|
Hey Ian, good to see you on here.
I agree with Steve and would stick to what you've got before adding all the extra weight.
I would think that if you wanted to take your braking set-up further, cross-drilled or slotted rotors (I'm betting that yours are already vented, ja?) would be a better investment than replacing your whole set-up.
I used to run a slotted & cross drilled rotor on my go-kart with twin piston caliper and could never justify the extra expense of a vented, slotted & drilled set-up.
This was always because you really don't have to stop much weight or from a very high speed. Plus, I found the same thing as you did in your beetle, on new tracks I was pulling up way too short of a lot of corners (often following other guys into braking zones). I also never experienced fade either, in fact if I stayed on the brakes from speed (even in a straight line) it would just lock up after awhile, or if I left braking too late and had to really STOMP on the thing.
Then I drove a kart with a vented, slotted & drilled set-up and the difference was amazing! The difference I found lay in control under braking, not fade or shortened braking distance. In saying the latter though, I could brake ALOT later and stay on the brakes deep into a corner after a long straight (whereas before I could only brake from speed in a straight line), this allowing me to open up a whole new world of balancing & braking that I hadn't thought of before, or had I explored would of found instant lock-up with my then set-up.
When we swapped to vented rotors (that were slotted & x-drilled too) I was trying to figure out why the difference was so apparent *someone tell me if my assumption is wrong here* and the only thing I could think of was that when under hard braking (despite my rotor being slotted & x-drilled) I was still getting a pressure build up (gasses, circulating air, dirt, grime, crazy brake imps, or the like) when braking from high speed, which was working against the pressure applied from the pistons in the caliper, and when I held on for too long this pressure would build up to the extreme then release, which meant the pressure I was applying at the pedal was far too great, resulting in momentary lock-up. Whereas, with the vented rotor, the pressure from the pads would be vented not only through the slots to the outter edge of the rotor, but through the x-drilling, into the vents & out through the centre of the rotor, resulting in consistent pedal pressure & control under all braking conditions. I think a similar theory can be applied to the lock up when trying to brake going deep into a corner... when forcing load on the inside tire, coupled with the built up back pressure in the rotor, the similar momentary lock-up would occur.
I know that this is a different scenario to a full weight street car on road tires, with suspension, but still worth keeping in mind, since the same parts gave the same result even on a later kart chassis, using different compound tires and change of driver.
Cheers,
Cam
|