Tag Archives: Brake job

Them’s the Brakes

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I’m quite tardy with this post.

Last Saturday was another Emich sponsored day at HPR. Usually I sign up for just the afternoon. You get four sessions, with fewer cars each session. And you can sleep in. This time, though, I signed up for the whole day. It would be a “maximum” day: seven sessions.

Tires

I used up the slicks a year ago and since then I’ve been pondering what tires to put on the track wheels. Not slicks again, as I can’t drive to and from the track on them. And slicks are so much harder on the car. Anyway, I’ve been looking at the various alternatives and haven’t come to a decision. Because I loaned the wheels to Kevin for use on the Lemons car, I didn’t need to come up with a decision yet.

Kevin has solved the problem for me. He just bought another set of wheels for his Lemons car, so he returned mine. “Have fun with the tires,” he said. We didn’t use them in the Noah’s Ark race in June and our overheating issues in the September race resulted in running only 40 laps on them. Thanks, Kevin. Much appreciated.

They’re Advan Neova AD07 LTS2. The LTS2 means made for Lotus. The fronts are smaller than I normally use, 175s instead of 195s. I was thinking they were 200 treadwear tires, but they’re 180s.

These tires come with a few questions: How fast can I go on these tires? How will the narrower front tires affect me? How long will they last?

Only time will tell as to how long they’ll last. If I only do two or three days a year, they could last a couple of years.

As to expected lap times, I pulled a number out my ass: 2:10.

In the movie Rush, Niki Lauda says, “God gave me an okay mind, but a really good ass, which can feel everything in a car.” I’m pretty sure God didn’t give me a really good ass. By putting these tires on the car, I’m changing two things: the grip of the rubber, and the width of the front tires. Which means I’m changing the grip in the front a different amount than I’m changing the grip in the rear. Is my ass good enough to sort that all out?

On the way to the track, I’m not in any hurry. I’ll drive fast at the track, I don’t feel the need to go fast on the Interstate. The first guy who passed me who was clearly going the same place I was, zipped by at about 130 in a Porsche. A few minutes later, a string of BMW M3s, followed by a McLaren and an Audi R8. I caught all but the Porsche at the gas station. I finally picked up a decent gas can, a Kawasaki green 5-gallon one. About four gallons went into the car, and I filled the new can. Depending on the day, I can get 4 sessions on a tank, so with the can I will get 6 and probably 7, if I cut a session or two short by a couple of laps.

The Laps

When I got my wristband, I asked about the car count. Fred said he limits the day to 75, but we had less than 40. I’m guessing that’s really 60 cars – something like 20 morning, 20 afternoon, and 20 all-day. Good for me, my group wouldn’t be more than 20 cars.

I didn’t get out right away for my first session. I took it easy on the out lap, as the car was cold. I was cold, too. It was probably only 50 degrees F (10 C). I had my t-shirt and flannel on under my driving suit and a hoodie over it. It’s chilly at 110mph with the top off.

The first session, I caught up to a black R8. He pointed me by, then managed to keep up to me. That’s a much faster car than mine, and I reeled him in pretty quickly, so I was a little surprised to kept up with me. I was faster in the turns, but he could always catch me on the straights. He was about the only interesting traffic I dealt with.

After the first session, my wheels were dirtier than I expected. I’ve been spoiled with the CL RC5+ pads I’ve been using for the last seven or eight years. They’re relatively dust-free, and the dust is more gray than black.

I really enjoyed the second session. Because of the low car count, I was able to run quite a few laps without any traffic. I was consistently running in the 2:11s, thinking I could easily manage a 2:10 by the end of the day.

When a session is ended, the worker at turn 1 picks a car to be the first to get the checker flag. The lights at each bunker will display the checker as this car approaches it. I’m pretty sure they picked me to be the first car to get the checker for the first two sessions. Woo hoo! I won!

I try to treat my in lap as a cool-down lap, and never use the brakes. So it wasn’t until I pulled into my spot in the paddock that I heard the noise my front brakes were now making. I’d used them up completely.

The brakes

Regular readers may recall that I just put these pads on after my Atlanta trip. I used OEM pads rather than my usual CL RC5+, which nobody had in stock at the time. I had used the OEM pads for years before I switched to the RC5+s and never had any abnormal wear. They weren’t as good as the Carbon Lorraine pads, but they weren’t bad.

I have less than a thousand street miles on these pads, and no track miles before this morning. The fronts are completely gone. I’m lucky they didn’t score the rotors.

