[DeTomaso] Stock brake calibers & other musings

[Will Kooiman]

That was my feeling too.  My car's brakes were scary at first.  I didn't
rebuild the calipers, but I switched to Porterfield pads, plus I bled the
brakes correctly and switched to braided steel lines.  The difference was
incredible.  It stopped as fast as my wife's Boxster-S, and that's saying
a lot, especially since it had 911 Turbo Brembo brakes.

I know one of the big problems was the brake fluid.  When I bled them,
orange fluid (rust) came out.  Another big problem was the original pads.
I believe in Porterfield R4S pads, but I also think I would have improved
stopping from any new pads.

BTW, you are correct about the solid rotors.  They stop great, but once
you drive hard, they overheat.  After a cruise through the Sam Houston
forest, we stopped for a break, and smoke was coming out from under my
front wheels.  That's when I decided I needed vented rotors.  I had been
breaking hard, but not *that* hard.

--
Will





On 5/14/13 3:36 AM, "eb0711 at kolumbus.fi" <eb0711 at kolumbus.fi> wrote:

>Have been driving around with the rebuilt stock brakes with Porterfield
>pads. I appreciate this may not be greatest news, but I've got to admit
>I'm surprised how well it brakes. Not sure how good thin, stock style,
>rotors are for track use, but I really like what I got with small
>investment and elbow grease.
>
>-Janne
>
>4/30/2013 1:12 PM, eb0711 at kolumbus.fi kirjoitti:
>> I rebuilt my stock front brake calibers recently and took them fully
>> apart while on that. I'm sure many know, but thought I'd share for the
>> benefit of other newbies:
>>
>> - Calibers seem like a decently nice design with big and little pistons,
>> with some oddities in fluid distribution by strange tubing arrangement.
>> - Outer pistons are individually at a dead end, meaning the fluid will
>> not change there, when you bleed them just for changing the fluid. Would
>> really need to squeeze the outer pistons to the bottom to get most of
>> the old fluid out from there.
>> - Changing rotors it's important to have the rotor and hub mounting
>> surfaces very clean and make sure the rotor is perfectly seated against
>> the hub. Otherwise the rotor will wobble and grab the pads at some point
>> of rotation. Easy to be sloppy here. :)
>> - Only way to use thicker ventilated rotors with stock calibers would be
>> to build a spacer to fit between caliber halves and use longer bolts. I
>> wonder if someone already makes them?
>> - Noticed also that the Porterfield pads have 1mm thicker (~20%) steel
>> backing plates than stock pads. So it's not just the compound, but
>> stiffness and (maybe?) heat handling improvement.
>>
>> -Janne
>>
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