Brake upgrade? For Mondial QV

I use my brakes hard and there is no need to upgrade. When I fist got my 1986 coupe last year the brakes were a bit squirely so I tortured them from high speeds repeatedly till the cabin filled up with brake vapors. Close to seven thousand miles later they are just fine.

 

I looked at this after pulling my front end apart and replacing ball joints and bushes.
Saw it was a slider type caliper and thought hmmmm what options are available
The answer is very little and what is is bloody expensive.

I look at my 79 Porsche 911 brakes with 4 spot calipers and cross drilled and slotted rotors and then look at my Ferrari and ask why...it does seem to pull up but with elongated pedal pressure it does fade.

 

I have to agree with Rapalyea, there is no need to upgrade your brakes on a QV or 3.2, unless you race around the racetrack.

For the Mondial 8 the pads tend not to release properly enough. You do not have this issue with the QV or 3.2 unless it needs a rebuild. (Which I would do anyway on a 30 year old car)

No issues myself and have braked down hard, hill down, on my last trip to Italy in the mountains. No overheating to sticky brakes. Plane stock.

Just my 2cnts

 

One option is just to replace the rubber hoses with braided so that as much feel as possible is transmitted - thereafter all the pad & fluid suggestions here & in the 308 section

 

Although rotors, calipers and pads are fine my 86 3.2 is a bit of a dissapointment in two areas. First, the brake pressure is way to low. Second, the brakes are not linear and are a bit easy to lock up.

I have been thinking of two possibilities. The first and easiest is grey's suggestion on hoses which might improve linearity. One radical thing I have brainstormed about is to install a vacuum reduction valve in the power brake vacuum line to reduce power brake boost.

There is another thing that I think could be done, might be easy to do, but is not as big an issue as with other cars I have owned and that is front/rear bias. Every car I have ever owned is imho, to muched biased towards front brakes. I believe this is to reduce the possibility of ham footedly using a lot of brake in the middle of a corner and getting rear lockup.

The most extraordinary example is my 1965 Corvair Monza convertible. It is just a wonderful convertible [won't blow my cowboy hat off at 80 mph] but I always felt the brake bias was to much to the front. Finally I got around to installing a proportioning valve and that car now has the best brakes of any car I ever owned, including the Ferarri. The car always had a very hard brake pedal which makes quick braking easier to modulate. But since the rears were not working as hard as they could actual hard deceleration was limited by front lock up. Easy to avoid but total braking could be better.

I was not prepared for just how much better the proprtioning valve impoved the car. I can come down from 80 mph like a rocket sled hitting a trough of water. The car suspension and low center of gravity and hard brake pedal have always made hard braking very comfortable. Specifically, the car simply does not change attitude under hard braking, and since the brakes are so linear and hard I can just decelerate very hard and no one can even tell by looking at the nose since it just does not dive.

And of course the engine is in the back so the back tires can do a lot of braking. Just 1960's drum brakes on an economy car, and given the low top speed of 90 mph and its modest 110 hp engine the brakes just do not have time to repeatedly heat up, even going down hill so I never get fade either.

Finally, propotioning front/rear reguires great care so as not to get oversteer in curve under hard braking. I did a lot to testing to get it just right. With the Corvair, and the Ferrari its not as tricky as it would be, for instance, on a 911 of that earlier era. Both the Corvair and Ferrari cars are very forgiving in such situations.

 

I love the EBC "red Stuff" brake pads for the Mondial. low"ish" dust, good bite and has all the upgrades like ceramics, chamfered edges, and slotted. Fit great on the QV. here is a pic of the calipers, decided to go ahead and paint them, the product I used was G-2, great 2 part epoxy paint that has a hard gloss, and self leveling for those rough cast calipers on the Mondial. With the stock wheels I figure you would have to really look for the painted calipers. goes well with the Nero Paint.
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Well done Mark! Nice clean wheels too.

 

I used EBC Red Stuff pads on my Mondial. Vaporized them in one day at Lime Rock. Black greasy dust all over. Never again.

 

Here is another example of painted brake calipers using the same process Mark used. Paint works great, but do not take your time, get it done quickly. The paint will be dry within a few hours.

Pictures show before and after. Cleaned the calipers with a brush attached to my Dremel tool. Used lots of brushes, at least eight, maybe more. Cleaning took more time than I thought it would. Off and on it took a week to clean all the parts.

Last pictures shows what happens when you do not think ahead. I painted these parts. When I finished painting the first part I did not think ahead as to where I was going to put it to dry. Quick fix was to use screwdrivers out of the tool box and then hang them on screwdrivers. Not the best way, but it worked.

Did this last year and the color still is holding up.

Mike Sou made a comment about seeing the calipers once they were painted. He was right, the best view of the painted calipers seems to be from the rear of the car while laying on the ground. But at least they are painted. Have no idea what they look like when the car is moving.