Halfway through the session, I was passed by a BMW race car. The owner came over and chatted with me. He said he was sorry he didn’t have a camera on his car, because he had a nice view of the smoke coming off my brakes when I was under heavy braking. He thought at first I was bedding in new pads. He asked if I had changed rotors when I changed the pad compound. I hadn’t. He suggested that this was the cause of my abnormal wear. That there’s some transfer from the pads to the rotor and if the new pad doesn’t play well with whatever the old pad put on the rotor, this could be the result.

When I last ran the OEM pads, my front rotors were drilled. My current rotors are slotted. Other than driving faster now than I did then, that’s the only change that comes to mind. Perhaps that’s part of the story? I doubt it.

So that was a disappointing end to my day.

Now, about the tires.

Turn 7 is a right-hand uphill sweeper. On my hard street tires, I take this in third gear, shifting into fourth as it levels off. On slicks, I’m in fourth at the bottom of the hill, well onto the high cam. In the second session, I was trying to figure out which was better with these tires. In fourth, I was barely onto the high cam and couldn’t really accelerate up the hill. If I could have entered the turn just a little bit faster, just a few more RPMs, I’d have been able to accelerate. Here’s where I think I felt the narrower front tire. I was getting a bit of understeer, and maybe the wider tire would have made a difference.

In any event, I’m quite happy with the tires. I have no doubt I’ll be able to get under 2:10 with them.

Chat with Pettiford

My day done mid-morning, I took a tour of the paddock. Mike Pettiford was there – he’s always there on Emich days – so I chatted with him a bit. He’s a driving instructor/coach.

Naturally, we talked tires.

He says he drives to and from the track on slicks all the time, even on thousand mile trips. I’m skeptical. I might believe he doesn’t get too much wear on the streets to and from HPR. But a thousand miles of highway driving? The original equipment tires for my car were 60 treadwear with giant tread blocks. They were good for about 2,500 street miles for the rears and not a lot more for the fronts. I can’t imagine that slicks would last as long.

When I mentioned rain, he shrugged it off. “I just go slow.” I got caught in a nasty storm on my way home on my street tires. Twenty miles an hour was too fast. Slicks would have put me in a ditch, or worse.

He doesn’t think much of me and my 460 tires. “What’s the point of having slow tires?” Not his exact words, but close enough. The other two guys in the discussion nodded. Different strokes. For me, the enjoyment is in driving the car as close to the limit as I can. With soft, sticky tires, the limit is a lot faster and with faster speeds are higher consequences. So I can get at least as much enjoyment out of hard tires as soft.

One other exchange got me shaking my head a bit, too. I’d mentioned that my top speed wasn’t any better on slicks than on other tires. One might think that having a higher speed on the exit of the turn before the straight would allow for higher speed at the end of the straight. That was his thinking. It’s not my experience. He didn’t say he doubted my statement, but he wasn’t convinced. The fact of the matter, though, is that top speed is related to horsepower. Slicks don’t give me any more power, so they don’t increase my top speed.

I ran three cameras on the car for the second session, but none for the first. I was thinking I’d rather have video of later sessions than early ones and didn’t think I’d be able to keep them all charged, so missing the first session was no big deal. First time with three cameras running. It’s probably better for a highlight reel than a lap.

I drove home trying not to use the brakes at all. Like a 70-mile cool-down lap. I didn’t need the brakes until I was a couple of blocks from the house, so I’ll call it a success. I found a set of pads (both axles) at Blackwatch and ordered them. I got a call from Fred at Blackwatch on Monday. “Your name is good and your phone number is good, we were just concerned about the email address. We didn’t want to send your order to Russian hackers.” He bumped me up to 2-day shipping.

I told Fred the story of my 18 lap brakes. He says the material transfer theory doesn’t work as the RC5+ are sintered and don’t transfer material the way other pads do. He said, “Maybe you’re driving faster now.”

I did the front passenger on Wednesday and the front driver on Thursday. I set a personal best on the time. Not a high bar, for sure.

The car is driveable now, but I can do the rears at my leisure.

It took me about an hour to clean the wheels. They’re much easier to clean when they’re not on the car, but they were the dirtiest they’ve ever been, not even close. And the dust was a deep black and didn’t always come off easily.

And, finally, the obligatory video. Sorry, I didn’t realize the OBD dongle in the car quit talking to my phone, so no data from the car.

Gimme a Brake

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The Lead Up

On the LOCO drive last month, I had an issue with my right rear brake caliper. That was the second time it happened. It also cropped up on the drive back from Atlanta. When Michael fixed it the first time, we noted that the disk was starting to crack and the seals on the caliper didn’t look good.

