element ) .
Price per disk is approx. 
2500 USD ( 10K a set ) and they last only for a couple of hours. I think only 
two manufacturers make them ( to my knowledge ) , one being Carbon Lorraine, the 
French inventor ( Don't remember who's the other one ). The building ( or should 
I say cooking ) procedure is long, costly and therefore, very 
expensive.  They don't brake well below 900 ° Celcius ( yes, 900 
Celcius.... ), which is their normal functionning temperature.  For the 
amateurs, it is beautiful to see them at night at Le Mans for instance, because 
they are almost burning in the night ( bright red ) and you see them through the 
rims. 
Of course, it needs a huge lot of cooling, 
otherwise they loose their effect and could possibly take fire.  Braking 
must be extremely strong and violent, to make them raise in temperature. 
Lewis Hamilton is a specialist of hard braking with carbon disks. He puts them 
at the right temperature in the formation lap before the GP, and his engineers 
give him the OK before the start, so he knows they will work at 100 
%.
As a conclusion, for street use, it is a non 
sense... and at this price, it's too good to be true.... 
Just my 2 cents...
Pat