Brake help
 

Hey guys,run into a little problem.

The other night i was out in the car (the vtr) and was messing around with my cousin.......racng a little,sum hard braking,now ive done that b4 and never come along with this problem......i came to a point were i had to come to a stop quickly.....hit the brake and didnt stop,there was still pressure but just wasnt stopping which made me had to avoid my cousins car and go straight onto another road which was a blind bend and i coudlnt see the cars coming,luckily it was around midnight so only one car was coming but i avoided it *racing is bad in my defence* LOL anyway today we had the car up on a ramp to take both front wheels off and take the brakes and everything apart.at first i thoguht the pads were worn out......checked them this afternoon and all are perfectly good,nuthin wrong and plenty of miles left in them......

now comes my real question,WTF happened.we did take them apart and blew an absolute fuck load of brake dust out,i mean a lot.i came to the conclusion the brakes were wet and with me using them it all gettin hot with the brake dust aswell making the brakes not work at that point.was it the fact that they were bein put through sum hard braking that they just simply over heated (after it happened there was a burning smell and when i stopped there was a lot of heat coming from between the rims)

any info i would appreciate
please giv me your oppinions,i gotta say im nervous about gettin back in the car and it happening again,i todl my dad tog o out and slam on the brakes and he did and it stopped fine,so am i right thinkin it was a one off from the brakes bein used hard or sumthin else?

thanks in advance :D

OK what kind of pads are they material wise?
I learned about some types of Kevlar and Ceramic Pads that would have this problem when they got really hot they would actually glaze and become like ice.
Did you check the lines? are there any signs of wear or twisting in them? they could have blocked up and caused pressure on the Booster but never get enough to the wheels. I've seen in the shop and the cap on the Master Cylinder blew off.

well the pads are the ones from factory,ive never had that happen to me b4.when we checked there was nuthin wrong with them at all.blew all the dust out of everywere,the brakes are now sharper,but losing control altogether was a surprise

brembo - the pedal still had sum pressure,i cant reemember if i had sum troubles with them b4,i know that that has never happened b4

Well, having watched the video (yes, good old gis caught it all on camera!) you can see the car bite initially, then literally all the power just goes. The nose of the car rises and then gis has to avoid the Ka, and turn right. -(ps, if that white van had parked any closer to the corner.........)-

Although, I would agree, fading sounds the most obvious, but the way in which the brakes just suddenly failed leaves me woundering what happened!

LOL ah yes forgot to mention i got this on video.and yes my reactions were quick from avoiding my cousins KA and also turning a corner at 30mph that really shoudlnt be taken at 30mph,but that white van.....any closer as you say jon and i would have made a couple of a saxo making love with a white van,lol

but indeed its weird how it happened but now they are fine

What is even more remarkable, is the last of "Oh fuck my brakes are gone" I know if my Mrs had been driving, the windows would have shattered with her screaming, and her hads would have left the stearing wheel, god knows what her feet would be doing lol

gis, how old is the brake fluid?

i'm wondering if maybe it is contaminated with moisture and started to boil in the lines. you did say that you were braking pretty hard at points right? if the fluid is more than 2 years old, i'd flush the system with new fluid. Back in the mid 90's Dodge lost a lawsuit when one of their vans lost its brakes in a campground and ended up killing someone. it was later determined that the brake fluid was contaminated with moisture which caused the fluid to boil. Since it wasn't listed in the owners manual as needing to be changed, it was ruled that Dodge was responsible for accident.

LOL im surprised ia ctually kept quiet,i never said a word during the whole thing happening.

ZfrkS62 - the brake fluid is changed regular....whenevr the car is serviced.it dam sure is a mystery why this happened.

it;s kind of hard to figure this out from across the pond. i think that someone could probably get a better idea if they really looked at your brakes.

this might something that you have to take to the dealer to have them look at. soemone there might have seen this before.

