Upmaintenance and confusion on the slowbra
Several months ago I signed up for what I believed to be my last chance at driving a car at Texas World Speedway. As it turns out, they're STILL not closing...which is good because I more or less didn't get to drive.
After the first session the front end was making a slight grinding noise off the brakes, and a HORRIBLE grinding nose, that could even be felt through the pedal, on the brakes. As I'd been using the same front pads for several trackdays, I assumed I'd hit the wear indicator (aka "squealer"). I didn't have the money to replace them that night so me full-weekend track event was cut short after 20 minutes.
Today I replaced the pads with some EBC yellowstuff pads. These are, in theory, and upgrade as I was running the pads that came with my BAER 6 piston/14" front brake kit. Baer calls their pads a "street" pad, and doesn't give any more info than that. I got several compliments on the front brakes on this car so for a "street" pad, they were apparently pretty good. The yellowstuff pads are a track oriented pad that will still work on the street, though not optimally. Fine, as I don't put many street miles on this car.
The interesting thing is: when I pulled the baer pads off, they weren't on the squealers. So I'm slightly baffled. I could have completed that trackday. Now I don't know what was causing the terrible grinding. It looks like the pad was just a weeeeee bit taller than the rotor, so I'm now thinking that as the pad wore, there was a little bit of pad material actually contacting the rotor around the rim. Either that, or the wheel bearings are shot in a very, very strange way. We shall see...
UPDATE: Turns out I'd lost one of the bolts holding the rear caliper bracket to the spindle, and it was this bracket that would rotate under braking and make contact with the top of the rotor. Pic below. Luckily, this didn't do any real damage to either the bracket or the rotor. Replacement hardware on order. When I initially installed the kit, these bolts didn't call for loctite, but they will DEFINETILY be going back in with loctite.
After the first session the front end was making a slight grinding noise off the brakes, and a HORRIBLE grinding nose, that could even be felt through the pedal, on the brakes. As I'd been using the same front pads for several trackdays, I assumed I'd hit the wear indicator (aka "squealer"). I didn't have the money to replace them that night so me full-weekend track event was cut short after 20 minutes.
Today I replaced the pads with some EBC yellowstuff pads. These are, in theory, and upgrade as I was running the pads that came with my BAER 6 piston/14" front brake kit. Baer calls their pads a "street" pad, and doesn't give any more info than that. I got several compliments on the front brakes on this car so for a "street" pad, they were apparently pretty good. The yellowstuff pads are a track oriented pad that will still work on the street, though not optimally. Fine, as I don't put many street miles on this car.
The interesting thing is: when I pulled the baer pads off, they weren't on the squealers. So I'm slightly baffled. I could have completed that trackday. Now I don't know what was causing the terrible grinding. It looks like the pad was just a weeeeee bit taller than the rotor, so I'm now thinking that as the pad wore, there was a little bit of pad material actually contacting the rotor around the rim. Either that, or the wheel bearings are shot in a very, very strange way. We shall see...
UPDATE: Turns out I'd lost one of the bolts holding the rear caliper bracket to the spindle, and it was this bracket that would rotate under braking and make contact with the top of the rotor. Pic below. Luckily, this didn't do any real damage to either the bracket or the rotor. Replacement hardware on order. When I initially installed the kit, these bolts didn't call for loctite, but they will DEFINETILY be going back in with loctite.
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