The plan was to buy new pads all around and replace the rear disks and the right rear caliper. But I wanted to go on the LOCO drive, so it went on the schedule for some time after the trip. We see how this turned out.

I also decided that, while we’re doing all this, I may as well upgrade to stainless steel lines. And, what the heck: why not paint the calipers, too?

Not long after I bought the car, call it a decade ago, I told myself I should be able to change my oil myself and learn how to replace brake pads and disks. At about that same time, I had Doug help me replace the pads, but it didn’t stick. More recently, I had Michael show me. He is very patient with me.

The object of the game, then, will be to do as much of this work myself, with a little supervision by Michael, and in the end not only have fresh brakes but the confidence that I can do pads and disks myself without supervision.

Before the LOCO trip, I checked some prices but didn’t place any orders. When the time came to place my order, it turns out that the pads I usually use are not in stock anywhere. Neither are the disks. So for this job, we’ll be using OEM parts. Luckily, the caliper I needed was in stock. The stainless steel lines were not only available, but I had a choice of silver or red. I chose red.

I replaced the front pads a couple of weeks ago, as soon as my order arrived. The front pads were shot and I needed to replace them post haste. I did this without Michael’s presence. Hurray!

Let’s Do It!

Thursday evening, I had Michael show me how to remove one of the calipers. My plan was to get everything taken apart on Friday. That is, get all the calipers off the car and replace the rear disks. For better or worse, I intended to do one corner at a time, removing the calipers and remounting the wheel. Then I could clean and paint the calipers. Finally, have Michael show me how to replace one of the brake lines, do the rest on my own, then put it all back together without assistance and be back on the road Monday or Tuesday.

Eisenhower said that plans are nothing, planning is everything. This plan, like many of my others, was nothing.

Things went well enough on Friday. That is, I managed to get the three other calipers off the car. The fronts and rears are different, and I attacked the fronts incorrectly. I figured it out before long. On the left rear, I had a bit of difficulty getting the pads off due to the disk having developed a lip.

Next job was to clean and prep the calipers for painting. The new one was simple: just mask off the bits I don’t want to be painted. Then I went after one of the fronts. I hit it with brake cleaner and wiped it down, then tried a wire brush and sandpaper. I think it’s as good as I’m going to get it. Michael agrees that it’s good enough to paint.

When I removed the front calipers, I noted the position of the brake lines. It wasn’t obvious to me how we were going to unfasten them. Michael had a couple of free hours on Saturday, so I had him help me with them. We decided we needed to take more of the car apart. I started with the wheel liner, but that didn’t help.

Then we went after the clam louvers. I already had the colored access panels off. Naturally, I dropped one of the bolts. Sort of removing the front clam, I’m never going to see that bold again. I may hear it rattle and buzz, but I’ll never see it. We now had somewhat better access. It’s still a pain. Michael’s short-handled wrenches came in handy. In the end, Michael did both sides.

I went after the rears on Saturday. I asked Michael for help, but I managed to do both of them myself. I was happy they were so much easier.

When we were done, we talked a bit more about getting ready for paint. It was only then that I actually looked at the left-hand rear caliper. It was in nearly as bad of shape as the right. There’s no point in putting it back on the car. The left side rotor was in pretty good shape, a bit of a lip, but no cracks or discoloration. I somehow had assumed that the state of the right-hand caliper was associated with the state of the disk. When the bolt backed out, the pads would engage on the disk, at an angle. I figured the heat damaged both disk and caliper. But, no, I will now blame the condition of the calipers on age.

So I ordered a replacement left rear caliper. I checked maybe a dozen places and the only one that had any was the same place I got the other one. A couple of hours later, I get an email telling me that he doesn’t have any. It has to come from England and will be a couple of weeks.

  • Cracked disk
  • OEM replacement disk
  • The difficult fastener
  • Red SS line
  • Car in kit form

So much for getting back on the road Monday or Tuesday. How does July sound?

Here I may as well add that I’m trying to get my windshield replaced. I went to Safelite. A week later, they told me one was on the way. That was two weeks ago. One vendor I reached out to is having some made, but it’ll be “late summer” before he has them. That could be September 20th.

Nasty Grinding Noise

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I’ve had a busy couple of weekends at the track: first the Ticket to Ride days then the Ferrari day. A week before either of these, though, Michael and I took a look at my brake pads. The fronts were clearly getting near the end of their life. I certainly had enough for Ticket to Ride, which is more or less the equivalent to half a track day.

