pretty good brakes

Rally

Rally

Forum Member
Joined
Jul 11, 2008
Messages
3,928
Location
Sydney
Car Year
1999
Car Model
WRX
Transmission
6 Speed
Interesting discussion on the brakes. My Impreza has pretty good brakes- with 8 piston front callipers there is no shortage of stopping power.




So as you might expect, the Forester is up against it with smaller brakes and more weight. Yet I am so impressed with how well they work. I also know that pad material plays a huge part in not just how well brakes work, but how they feel. The problem with your Forrie may be the pads. I also bleed my brakes annually- just did it yesterday in fact on the Impreza and the Forrie last weekend. Just doing this (every year) improves the pedal feel.

The pads in the Forrie are made by Hitachi for the Toxico callipers- which means I believe they are genuine pads. I have travelled 85,000km on them and I bought the car second hand at 139,000km. They still have a reasonable amount of pad material on them. Maybe for the XT the brakes are lacking, but for the NA's they work very well.

The steering is fine for the sort of car that the Forrie is. My Impreza has an extra quick rack installed, but I would not like it on the Forrie. Yet the quick rack on the Impreza makes the car that much better than standard steering. Electric steering is getting better, but my view is that it should not have been released until it was at least as good as the hydraulic system. If you think the SG's steering is not real flash, go and try an SH diesel and see what you think. The SG will feel like a go kart after that! :) But I can accept that the Golf has better steering than either of my cars. So it should- it is a far newer car. And it probably is the way of the future- especially now that they some manufacturers know how to make them work well, apparently.
 
I just made a mess in my pants! :rotfl:

I'd imagine those brakes would work exceptionally well! I find Subaru 4 pots to be quite average for what they are in comparison to SG Forester brakes.
 
Again, it comes down to the pads. With the Impreza, you push the brakes a lot harder than you would the Forrie and you have to wash off a lot more speed a lot more often. So you needed a pad which could deal with the heat. But then when you weren't punishing the brakes, you wanted a pad that would work cold and that was the problem I had with the standard 4 pots. The genuine pads were ok for a standard car, although I did get fade. With more power, the brakes were further compromised. I ran a set of RB74's, which worked well, but vibrated terribly at anything beyond moderate braking. I then had a set of Galphor pads, which felt terrible. The pedal feel was the worst I've experienced, and the car never felt like it would stop, although it always did. With cold brakes, the brakes were not that good. With the big brakes, pedal feel is much better, but you need a strong right leg. Those V8 Supercar drivers must have legs like tree stumps.
 
Hi Rally

Impressive! Those brakes look like what I have dreamed of for my Forester and really should have done something about it way back at the beginning of ownership. My stock brakes pads have done fine service. The original fronts were replaced at the last 238,000km service and coming up to the 250,000km service next week the rears are still the originals and have reasonable life left in them I'm told.

One positive thing that I can say about the Forester's steering is how well it has been set up for rough & corrugated roads, which does make sense. No rack rattle or loose feeling. Subaru obviously knew where to compromise and knew the market demand well.
 
They only j-u-s-t fit in 17 inch rims- and then only of you don't have stick on wheel weights.

238,000km on the front pads- which confirms to some extent my suspicion I am my on original front pads. I reckon I have half a chance of equalling that distance. Will try for 250,000km!
 
Rally said:
238,000km on the front pads- which confirms to some extent my suspicion I am my on original front pads. I reckon I have half a chance of equalling that distance. Will try for 250,000km!
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I was rather annoyed when they showed the old pads to me because I reckon I could have got 300,000km out of them. Typical of the dealership service people who seem all too willing to replace stuff too early "just in case". The long pad life reflects the long distance driving my Foz has mainly had. I mean, how many times do you really use the brakes when crossing the Nullarbor or the Stuart H'way?
 
guzzla said:
The original fronts were replaced at the last 238,000km service and coming up to the 250,000km service next week the rears are still the originals and have reasonable life left in them I'm told.
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Just shy of a 1/4 of a million Km's for a set of brake pads is a fantastic lifespan :ebiggrin:

Regards
Mr Turbo
 
Apart from testing of brakes and braking in our cars when purchased, I don't think that I have done more than about 6-12 panic stops in my entire driving life.

I test the brakes on dry bitumen, wet bitumen (preferably when greasy after a dry spell ... ) and on dirt and gravel roads. Apart from the bitumen road tests, I am not silly enough to do any even approaching a panic stop off the bitumen.

I do the same to establish the handling characteristics of each new car so that I know where the limits are well before I have to know ... :iconwink:.