New brake fluid is never a bad idea, and not too expensive to do either :P

The brakes were looked at and taken apart yesterday,everything was fine,we tested the brakes afterwards stopping hard and it was just fine.only thing i cam think of is they just faded after 15 minutes are pretty hard braking.

Hey Danny dose the brake peddle go a bit more down than usual..

IF so then

You might boiled your brake fluid causing some airbubles in them .. You need to bleed all your brakes.. This happens to be everytime I go to an autocross or the track.. So the best solution for this is to get a hight boiling point brake fluid.. :mrgreen:

thats cool,but if that was the case wouldnt the brakes feel liek that all the time afterwards? its just weird how the brakes are back to normal after what happened

Ohhh . Then I did not real well enough to understand the situation.. :mrgreen: Sorry..

Well maybe it's not the brakes that got the problem maybe it's you Danny .. every though of that :mrgreen: .. You might not have brakes hard enough to stop the car..Or maybe you were just to close to your cousins car.. Or maybe you just need someone like me to show you how to drive :P :lol: :mrgreen: ...

I am glade that nothing happened to you .. And you really need to stop doing this on public roads.. you need to get your self to the track.

lol if u see the video dude u will see that i aint close to my cousin at all,i always keep a distance between the car infront and myself.there is a good 2 seconds from when i start to brake till i reach my cousin.just standard brakes arent good for more than 15 minutes of hard braking

Ronin005 - sorry mate i dont have the video hosted anywere,the people who seen it have been through MSN :D

To me danny it sounds just like extreme overheating of the pads. If the fluid boiled/overheated then you get a squishy pedal (going to teh floor in extreme circumstances) but if its pad overheating then you get a hard pedal. If the pads are heated to outside of thier operating range then their friction properties change considerably! Like with cold carbon metalic (race) pads untill they are fuckin hot they do bugger all!! In the same way if normal spec pads go over a certain temp tehy do bugger all!!!! Ive had it a couple times, but not quite to that extent.
I expect that afterwards teh brakes were not on 'top form' especially the next day, as when you heat em up this much they get 'glazed'. But a good average run with a few hard stops will de-glaze them pretty well.
If you totally overheated them, then they disintegrate!!! lol so take it easy danni, dont wanna see a KA Saxo combo any time soon! :wink:

lol dont worry i aint planning on seein a KA and saxo combo myself anytime.i went on a road that i usually drive on last night,its a national speed limit so even at that speed its just the right ammoutn around the country lanes,but hey also requre a little braking for sum sharp turns etc etc.......but i found myself not bein able to do it,i got around the first 2-3 corners and i was scared to death of hittin that pedal and it happening again.although durin the day i did a few stops to test them myself and they worked fine.i guess i need to build the confidence up again thats all.

GMC 4 pot conversion goin on the next one thats for sure,lol

LOL, yeah i always thought the saxo felt like it braked really well! I mean its well light and discs all round. Maybee you just need some mintex pads 1144's when your standards run out.

Hummmmmmmmmmmm Brembo's!! Talking of brakes, you know that red golf I showed you (gis) he got the brakes from Seat when the price list was all wrong, and got a set of Brembo's for something like £400! :shock:

LOL, I heard you went even cheaper than that! :wink:

One of the worse feelings in the world is not being able to trust your brakes to work properly. Have you been losing brake fluid? If you have, then that is not normal and you should check for the source of the leak. Also, I highly agree with flushing out the brake fluid. Regular Brake fluid is highly hydroscopic ( absorbs water) after a while the fluid gets so built up with water that the fluid loses it effectiveness and then you will have the water starting to settle in the lower portion of the brake system like the ABS module; for instance. That in itself could cause braking problems if the ABS module fails. Another thing, did you check your brake rotor thickness? Usually the minimum thickness is scribed on the rotor itself. Using a caliper gauge will determine if you need new ones. Get some good pads and if you decide to get the lines flushed, go ahead and get new brake hoses front and back.

