Ceramic brakes!

[dub_crazee]

lookin great nate i cant wait to see the verdict

Thanks for the info on using the 2 pot 964's btw. ive just finished my rear conversion and only needed 1,5mm spacers for the caliper in the end! my mate made them from aluminium too

[Wally]

Recently I was finally able to drive a few hundreds meters round the block with the 'new' engine and also tried out the ceramic brakes.
Unfortunately, one disk probably had been flaked too much and/or turned down too little. Anyways, the new pads were eaten alive by that disk. I have never seen so much brake dust in all my life: even the fender was covered with brake pad dust!
Within a few blocks, the pad of one side of one disk was totally gone. What looked like a smooth disk was now a rough landscape again. Too bad, as the other disk was perfectly fine and so were the pads. Even though I proved you can machine these disks, too much flaking will not be possible to remedy totally. For this one bad disk even I feel more machining is not safe anymore, so the project will end here
Well, if you never try s/th new, you will always get the old same results.

Anyways, to be able to go to meetings this summer, I looked and found a steel replacements: Its 330x28 and comes from the rear of a 996 turbo/ C4S or 997S or turbo.
The ones I found are from a very recent 2007 997S and basically only need the caliper to be adjusted for heigth, which is very doable.
New pads (Texstar) arrived today, so the bug will be able run again this weekend

It's too bad about the ceramics. They looked amazing. I've read that what you're doing now is really common among PCCB owners anyway though (swapping out for iron rotors).

[Steve C]

Hi Wally

To bad that it didn't work. I wonder if it would have made a difference with which direction that they were turned when machining, clockwise or anti clockwise? The fibres may have been raised up, like patting your cats fur backwards.

Steve

[Wally]

Originally Posted by Steve C

Hi Wally

To bad that it didn't work. I wonder if it would have made a difference with which direction that they were turned when machining, clockwise or anti clockwise? The fibres may have been raised up, like patting your cats fur backwards.

Steve

I see what you mean, but as I see it this stuff is not like a GRP-made fender where actual fibers are still present when you scratch or sand them. I suppose the baking process took care of that. Lets just say its weird stuff.

These recent week, I have been trying to look for a direct replacement and found many posts concerning problems with pccb brakes on Rennlist and such, like vwdevotee mentions above.
This really lets one to believe the PCCB generation I disks have indeed a serious problem in longlivety. There have been reports of disks failing as soon as 15K miles and when they do, they eat up the pads - even the 'right' original porsche pads - in very, very short time (I know now how that looks). That almost gave Porsche a (legal) claim from safety point of view...

This week, at the local porsche dismantler, he had two cars there with the PCCB (Gen.I) on them. One was his own street car (650 hp GT2 Cup) and his racer. His admitted that the first two laps on the track, it was tricky because the brakes didn't bite that much initially as he was used with the steels and indeed needed to warm-up before they performed well. Then they performed extremely well. The track car had also the beginnings of worn disks, as did the 'street' car which saw track days as well. A spare set of PCCB's gen I from a wrecked car he also had looked immaculate however. Even the yellow calipers had no discolorization, suggeting no overheating had taken place.
All this info I got there leads me to believe that excessive (over)heating is what kills these disks rapidly. That is probably why porsche made the
the generation II disks, which have 2000 fibers instead of 400 per unit (so I have read) and are 380mm instead of 350mm diameter for even better cooling.
Even with these, the Manthey racing team supposedly uses one set of the Gen.II disks at every race. Well, at least they now sustain at least the whole race...
So much about the ceramics
The 'pancake' disks the I have now om still look huge IRL; I just have to look elsewhere for saving some unsprung weight I guess. The really light pccb calipers I can maintain do help a bit fortunately. Total weight of rotor and caliper as compared to the former set-up is still 1,5kg less ;-)

[Sandeep]

Thanks for the update Wally.

Sorry to hear that it did not work out (50%) but you're only 50% away from having a working pair

Glad to hear you have a working solution now.

Sandeep