Hey all,

A month or two ago I took my car for a half day of road racing. It went very well, my car ran great and aside from losing some of my lugnut covers everything went well.

After the day was over, I drove my car out and I noticed that my brake pedal has a good deal more play in it than before. The next day I bled my brake system and hoped that'd solve my problem. It didn't seem to. I have plenty of pad left and my rotors are in good shape.

Any ideas what I should look in to?

If it's replacement time, any links to good pad/rotor/lines kits out there?

 

you might have spread a caliper

 

Thats what I was thinking.

 

Oh really? How would I go about checking that? I'm guessing I'll need to measure the gap, is there a value to compare against?

That'd be pretty intense to mess up a caliper, wow, common at all? The track I was on wasn't particularily fast either.

 

Its verry common with the stock LS1 calipers that see road course use. Thats where the strength of the C5 calipers come in at.

 

What can I do to verify if this happend and what is recommended for fixing it?

 

Look at the pads.

Spread calipers will cause the pads to taper

 

Since I came back from Road Atlanta, my brakes have not been the same either. Car did great except for the brakes. They were gone after 3 laps - a little unnerving and smells up the car. I know a brake upgrade is due, but for now, I will just get by. What exactly is the spread caliper and how do you fix it?

 

caliper has a piston side and an ear side and a "bridge" connecting the 2.

The bridge is a weak link and under tremendous heat generated, the bridge will "bend" slightly. So the bottom of the ear and piston side is a wider demension thant the top.

The fix? Replace ...

This is why C5 calipers are so coveted. They have reinforced ribbing on the bridge to reduce the likelihood

 

How expensive are those? Any other options that are better?

 

Probably a dumb question but could you put them in a vice and bend them back? That way they would work properly as long as you didnt try to road race with them again?

 

"aside from losing some of my lugnut covers everything went well. "

Where i race, they make you take those off beforehand :o

As for the bridge, is there anyway to reinforce it yourself to prevent this from happening?

 

Wish I had gotten that pearl of wisdom

 

you can glaze the pads also ....

 

I didnt go road racing, but after finishing my Delteq install I went with my brother on a empty street to do some runs which required the use of braking power... after that it has felt like my brakes arent really doing anything, and before this my brakes felt real good. Its been about 3000 miles since I put new pads and rotors in.

I was thinking maybe it had something to do with the brake booster line but this makes it sound more like a caliper problem.

 

I'll answer that question with a question. Would you really want to risk your life by attempting a half-*** fix where your brakes are concerned? Is your life really only worth the costs of two new calipers...$200 max?

 

It's not a good idea with cast metals, or really any metal for that matter. But in particular cast metals are relatively brittle and don't like being bent, especially back and forth.

Take a shitty peice of silverware next time you have one and bend it. Then bend it back. It gets easier each time and will eventually crack.

Same basic principle applies to a caliper. So yah, you could do it but the caliper would be structurally compromised.

 

Can anyone give a definitive answer as to diagnosing if its a spread caliper?

 

Definitive

 

lol, are we talking something that's immediately noticeable to the eye or is this a slight thing?