[Tigers] Stopping Distance

[bucktrippel at verizon.net]

Mike makes good points. My experience is also that the stock front calipers and rotors have enough clamping force to lock up the front wheels, even without the booster when using typical street tires. More tire patch would make the car stop shorter.  Braking distance varies with the choice of friction material. BTW, our tests showed that modern high performance pads can really help the Tiger's stopping distance.

With modern pads, our race tiger's stopping power with stock brakes is not a problem. The problem is heat build up.  After awhile the heat does crazy things (pad fade, pad transfer or boiling fluid.) This occurs even with a lot of cooling air. Vented rotors are simply less susceptable to these heat problems. If you are racing in a class that allows vented rotors or doing a long mountain drive, vented rotors are a good choice. (For years Tigers have used Nissan vented rotors.) Now we have another choice with the Wildwood kit.

Over a decade ago we did some brake testing of stock Tiger brakes on a closed course usually used by a local police department. The police used the heck out of it, so much so the asphalt was breaking down. The surface had a lot of loose pebbles from the aggregate. In fact, wide racing slicks actually performed worse than narrower street tires because of the ball bearing effect of this gravel. This showed me I need to consider the surface when comparing brake tests. To be honest, I have not idea if R&T tests on new pavement, old (less grippy) pavement, asphalt or concrete. 

I guess the best idea is to do a before and after testing on the  same surface.

bt