Best car for endless hairpins?
Discussion
I was out for a drive today in my mk3 mr2, along with my mate in his VX220.
We spent an hour going up and down a steep hill which is just endless, narrow hairpins and short straights.
After every run down (it was fairly, umm, spirited) our brakes were smoking, despite both of us having light cars with uprated brakes (EBC yellowstuffs on mine, Mintex 1144's on his).
While I wouldn't base a car purchase entirely on being an idiot up and down a hill, it got me wondering what the perfect car for this would be?
It has to have a decent amount of power (or at least power to weight) due to it being very steep in places, amazing brakes are a definite must, but also be relatively forgiving, decent over bumps and change direction quickly.
A Caterham seems like the obvious answer, but I kept thinking my old Clio ('93 16v) would have been more fun up there than the MR2, which has a bit of a surplus of grip over power and doesn't change direction that quickly.
So, what would you pick?
We spent an hour going up and down a steep hill which is just endless, narrow hairpins and short straights.
After every run down (it was fairly, umm, spirited) our brakes were smoking, despite both of us having light cars with uprated brakes (EBC yellowstuffs on mine, Mintex 1144's on his).
While I wouldn't base a car purchase entirely on being an idiot up and down a hill, it got me wondering what the perfect car for this would be?
It has to have a decent amount of power (or at least power to weight) due to it being very steep in places, amazing brakes are a definite must, but also be relatively forgiving, decent over bumps and change direction quickly.
A Caterham seems like the obvious answer, but I kept thinking my old Clio ('93 16v) would have been more fun up there than the MR2, which has a bit of a surplus of grip over power and doesn't change direction that quickly.
So, what would you pick?
Raize said:
MX5
Before the MR2 I had a MK1 MX5, and it wasn't as good at this. Sorry PH!It was fun out of the hairpins, thanks to the front engine and RWD, but driving it hard it never felt very composed or rigid, and the brakes weren't anywhere near good enough.
As for the Clio, I can't help but feel they'd have the same or worse braking issue (I think any car would, it's literally foot to the floor on either accelerator or brake most of the way down, without and cool-down time), although I'm sure I'd be more aggressive in the corners in a Clio than I am in a mid engined car.
I assume Caterhams and the like have pretty decent brakes? Sadly I'm yet to drive one...
As for 911's, co-incidentally we had a 996 with us initially, but before he did a proper run his oil pressure sender failed (we hope) and he was showing zero oil pressure, so limped home. Would have been interesting to see how a slightly bigger car with much more brakes, grip and power coped!
kambites said:
Caterhams don't need decent brakes because they don't weigh anything.
I would have thought that about my mate's VX (circa 850kg, depending on what you read and where), and he gets brake fade in one run, despite uprated pads.As I say, it is a torture test for brakes thanks to being steep downhill and having no straights, but I was still a bit disappointed by just how quickly my (relatively) expensive pads wilted.
roverspeed said:
If the discs have lost the ability to dissapate the heat, then they stop working. How will pads stop the discs heating up?
Why does it matter if the discs heat up if the coefficient of friction between pad and disc at high temperature is still high? Good discs mean they brakes don't get hot. Good pads mean it doesn't matter when the brakes get hot.
The very reason brakes work is that they get hot. They are converting potential energy into heat energy which is dissapatted into the air.
The larger the disc mass and the faster it can dissapate heat energy, they less likely the brakes will fade.
The composition of the brake pad material may help prevent heat soak to the brake fluid? And prevented them actually breaking down chemically/structurely. Also it may prevent gas build up between disc and pad.
But i dont see how they can help the discs out in any meaningful way.
The larger the disc mass and the faster it can dissapate heat energy, they less likely the brakes will fade.
The composition of the brake pad material may help prevent heat soak to the brake fluid? And prevented them actually breaking down chemically/structurely. Also it may prevent gas build up between disc and pad.
But i dont see how they can help the discs out in any meaningful way.
My understanding of this is the difference between "good" and "bad" disks (heat dissipation wise) is very small compared to the difference between "good" and "bad" pads.
If a disk is a fixed size, and a similiar material, there isn't a huge amount it can do to dissipate heat better.
My pads are allegedly rated to work up to 900 degrees or something silly like that, and while I'm sure my disks aren't anywhere near that hot I have no idea what surface pad temps are like. Presumably very, very high (as they were smoking quite alarmingly).
If a disk is a fixed size, and a similiar material, there isn't a huge amount it can do to dissipate heat better.
My pads are allegedly rated to work up to 900 degrees or something silly like that, and while I'm sure my disks aren't anywhere near that hot I have no idea what surface pad temps are like. Presumably very, very high (as they were smoking quite alarmingly).
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