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RE: Carbon/Metallic Brake Pads

To: rpalmer@ames.ucsd.edu, tigers@Autox.Team.Net
Subject: RE: Carbon/Metallic Brake Pads
From: "Spontelli, Ramon" <rs11@ElSegundoCA.NCR.COM>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 1997 12:17:00 -0700
>  Anyone out there have any input and/or experience with
>  carbon/metallics, favorable or otherwise?

I do!  I do!

A couple of years ago I put Dale's Porterfield carbon/kevlar pads on the
front of the Mk II autocrosser, along with a pair of brand new rotors,
one of which is now broken . . . oops, thread-mixing!

Anyway, with the carbon-kevlar pads on the front and the stock/OEM-type
shoes in the rear, the results were, well, sort of "bitchin'" as they
say.

Then, seeking too much of I good thing, I went back to Dale and got the
carbon/kevlar shoes for the rear.  The result was an immediate
rear-wheels-lock-up-first on every braking application.  Extremely not
good.  To "fix" that, I bought one of those Tilton adjustable
proportioning valves, and plumbed it into the rear line back there where
the hard line meets the flex line at the rear axle.  Though I was able
to get the bias adjusted so that we had some pretty even braking,
neither Theresia nor I could get used to the "feel" of that damn
proportioning valve.  It's a spring-loaded thing-a-ma-jig <Tech
Writer?>, and you adjust the tension on the spring to control the amount
of force going to the controlled output port.

After about six months of trying to learn how to drive the setup, we ate
one of the big-bucks shoes when we broke one of the studs that holds the
brake-adjuster to the backing plate.  So, instead of replacing the shoe,
we went back to the stock/OEM-type shoes, transferred the big-bucks
proportioning valve to the parts bin, and lived happily everafter . . .
well, ok, happily 'til we busted a brake rotor!

Ramon

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