All my cars since my Morris 1100 (late 1960s) have had disc brakes at the front.

Not one of them has had brakes that I consider to be inadequate in any way. Even my '68 LC with its drum brakes was no slouch in the stopping department. Having 8 leading shoes and big drum brakes helped there ...

I suspect that a lot of what has been said has more to do with how brakes feel, rather than how well they actually work. Some people like brakes that "feel like they are doing something" - i.e. sharp and vigorous when the pedal is touched. I find such brakes quite disconcerting. I far prefer very progressive brakes that can be applied with a greater degree of finesse, as it were.

When I need to stop in general driving, there is almost invariably a considerable amount of space in which to do so. I start braking from the moment that it becomes apparent that I need to. How vigorously depends on the circumstances.

I do drive my Forester (and the Impreza before it) 'vigorously'. I am not one of those who takes two sets of traffic lights to get up to the speed limit, and never have been.

The best braked car I have driven (slightly better than the E-Type I was pretty familiar with) was a Renault 16. It would stop at around 1.05g. This gave it a stopping distance from 60 mph of the mid 120-130 feet. The E-Type and most modern (non-American type cars) from the mid-1960s onwards are quite capable of stopping at around 0.95-0.98g, giving stopping distances of about 132 feet from 60 mph (see data sets referenced below). By way of comparison, our HR Holden (with power-assisted discs at the front) took a leisurely 176 feet to stop from 60 mph, and Fords of the time were similar. All tests done with the car unloaded except for the driver.

Almost all cars made since the 1990s have stopping distances that are different by a couple of feet, and that's all. They all stop from 60 mph in around 132-138 feet.

See some data sets here.

And some technical information about braking here at Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braking_distance

There will always be considerable differences in the braking, steering and handling characteristics of any two cars, even from the same stable. A safe and sensible driver gets to know the characteristics of the car/s he/she drives, and drives them accordingly.

Even in the vaguely emergent situations that one finds oneself in, I have never found the brakes in our SG, SH or our Impreza to be anything but very effective. They all stop. They all do (did) it in the minimum practical distance for the road conditions.

What has not been discussed here is recovery time of the braking system (and fade) and such like characteristics. Rally can correct me if I'm wrong, but most of the modifications done to brakes have to do with allowing (effectively) panic stop after panic stop without deterioration of the braking system's efficacy. These situations do not commonly occur in road driving.

In my distant youth I realised that if one drives on the brakes, one day one will die on them.

I would also suggest to Guzzla that if he is getting 200,000+ kms out of a set of pads, he is driving far more gently than I ever have, so the point about the brakes becomes moot ... :iconwink:.
 
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Pedal feel is resonably important, but braking performance far more so. Early Commodores had woeful brakes, with both fade and terrible locking of the rear brakes. Whoever named them COTY obviously never used the brake pedal. One of the reasons some older cars might do well under brakes is their light weight. The first FWD Mazda 323 seemed to have ok brakes- until you had 3-4 other people in the car when stopping became a distant but cherished memory. Too many hi performance cars were chronically under braked. A mid 80's Z28 Comaro still had rear drums, and the front brakes on a current WRX are inadequate, a backward step from the lighter, less powerful earlier versions.
 
^ Gidday Rally

I agree about the Camaro, and Firebird, and Mustang brakes. Let's not even talk about the brakes on my cousin's Pontiac GTO 400 ... :puke:

Have been doing some research on this claim about the Forester's brakes, as it's fast approaching 40°C here ATM. I reckon we will make the forecast of 43°C for today. We only got to 28.8°C yesterday, forecast was for 35°C. Time for me to head for the pool :iconwink: :ebiggrin: :cool:, really :cool: - :lol:.

The PDF file of the report by the Canadian Transport Authority is here:
https://www.tc.gc.ca/media/documents/programs/TR_FORESTER_ENG.pdf

See page 27 for the braking performance of the 2011 Forester.
At that page, it indicates that the Forester tested stops from 100->0 kph in 40.3m, or around 132 feet ... This is well under the safety threshold set by them for braking from 100 kph, and is 6m under the threshold for braking from 80 kmh ...
The Forester also brakes from 110 kmh in about 1.9m more than their threshold for braking from 80 kmh.

It is very, very hard to get braking from 100 kmh under about 128 feet, regardless. So the Forester brakes are about as good as it gets!

IMHO, this does not constitute the brakes being marginal or deficient in the Foresters.

