HEAVY brake corrosion

[cyberface]

OK so I hadn't driven my Exige since the weekend. The weekend involved 400 miles of driving on snow, ice, and then heavy rain on the way home on Sunday.

Did my usual trick of trying to drive into the car park whilst left foot braking to attempt to dry the brake discs off.

Car completely seized today, all brake discs bright red with rust. Got the driven wheels unstuck, reversed the car 10m with one front wheel seized, dragging along the tarmac until all brakes released. Now I thought my old 993s were a nightmare for this but the Exige takes the cake.

Presumably this is purely a function of the fact I have no garage and the weather has been pretty extreme? The discs now look completely knackered - they felt so bad today that I did an italian tune-up on them (repeated edge-of-ABS stops from reasonably high speeds) which has made them smooth again, but the corrosion is very noticeable away from the swept area of the pads. And I don't know how much damage I've done to the pads in the process of cleaning up the discs.

Is this likely to end up like the Porker, where I was replacing all discs and pads every year purely due to corrosion, pad material adhesion to the discs, etc.???

(BTW I leave the car in opposite gear to hill angle, and since the handbrake doesn't operate on the front wheels, handbrake isn't the main cause)

[nsm3]

Try RS42's, they don't seem to stick on so bad as the OEM's?

[S Works]

All my Elise's lived outside and, to a certain extent, had this problem. Never more than a bit of a "thunk" as they released though. Probably just extra bad due to the particularly severe weather (by comparison to recent years).

[nomisesor]

cyberface said:

Presumably this is purely a function of the fact I have no garage and the weather has been pretty extreme?

Most likely the latter, leading to (literally) kilotons of salt applied to the roads over the last couple of weeks - I expect that a garage would make little difference unless you hosed down the discs, pads, and insides of the wheels before taking it inside. Residual salt would attract moisture from the air and maintain a tiny pool of brine around itself on the discs. Note the damp spots around the salt crystals even on dry pavements - like today. Terrible for aluminium as well.

[dom180]

Take it out of gear/handbrake off and push it back and forth a little every day or two - should stop the brakes from binding - also try to stop very gently when parking without using the brakes very hard for the final stop.

[andy_s]

Think it's just the extremes in salt/weather which is making the ever present binding worse than usual - I've had to drag mine along a gravel drive like a dog with spine injuries in the past but everything was back to normal once 'Italianed'.

[bordseye]

cyberface said:

Is this likely to end up like the Porker, where I was replacing all discs and pads every year purely due to corrosion, pad material adhesion to the discs, etc.???

Wasnt necessary on the Porker really but if you want to you can do that. The discs are cast iron which gives the best braking but will rust like the clappers with winter salt. Or even with a wash and garage as I found out. And the longer you leave them between runs, the worse the problem gets.

What makes it worse is pads which contain sintered iron and which rust to the discs because the pad/disc clearance is small to make the brakes lighter.

If it were an issue for me I would try and find a pad formulation which didnt rust on like the old banned asbestos pads. Your discs themselves will still rust but the first brake application will clean them up.

[cyberface]

I'm looking at EBC yellows. Anyone know whether the compound is mainly sintered metal or is it ceramic based? The EBC reds I ended up using on the Porker (which didn't stick as badly) were ceramic...

[Beachbum]

I'm using EBC yellows, dont know the compound, but do know they bind a lot less than the original Lotus offerings.
Having said that, I just realised that they havnt once bound to the disks this winter, so whatever the compound is, its working

[LRGS2]

I'm on yellows too with no binding to date, although my car is garaged!

[Silent1]

Mintex 1155s

Never been impressed with EBC on anything but a standard car.

Indeed i nearly died on a set of yellows with some brake fade in milton keynes once.

[Spunagain]

Hi Cyberface

This may be a daft idea, but would it be possible to swapping the discs and pads with the Metal matrix ones from an early S1 as they don't corrode at all? I am not sure if they woudl drop in or how good they are in comparison with the iron ones but they are great on my S1 and held up pretty well on track! I am on my 2nd set of pads and original discs at 96k miles!

Regards
Spunagain

[zebedee]

Had the same problem, to the extent that whilst braking, the pedal was vibrating under my sole like there was a cobbled street scrubbing against it! They have cleaned up since after quite a lot of what seems to be called 'Italianing' but on a recent enthusiastic drive, they felt wooden even when warmed up and weren't giving me the performance I am used to, so not sure if the pads and/or discs have been damaged in the process. Needs a service soon, so we'll see then.

[cyberface]

Silent1 said:

Mintex 1155s

Never been impressed with EBC on anything but a standard car.

Indeed i nearly died on a set of yellows with some brake fade in milton keynes once.

Being chased by the Feds again mate? Getting brake fade on the road with Yellows sounds highly extreme to me, the police use the damn things in their heavy pursuit cars!

As you well know I had Mintex 1144 on the VXT, they were good but rattled and squealed occasionally - 1155s squeal like pigs and I don't have a tolerance for squealing brakes... Anyway, I'm pretty sure that 1155s aren't technically road legal (as per the Pagids) and after the amount of aggro I had with the insurance on the VXT I'm wary of choosing a pad that isn't explicitly road legal / EU approved.

Perhaps I should look at the Reds again? They were superb on my blown 993 at Brands GP and I wasn't hanging about. What car were you using the Yellows on to get fade on the road? Don't tell me the VX....

[TIPPER]

cyberface said:

Silent1 said:

Mintex 1155s

Never been impressed with EBC on anything but a standard car.

Indeed i nearly died on a set of yellows with some brake fade in milton keynes once.

Being chased by the Feds again mate? Getting brake fade on the road with Yellows sounds highly extreme to me, the police use the damn things in their heavy pursuit cars!

As you well know I had Mintex 1144 on the VXT, they were good but rattled and squealed occasionally - 1155s squeal like pigs and I don't have a tolerance for squealing brakes... Anyway, I'm pretty sure that 1155s aren't technically road legal (as per the Pagids) and after the amount of aggro I had with the insurance on the VXT I'm wary of choosing a pad that isn't explicitly road legal / EU approved.

Perhaps I should look at the Reds again? They were superb on my blown 993 at Brands GP and I wasn't hanging about. What car were you using the Yellows on to get fade on the road? Don't tell me the VX....

Its worth bearing in minds that EBC have changed the compound of the Yellows.
I'm very pleased with them for my use. I had more of an issue with fade (only the once mind) with Mintexx 1144 than the Yellowstuffs.
Randy has started selling Carbon Lorraine pads (similiar ball park price to RS42s) but I don't know if they're homologated for road use.