I would agree when it comes to accelleration, however horsepower doesn't help you at all under braking or cornering. :)

In my previous post, I didn't mean that horsepower was a substitute for weight loss. What I was saying is to get your car as light as possible. If you are under the weight limit allowed by your class, place ballasts in ideal positions. If you cannot possibly get your car light enough to be at the limit allowed by your class, then you add as much horsepower as you can. Like I said though, horsepower only helps your acceleration while weight reduction helps acceleration, braking, and handling.

hard to argue with that logic, thanks

damn, more pics!!

not for canadins!

a couple random posts

I found a really great article on brake compound selection for those of you that might be interested... Essex - Learning Center - How to Choose the Best Street and Track Brake Pads

also, here's an interesting debate on another forum I occasionally post on about whether the accumulation of tires on a track have a positive or negative effect on traction... Drifter Rubber--Help or Hurt? - NASA AZ

Good stuff.

The rubber debate is a pretty easy one. Take NASCAR for example... If the track is clear Friday and Saturday and gets rubbered in, but a rainstorm swings by Sunday morning before the race, the track is going to have lost a ton of grip.

In F1... think of how Monaco gets faster as the weekend progresses.

regarding the rubber on track debate... i'm not convinced it is that easy... a certain amount of rubber buildup is good but if there is enough that it fills the aggregate, then you lose 'microtexture'... that is a common cause of long landings and problems on airport runways - where crews have to go out and clean out the rubber from landing zones... the same argument is being made (on the thread I linked) from the excessive deposits left by drifters, just before a TT run or whatever...

A lot of it depends on the surface.

On concrete tracks the rubber can build up moreso than on asphalt tracks and develop grooves that screw things up.

But for the most part once the track has fully "rubbered in" the excess rubber just marbles up at the top of the track outside of the groove.

So, I'm going with Ferrodo DS3000 front and rear... going to try these out and see how they perform at an event coming up soon

Stillen is also providing me with temp sensing paint... three compounds that change color at different temps, should indicate temp thresholds at different parts of the braking mechanism... should help us trace down where the heat problems are too! I look forward to getting the results... will make an effort to document with pics between runs

http://i656.photobucket.com/albums/u...649-1Large.jpg

good point! at my usual local track, we have concrete mixed with asphalt... the effects and timing of buildup are very different depending on which part you hit

friction chart for this compound...

http://www.raceshopper.com/images/ds3000graph.jpg

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/3...ville20mar.jpg

Here's actually a good shot showing the groove mostly built up on a concrete track... you can even see the darker areas where it's built up more at the seams... and of course the marbles up out of the groove.

In most of the NASCAR races it takes roughly the first 100 miles of the race for the track to fully rubber in... from there it's pretty stable assuming atmospheric conditions remain the same (they never do.)

That temp paint is cool. :tup:

cool pic, thanks for sharing :tup:

yeah, it should give us all helpful data... i'll be sure to share results on my AP Racing BBK install thread


Here are comments on these pads from another forum:

...... Rating = 9
...... cf = 0.62
...... In every way, an outstanding track pad, and the high cf results in a very firm pedal. Though cold friction is also excellent, don't ever think about using this pad on the street. When cold, I've never heard any pad squeal louder; it's borderline painful. Because the iron content of this compound is >50%, the brake dust is more-or-less corrosive to aluminum wheels (without a clearcoat) and can quickly stain them badly. Even when using these pads only on track, wipe your wheels clean every evening.

Yeah I've got to get some of that too, was looking at it last night. I also found some temp gauge stickers you can place on the calipers that give you a fairly accurate reading of where they are at given that they aren't going to cool off very fast.

I think the DS3000's are a good choice, was looking at the DS3000 Endurance for their slightly lower aggressiveness as I prefer around a 0.5.