As far as I am able to tell in normal driving, there is no practical difference between the brakes on our 2009 MY10 SH and our 2006 MY06 SG. The SH is slightly less stable (as I have noted before), probably due to it being considerably higher than my SG, and a bigger vehicle all round.
They both have 280 mm ventilated discs at the front, and perfectly adequate little discs at the rear (with the parking drums inside - that's a brilliant bit of design work by whoever thought it up). There is a lot to be said for having disc/drum combinations IMHO, but that is out of fashion ...

Both brake pedals are softer than that in my Impreza, or our '93 Camry for that matter. However, this does not appear to have the slightest effect on the efficacy of the brakes.
 
My SG has approx 298mm front discs- same as WRX
 
^ Are they standard size, Rally?

I wouldn't say that my measurements were the peak of accuracy ... Kneeling down on red-hot paving using a steel tape measure trying to compensate for the parallax error while my knees were frying... It hit 40°C at 1310H here. Still climbing! At least our pool is a nice temperature!
 
Well, they are the same size as a WRX disc- that much I am certain of. My brakes are standard. And from the literature I have read, WRX brakes are ~298mm.
 
^ Rally, I just found a copy of the brake spec sheet for the MY03 Forester here:

https://www.subaruforester.org/vbulletin/410300-post5.html

I note that it lists the front rotors as being 294 mm in overall diameter, rears as 266 mm (for all RHD models - they all have four wheel discs, that's all Oz delivered Foxes).

I assume that the series II Forester would be the same.

[EDIT] BTW, it's just hit 43°C here ... Still quite a few hours of sunshine to go, so will probably even make it to "hot" ... :lol: :rotfl:

[end edit]
 
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Rally said:
One of the reasons some older cars might do well under brakes is their light weight. The first FWD Mazda 323 seemed to have ok brakes- until you had 3-4 other people in the car when stopping became a distant but cherished memory.
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My '76 Mazda RX3 was very light (IIRC under 900kg), had unvented discs fr & drums rear. The first time I did a hard brake from 100kms scared the hell out of me lol. When I got it engineered with a 220KW JDM turbo EFI 12A rotary, apart from heaps of other bit & pieces was Volvo 4 pots & discs up front. Rears left standard. The brakes engineer who did the stopping test (incl G-force & fade tests) was very impressed...so was I. No matter how hard I tried I couldnt get fade & they pulled up very hard with great pedal feel :lildevil:
 
My understanding was that for their time, Volvos had very good brakes. Probably just as well- they were also the Camry of their time as well. Worst experience I had under brakes (when the issue was just the car and it's brakes) was an old HG Monaro 350. I was a passenger- something I'm not very good at- and the owner gave the biig V8 some stick. Then put in a request to slow down. The car fought him every inch of the way. The way the car weaved under brakes at high speed, I'm sure I saw the pearly gates. I never got in that POS again.
 
My worst experience with brakes was trying to pull up from topping out at 112mph in my father's 1970 VG Valiant 245ci 2-barrel 3 speed with all drum brakes. After about 2 seconds there was nothing. It was only the wind resistance and eventually 2nd gear that gradually brought it to a safe speed - if there was anything such as a safe speed in that monster. My father never did get to find out what I used to put that car through. Gee cars have come a long way.
 
Ratbag said:
I would also suggest to Guzzla that if he is getting 200,000+ kms out of a set of pads, he is driving far more gently than I ever have, so the point about the brakes becomes moot ... :iconwink:.
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Yes, I reckon I am gentle with the brakes but it doesn't mean to say the cars always gets gentle driving. It's a bit hard to drive a XT Forester and not get sucked into speed. I try not to use the brakes unless I have to - it's sort of counter-productive. But I do think it's more to do with the open road work it gets most of the time.

I also replaced the front pads on our V6 Camry at 231,000km because the rotors needed machining (the Forester's never did) and the pads were just over half worn. I reckon they could have seen 400,000km.
 
Guzzla

You were lucky with your Camry. Ours had to have the rotors replaced at about 85,000 kms. Apparently the OEM pads were harder than the rotors, and chopped the rotors out ...

As regards to braking efficacy, as distinct from subjective feel, have you ever done any actual tests of the braking efficacy? It appears from the document link I posted that the Forester brakes are about as effective as brakes get when it comes to actual stopping distances. This has also been my personal experience with them.

I also never had the slightest sign of brake fade with either my '93 Impreza or my Forester/s.

However, I do agree about the soft pedal feel. So much so that I asked Ross about it with both cars, and he said that this was normal, specially for cars with ABS, EBD and (on the SH) VDC.

Having said that, I quite like the softer pedal, as it allows for far smoother driving and braking. Both important, as my SWMBO gets car sick if I so much as tweak ... Forget about vigorous driving when she is in the car - she'll puke on everything ... :(.
 
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