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Home » Braking System Design » Stanford Brake Systems: A Short History |
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PARENT CATEGORY Braking System Design |
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LINKED PROFILES Stanford Solar Car Pr... |
ARTICLE
Stanford Brake Systems: A Short History OCID cn00000233 |
LINKED CATEGORIES Braking System Design |
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Stanford Brake Systems: A Short History by Oliver Max created 11/6/2002 submitted 11/20/2002 09:02:04 AM Recent brake set-ups we used on Stanford solar cars - successes, failures and things to improve on. Back in the day ('95,'97?) we had solid aluminum (go-kart) brake discs that were anodized, 1/4" thick, and probably 8" diameter (or similar to whatever is on the 3DB now). These were used with earlier versions of the Enginetics go-kart calipers that were pretty much identical (minus the sexy anodizing) to the ones currently on the 3DB. Originally the calipers were driven by Airheart master cylinders, but these were lousy so we switched to Enginetics master cylinders and those worked great up thru the latest races. Somewhere along the line, someone got different brake pads (you need special ones for aluminum, pads for steel discs will ruin aluminum discs) and destroyed the anodized aluminum discs. Ever since then I think we've used 3/16 thick steel discs with the Enginetics calipers and master cylinders. These worked great, but are probably a lot heaver than needed. There's a ton of metal on the calipers since go-cart folks are always speeding up and slowing down, hence dumping lots of heat into the brakes. On a solar car, you should never use the brakes, and if you do, you'll probably only do one rapid stop from full speed followed by long enough intervals to let your brakes cool down (ie: during braking tests). On the Backburner, we had a Magura hydraulic bicycle disc brake on the rear wheel, which stopped the wheel fine. the only problem we had with this was that the pads rubbed while driving (so we removed the pads, of course :) ) Having your brakes rub is the last thing in the world you want - make sure the pads are retracted by springs on whatever calipers you get, and you can adjust things easily to center the calipers on the disc, both of these are necessary to prevent brake drag. So, I'd recommend looking into bicycle disc brakes. Your front brakes are critical, so you might want brakes made for tandem bikes up there, as these should be designed for similar braking forces. Check out both hydraulic and mechanical options. Everyone will probably say hydraulic brakes are superior to mechanical brakes (and maybe thats true), but after seeing how much time people have wasted bleeding brakes, spilling brake fluid everywhere, chasing bubbles down lines, I'm not so sure. If you find good quality mechanical brakes, they might be worth looking into. Hayes is another company that makes bike brakes. And there's probably a million others (check bike part suppliers on the internet). As for materials, you'll probably find most bike brake discs are steel, but still incredibly light because they remove so much material from the disc. Oh, a side thought, I remember the hubs being a nightmare to remove with the fairings on - because the calipers around the brake disc kept the hub from sliding off the axle and the axle bolt couldn't pull out the back of the upright (there’s a fairing there), and the calipers were hard to remove because the bolts were hard to reach. yup, that would be nice to fix. 524 words | oomax
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