So right after Ticket to Ride I ordered a set.Unfortunately, they were back ordered.

We took another look and decided I’d be okay for one more track day, but no more!

This turned out to be a slight miscalculation. There’s a definite nasty grinding noise coming from the front when I apply the brakes. I need to keep the car parked for who knows how long, until my order gets filled.

Then I remembered that a few weeks ago, when looking for something else (I don’t even remember what I was looking for now), I came across a box with a used set of pads. When I found them, I said to Michael, “Why do you suppose I kept these?”

They are the stock pads that I took off the car when I first put the Carbone Lorraine pads on a few years ago. I can’t say for sure, but they may have half their life left. In any event, they’re not completely done, so that must be why I kept them.

Not knowing how long I’ll have to wait for the good pads, it was an easy decision to put these used ones back in. And it’s good instruction for me. I keep saying that I’m software, not hardware. So Michael did one side and I did the other. (Yes, I’ve gone through this exercise before, when Doug first helped me. It didn’t stick then, but I’m thinking that through repetition I’ll finally get it.)

We took it around the block to make sure all is well. They’re clearly not as sticky as the CL RC5+, but they’ll work just fine in the interim.

And, luckily, the rotors are none the worse for wear.

Winter Maintenance, part deux

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Thursday, December 28

Today we made another stab at getting the Lotus back in shape. Our task list looks something like this:

  • Lotus
    • Front discs
    • Front pads
    • Flush brakes (maybe)
    • Drive belt
    • Change oil
    • Clean air filter
    • Mount the 2bular exhaust

In addition, we also have these to do as well:

  • Chrysler
    • Front pads
    • Flush brakes
    • Install windshield wipers
    • Rotate tires
  • Hyundai
    • Rotate tires

Again, we managed to get a fairly late start. Michael is on vacation, after all. We decided to delay the brake flush on the Lotus given that it was done in June. We can do it in April, before I have any more track days and remain on a more or less annual schedule. We also rearranged the priorities a bit, with the Chrysler’s brakes at the top of the list with the Elise drive belt second.

The Chrysler has been treated like the red-headed step child. I’ve only driven it about two thousand miles this year. I’ve been bad about keeping up the maintenance. I should be given a stern talking to about the state of the poor car. The front pads were beyond done and the front tires are worn to the cords. We did rotate them, so the bad ones are now on the back. She’s not going anywhere until I get her new tires.

The pads were an easy fix, but the bleeding took a while. We did it the old-fashioned way.

Next up was the serpentine belt for the Elise. We watched a video on YouTube earlier. It turns out the whole repair takes about as long as the video, assuming you have the part. We did not. The video we watched suggested taking the old belt to the parts store to get the proper size. Last weekend I went to the Toyota dealer. They said they show three different sizes. They only had one in stock, at about seventy bucks. They suggested I go to O’Reilly’s.

So we got the belt off and headed to Advance. The guy there was not very helpful. His computer didn’t list any options when looking under Lotus. We only found one option when searching the Celica and that belt was too long. He suggested the dealer.

So we headed to O’Reilly’s. The coin dropped for me on the way from one store to another. We needed to look at the options for the Celica for every year until we found a match. The O’Reilly’s guy started the search that way, but failed. Then he took the old belt into the back and came back a few minutes later with a match. Seems like the Advance guy should have been able to do that.

Oh, and it’s a good thing the dealer didn’t have any in stock. Instead of paying more than $70 for the belt, it was $16.24, including tax.

Michael had the new belt on in a jiffy. I figured we had enough sunlight left to change the oil but not enough for the exhaust. We finished as the sun set behind the mountains. As it wasn’t dark yet, we knocked off the Chrysler’s windshield wipers. So, not as much progress as hoped.

Friday, December 29

After yet another discussion of the tasks we want to accomplish, I agreed that I could clean the air filter without Michael’s help. It’s a pain in the keister, as you can’t really get to it from the top and you need to go in through the left rear wheel well. And the tire rotation for the Hyundai will have to wait that car isn’t on premise, being Genae drove it to work.

First thing to do for the exhaust swap is to remove the diffuser. You may recall that, during the Incident at Woody Creek, when we were towing the car off the track, we hit the only pothole in the place and the car came off the casters. The casters rotated up and back, clobbering the diffuser, denting the rear panel, and doing a bit of damage to the fiberglass.

While Michael started dismounting the exhaust I went to work on the diffuser to see what I could do for it. Apologies for the poor photo. This gets mounted with the right of the photo to the front of the car. I neglected to take an “after” picture, but as you can imagine there wasn’t much improvement. I’ve been thinking about getting a bigger diffuser for some time. This looks like my justification, but it will have to wait until after the Chrysler’s tires.

