Thankyou for a really educational post. That is hugely helpful to my understanding. I am using the car less and less on the road though. The one unavoidable issue is getting to and from trackdays. I am not keen to get a car that needs to be trailered to trackdays. That said, the brakes hardly get used at all on the motorways.
You are describing the symptoms fairly accurately. Though the juddering is more of a problem than the fade, as I tend to let things cool off rather than persist. On the track I always start slowly and decrease braking distances and increase speeds over a couple of laps. Using 048 yoko tyres makes this a necessity as the cold grip is poor.
The main issue at the moment is that the discs have worn extremely quicly on the track and I do not want to be going through a set of discs every 6-8 trackdays (4 months). Hence the appeal of something a bit tougher. I will need to get more familiar with the bedding procedure in the future though. Plans did it for me with the last set of pads.
I am not sure that staying on the current discs is a viable option as I do more trackdays. Also, I will be getting a healthy increase in power over the next few months - 60-80 bhp and the brakes will be further tested on circuits like Bedford.
Thanks again. I am seriously impressed by the level of expertise on this forum. Cheers
Andrew
I don’t think either Plans or Eliseparts supply the 3000 series AP which are the proper ones that I think Lotus supply and hence Sean has. 5000 series are Clubman spec.
Does it matter? Personal opinion I guess. All I know is that I tried a car with stock calipers and AP 3000 rotors (295 up front) and it felt great.
Ian
Ian - last time I looked at the AP website I could not find the 3000 spec rotors (are there also 3000 spec calipers?) and the 5000 spec seemed to be more than just Clubman spec. I must admit that it did confuse me then, are the 3000 spec a Lotus only supply?
Here’s a 3000 rotor - click - they all start CP3xxx.
There’s a hint as to reduced quality at the bottom of here.
I’m going on info shared with AndyD, by a supplier (I assume) he trusts, on the difference between the qualities. I’d rather have the increased quality, for a few quid more, for the number of times you change disks.
Agreed but talking to Andy today, there appears to be supply difficulties with the 3000 rotors. He’s in the process of creating a post which will be interesting reading to those of us looking at going down the AP route soon.
“These discs use different castings through the range according to the size of finished part.”
I.e. they’re not the same.
Talking to Andy earlier I think we’re going to try Alcon as AP are being very poor with supply. The Alcons are the same pattern as the APs (so could always switch in future), slightly cheaper and similar quality to the 3000s (i.e. better than 5000s).
Also might try 295s on the rear too. Now where was the post that discussed that?