R1 Concepts Brakes and Rotors

[clive goodridge]

Clive, I think is a common problem aftermarket brake suppliers should be aware of. My symptoms were the same with the R1 Concepts brake pads. Simply put, stopping power was gone, resulting in MANY scary situations were my VX did not want to stop. All those problems are gone now with stock pads. Kenny said he found out that it was the thickness of the aftermarket pads.

Bart

The pad thickness was fine it must've been the material-too hard or 'cold'.

Re brake bleeding and pedal travel we've found that the pedal can be made harder and shorter by adjusting the rear calipers. A couple of my VXs had horrible feeling long pedals and this cured the problem.

Thanks for your replies, Clive.

[etlsport]

I'm not sure exactly what my mechanic did to my brakes but when I had him replace the rear pads (oem) and rotors (aftermarket, flat vented).. afterwards my brake pedal barely even makes it to the level of the gas pedal, its nice, tight, predictable, even perfect braking!

[twistedsymphony]

I can honestly say that I've never heard of the thickness of pads causing ABS issues...

Brakes are really f-ing simple... you have a big cylinder attacked to the pedal then a bunch of hoses that connect that cylinder to a whole bunch of little cylinders which clamp the pads to the discs.

abs is pretty much completely separate, there are sensors in the drive line that monitor wheel speed, that gets fed to a computer module and when it detects that a wheel has "locked up" based on it's speed then it controls a valve in the brake line to pulse the brakes on and off...

I can't possibly imagine a scenario where changing the rotor (or any other part of the brake system) would set off the ABS light. Theoretically you could completely remove all of your calipers and the BMC too and the ABS would be honkey-dorey as long as the sensors and computer module were ok.

thinner pads could make the brakes squishy... but they would have to be REALLY thin... are these R1 concepts rotors thinner than OEM as well? because that would help.

Upgrading to a larger Brake Master Cylinder (or just adjusting the factory BMC if it's possible) would probably solve the squishy brake issue... or just rebuilding the calipers, or upgrading to better fluid... lots of things and improve brake pedal response. In my experience the pads and rotors have little to do with the firmness of the pedal unless they're both REALLY bad to the point where you're exhausting the capacity of the BMC.