A Quick Lesson in Brake Bias
Sunday, September 5th, 2010I haven’t remarked about the braking much until now because I wasn’t that thrilled with it. I wanted to make sure there wasn’t something I had overlooked in the braking system that was causing its sub-par performance before I started whining about it.
That being said, last night I was browsing through the Wilwood pedal documentation and realized the brake pedal has a balance bias bar that I had left at its default setting which puts even pressure on the front and rear cylinders at the same time. In this car, like many sports cars, the front brakes are larger, so naturally we would want a bias up front. We want those fronts to actually work harder.
The balance bar is located at the the top of the brake pedal and connects the two clevises that screw onto the cylinder push-rods. If you turn it clockwise (like tightening a bolt) it will move the pressure bias to the left, or the front braking cylinder if you have the brake lines ran that way. ‘Loosening’ the bar will move the bias to the rear. Wilwood claims in their documentation that maxing out the bias bar to the left (front) will put twice as much braking pressure on the front cylinder in comparison to the rear.
Once I realized this I cranked the balance bar so it was maxed out to give the front brakes as much bias as possible. Test driving so far shows much, much improved braking performance. If at any point I determine the GTM will need MORE front braking bias then I will have to change master cylinders to get more pressure.
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