I also fiddled around trying to straighten out the damage on the rear panel. It wasn’t nearly as bad and I’ve done a passable repair to it.

This is now the fourth time we’ve swapped out the exhaust and we’re getting more practiced at it. I think it took us something like three hours the first time and now we’ve gotten it down to about an hour and a quarter.

All finished and the car put back together, we took her out for a spin to see what she sounded like. It’s been months so it’s not like I can make an accurate comparison between the fiberglass and the steel wool. But I think it’s quieter now. It’s almost as quiet as the stock exhaust, except that it burbles and pops nicely when coming off the throttle.

In the end, we didn’t get everything done that I wanted to get done. But I’m happy nonetheless.

A Glance Back

It was a tough year for the Elise. She spent 100 days in the shop for a camshaft replacement that went awry, resulting in a rebuilt head. The battery died and I didn’t know it was installed incorrectly, resulting it the battery bouncing around inside the boot at the track. I had the aforementioned right rear suspension failure, which was the same failure we had on the left rear back in 2011. The one good thing that happened was the left rear turn signal magically fixed itself.

This year I drove the car the fewest miles of any year since 2011. I’ve had the car nearly eight years. This year’s repair/maintenance bill amounts to almost a third of total maintenance spending since I’ve owned it. The high maintenance bill results in a total cost of a bit over a dollar and a half for every mile I’ve driven it. (For the record, that’s fuel, service, insurance, and taxes/license.) Looking at the bright side, I didn’t spend as much on it in 2017 as I did in any year I was still making payments on it.

Winter Maintenance

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Every year High Plains Raceway has a free track day. Anybody who has been an open lapping customer during the calendar year is eligible, as is any member in good standing of the clubs who own the track. It is held between Christmas and New Years, unless weather causes a delay.

But I need to get the car sorted before I can take it out. I have a long list of tasks for Michael to help me do to do for me. I was hoping they’d do the track day on Friday, as that looks to have the best weather. But it got scheduled for Wednesday. So Michael and I had a lot of work to do on Tuesday:

  • Front discs
  • Front pads
  • Flush brakes (maybe)
  • Drive belt
  • Change oil
  • Clean air filter
  • Mount the 2bular exhaust

The rear pads were replaced in June, and I’ll have to replace the rear discs next time I replace the pads. Brake fluid was new in June and has roughly three track days and only a few thousand miles on it.

Tuesday, December 26

Tuesday turned out to be quite cold. I turned the garage furnace on after breakfast and hoped to get it up to 50. The thermometer in the garage read 25. I almost never see it reading below 32. Michael slept in and we spent too much time talking about what we were going to do instead of doing it. And, of course, we had to make a trip to the auto parts store, and we grabbed lunch. (The Chrysler reported the outside temp at 8 degrees.)

In the end, all we got done was the brake hardware.

I’m software, not hardware, so please forgive my ignorance as I point out the obvious.

I’ve never given the discs much thought before, I’ve never had one in my hand. When I unboxed them it was obvious because of the slots that there’d be left and right. I didn’t look for any other asymmetries. I didn’t give much thought to the slots until I held the new discs up against the old ones still mounted on the car.

First, the vents in the new discs are different than the vents in the old ones. The vents on the old discs are asymmetrical. The new ones are not. The old ones vent the same direction with respect to the car’s travel. The new ones, one will be going forward, the other back. The left side vent matches the old one, the right side doesn’t. Sadly, my photo doesn’t illustrate very well.

Second, the slots are in the opposite orientation to the holes in the drilled discs.

I’m guessing that the difference in the vents is due to the drilling. With the slots, it doesn’t matter where the vents are. But for the holes, the location of the vents matters.

Confirmation that the pads were due to be replaced. All four pads were similarly worn, except the inside pad on the left, where the wear is uneven and bottom half of the groove is gone.

It snowed much of the day, so I was anticipating a possible change to the schedule. If they change it to next week, I’ll have to skip it. Genae kept checking the weather radar and it showed no snow. But clearly it was snowing. The TV weather wonk said it was “fog snow”. Never heard of it before.

The snow and cold contributed to our lack of progress. It will be easier to do the exhaust in the driveway with the ramp. And it’s best to get the oil warm before changing it. If we open the garage door we lose all our warm air. Even the quick spin around the block to check the brakes was interesting. Our cul-de-sac is frozen packed snow. Plows have been by the other streets around the school, but there were still big patches of slush.