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The mkiv Supra Owners Club

Help With Brakes


Paul Laing
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I've warped about four sets of UK discs, so it does happen. You can't see it with the naked eye, you have to use a set of calipers (not brake ones haha) and measure the disc thickness four times at four equidistant points around it's circumference. Anything more than about a tenth of a millimetre is warped and you need to swap them.

 

Warping usually occurs when the car is stationary, bizarrely enough, because you've murdered the brakes and they have a lot of heat in them. Then you park up and the bit of disc under the pad cools down a lot slower than the rest of the disc, so one quarter of it ends up warped. Each time I've done it I've measured the disk thickness (disk 'runout') as I described above and only one quarter of the disk is wider than the rest.

 

You can hear it on disks that have gotten wet and have some surface rust on as well, when you drive at walking pace with the window down - the wider bit catches on the brake pads and makes a noise.

 

Warped disks will manifest themselves at high speed braking and can even, when badly warped, cause a vibration at high speeds due to the uneven mass osciallating.

 

Hope that answers a few "how can I warp UK disks" questions. As for driving the car with a known-to-be-buggered brake system, I'll remain silent :innocent:

 

-Ian

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Originally posted by Ian C

Warping usually occurs when the car is stationary, bizarrely enough, because you've murdered the brakes and they have a lot of heat in them. Then you park up and the bit of disc under the pad cools down a lot slower than the rest of the disc, so one quarter of it ends up warped.

-Ian

 

That would be the hot-spotting of the discs I was on about before. See I am not just an ugly face.:p

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Originally posted by Ian C

I've warped about four sets of UK discs, so it does happen.

Warping usually occurs when the car is stationary, bizarrely enough, because you've murdered the brakes and they have a lot of heat in them. Then you park up and the bit of disc under the pad cools down a lot slower than the rest of the disc, so one quarter of it ends up warped.

-Ian

 

Exactly why I said they should not warp on the road 'given adequate cooling off'. A bit of gentle driving before parking up is cheap insurance for both disks and turbos. :)

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Originally posted by Syed Shah

Exactly why I said they should not warp on the road 'given adequate cooling off'. A bit of gentle driving before parking up is cheap insurance for both disks and turbos. :)

 

And not sitting on hills after you just stopped with your foot on the brake pedal. Especially bad if you just stopped from motorway speeds. Use your handbrake thats what its there for.

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Originally posted by Syed Shah

Exactly why I said they should not warp on the road 'given adequate cooling off'. A bit of gentle driving before parking up is cheap insurance for both disks and turbos. :)

 

Yeah, my trouble was that I "tested" the brakes one quiet night on the slip road off my exit from the A11, 140mph to zero in half the slip road length. Great, except the five minutes it took to get home after that didn't actually let the brakes cool enough. I knew it might warp them but couldn't be arsed to get the car back out of the garage and drive around a bit :stupid:

 

-Ian

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Originally posted by dangerous brain

at least have thread inserts put in them so that you know for sure the pipe won't come out.

A decent engineering shop will be able to fit an insert such as a Wurth Time Sert, and face off the area where the copper washer on the brake pipe sits. A safe, proper repair, and much cheaper than a new caliper

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I must admit to being puzzled by this warping issue. I've lapped Silverstone GP circuit, braking on the ABS and not had a problem. I guess the lack of back-plates may make a difference, but apart from that I've no extra cooling (apart from a slowing down lap). I'm not braking to a stand-still of course.

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It's the cooling down lap John, it lets all the heat in the brakes dissipate evenly. It's not the physical act of stopping that warps 'em, it's parking up afterwards while they are still hot enough to vapourise water.

 

-Ian

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I never stop all of a sudden after a good thrashing of my car, does anyone??? I allways have to drive home, going through an estate so that gives the disks time to cool.

 

Can't believe people warp disks like, i hope my new disks are good, Brembo ones usually are ;)

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Ian, particularly as on a track like Silverstone speed doesn't drop below 60mph or so even on the slow bits, so plenty of air movement to take away the heat. I'm sure the lack of back-plates helps and I am looking at the practicality of adding some ducting to the fronts.

 

Sorry Paul, thread hijack. Let me know when you get the wheel studs.

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