man i was gonna reply to this thread after a couple days when i tested the brakes good for a few days,then i forgot.lol

jon - yes i remember that red golf,if i remember i went all excited when you showed me as i loved it,and what a lucky guy for gettin a set of brembo's for that cheap.he got them from seat? that mean they are leon cupra R brakes?

foxfour - the ABS is workin fine,actually for the past week or so they aint been a problem.well they actually been sharper since we cleaned all the brake dust out and everything,guranteed if i get another saxo in the future,then bigger better brakes are goin on,lol

brakes have a temp that they are rated to if you go above that your brakes don't work as well as they should.i found this out because recently i had to get my brakes done because the mechanic that did my brakes last time put brakes that where not suited to my car so i was finding that the car wouldn't stop after a couple of times braking hard the peddle felt the same just the brakes don't work at all so sounds like you just overheated the brakes to me.

You mean pads.

Theres two types of fadeing.. or over heating..
One is pad fade..where the pad overheats and glazes over.
The other is fluid fade.. which occurs when the brake fuid boils...
Both can happen suddenly.

The difference youll notice between the two.. is one the pedal will just go flat to the floor.
and the other youll still get pressure but it will be hard to push down(or perhaps squishy)..

^sorry meant to say brake pads

I think I Know what your problem could have been. But I need to Know a few things to properly Diagnose the problem. (I used to work in a brake shop :mrgreen: )

What kind of brakes does your car have? Front Disc, Rear drum?
What were the road conditions. Was it very wet outside?

Also, and this is important, so dont assume, When you had your brakes serviced, did they say they 'bled and serviced the brake fluid."? or did they actually flush it. 9/10 shops only 'service' brake fluid, rathan flushing the entire system. They might not have replaced your fluid as you think, they may have only topped it off and cleaned out the gunk at the caliper/drum.

Also, does your car use/leak brake fluid at all? Have you ever had to put more fluid in the resevoir?
And finally did you notice ANYTHING unusuall that might be helpfull right before it happend? Did the brake pedal go down any further than ushuall, did it feel more sqwishy that normal, did it feel strange in anyway before they decided to stop working?
If you could let me know, I bet I can tell you what your problem is. If not, I guess Im a failure in life :mrgreen:

from whats been said i think it was just brake fade after quite a bit of heavy braking. but anyway ill try and answer sum of the stuff you asked

the car has front and rear discs,i had been parked up when it had a bit of rain but the road had dried out a bit b4 i set off.im not sure what they did at the last serice to the brakes,was a bit ago now as its goin in for its next service in about 2-3 weeks time so i can ask then.
The brake pedal felt pretty much the same,pushed,felt pressure and i could feel the brakes tryin to grip but it wasnt happening.

Well that pretty much ruled out all the possibilities that I had in mind. It is very unlikely that the car would get snap brake fade, its ushally a progressive thing, but I guess its possible :?

Actually it isn't usually a progressive thing from my own observations. On a race track at least it comes on suddenly (since youve hit the brakes the last go around really hard). On the street yeah.. But he wasnt driving like your supposed to on the street...
*shakes finger.. shame shame shame*

Oooops, forgot about this thread...and yes, they are CR brakes :wink:

I had the same kind of problems last year when I was on vacation in Spain, they have beautifel roads up in the mountains, I was driving fast and I used the brakes a lot, but there was a moment I didn't used them, like 10 minutes or so, and I arrived to a toll booth, and I pressed the breaks and nothing happened, that was some scary shit as I was approaching a car in front of me very fast, so I downshifted a gear, the engine didn't enjoyed that, and I was about 1 or 2 meter behind a car at 120 km/h, so I downshifted a couple of gears, and pressed on the break pedal in and out, like pumping, and I managed to stop, when I checked them everything looked allright, so that was my first real experience with break fading.

Sorry for hijacking your thread...