Now I have new pads (should have used those EBC red pads), new rotors, new brakes lines, and painted calipers. Brakes work great.

 

My 1988 coupe has a Tarox brake system as installed by a PO. i've always felt the brakes on my '86 coupe are very good. However, The Tarox system on my '88 takes it to another level.

Let's just say I have to look behind me when I brake to make sure no one is going to hit me! The car stops that quickly. It reminds me of the brakes on a Porsche 993 C4S I used to own. It was the best stopping car I have ever owned...and I have owned over 80 cars so far

 

My brakes are good also in 'normal' use also.

 

Brakes, like handling, is as much art as science. Most cars are biased to the front, the Monidi less then most. The brakes have gotten better but are, to my taste, still too light and not progressive enough. I flat spotted some front tires which I have never done before. A learning curve. Mid and rear engined cars have an advantage. Porche. Monidi. Even my old Corvair.

I am building a 1988 Mark VII as a fast GT [7.5 psi boost] and found a company that would fabricate custom rear pads for me for a higher coeficient of friction then the fronts. I never could activate the anti-locks at the rear with matched pads.

 

PS: Not everyone knows ant-locks seriously increase stopping distances on ice or hard packed snow. Steering control on those surfaces? fugedaboudit Found that out with my first anti-lock car in Chicago. Was testing them down a residential street at 35mph and thought they had failed. Disconnected them at times for such situations.

"....More specifically, the studies show that ABS has no real-world effect on dry-surface braking, ABS-equipped vehicles take longer to stop on ice than non-ABS vehicles, ABS-equipped vehicles are more prone to roll-over accidents than non-ABS vehicles, ABS-equipped vehicles are involved more often in single car fatal accidents than non-ABS vehicles ..."

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2006/08/killer-abs-abs-braking-increases-rollover-risk-by-51/

 

David- That is a very questionable source and very questionable results belied by thousands of road tests by the major magazines, NHTSA, and the insurance industry. The biggest problem with ABS brakes is most owners do not stomp on them hard enough to activate the ABS in a panic situation. When they feel the ABS cycling, many drivers have a tendency to actually decrease brake pressure, the opposite of what is needed.

 

David your car actually has aftermarket pads on them from Porterfield I don't remember which ones but the part number is on one of those receipts within the service records you got with the car.

 

Hi Rob,

I was talikng about the Mark VII.

 

Hi Tazandjan,

Do you have sources for anti-locks stop shorter on ice then non-anti-locks? I have already listed one that you find suspect. I remember one magazine test that showed Anti-lock stopping distance 25% longer on ice. Will see if I can find it.

 

My 1990 Audi 100 had a button to deactivate the ABS feature. I have read that in dirt/loose gravel/sand an ABS car ABSOLUTLEY takes longer to stop. When you lock up the wheels the tires push the loose stuff ahead and it forms a berm that stops the car more quickly.

I don't believe for a moment that Audi would have put such a feature in a car if there wasn't science behind it. Of course, Audi was probably anticipating a more intelligent driver than the ones we have on the road these days.

 

"In gravel and deep snow, ABS tends to increase braking distances. On these surfaces, locked wheels dig in and stop the vehicle more quickly. ABS prevents this from occurring. Some ABS calibrations reduce this problem by slowing the cycling time, thus letting the wheels repeatedly briefly lock and unlock. The primary benefit of ABS on such surfaces is to increase the ability of the driver to maintain control of the car rather than go into a skid - though loss of control remains more likely on soft surfaces like gravel or slippery surfaces like snow or ice. On a very slippery surface such as sheet ice or gravel it is possible to lock multiple wheels at once, and this can defeat ABS (which relies on detecting individual wheels skidding). Availability of ABS relieves most drivers from learning threshold braking.

"But part of the answer is that on HEAVY snow, locked wheels can be useful because they gather up a "wedge" of snow which helps to slow the vehicle. ABS allows this wedge to clear every time the wheels are unlocked. The same can apply on sand in some conditions.

"Note, however, that this somewhat simplistic test compares ABS with locked wheels. A good driver with a car with a decently designed braking system, designed to minimize the chances of accidentally locking the brakes during a panic stop, would fare better under these conditions.

"A June 1999 NHTSA study found that ABS increased stopping distances on loose gravel by an average of 22 percent."

Anti-lock braking systems | Effectiveness | 4-wheel anti-lock brakes are designed to allow the driver to maintain steering control around an obstacle during a panic stop

 

Good information.....dovetails nicely with the information I posted about my 1990 Audi.

 

bill

Good catch! ABS is just one small tool with both good and bad. IMHO good is mostly good on dry and wet roads. Having driven ice and hard packed snow my whole life before moving to Georgia I was appalled by ABS the first time I bought it in Chicago. It was lke having no brakes at all.

 

WOW, they do say on the box that they are not competition pads, but for street performance. longer rotor life ya know..