How much should one expect from our brakes?

[Xhilr8n]

Here’s the deal. I’ve only sat or ridden in like three various Sevens before ‘“The red one” came to our garage.  Never driven one.  The light car and light flywheel taught me how to use her clutch like they all do.  Starts and moves along smoothly.  Just approaching 600 miles so getting her first good pulls.  So far so good.

 

But the brakes.  My first impression was it felt like pushing against drywall.  Only a slight ‘give’

 

Flushed brakes as documented in another thread.  Improved things but not a lot.  The car can be stopped but takes substantial pressure, and you better be there quick with that full pressure if Whoaing down!!!  is desirable.   I figured TADTS, just a part of Sevendom.

 

Took a nice “blat” this morning on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  A senior fellow I’ve just met with an extensive racing history came along and gave me his impression, as I requested.

 

He said you ought to be able to lock the wheels, push your eyeballs forward.  My experience with my track prepped Elise is that we could out brake anything with doors at Road Atlanta.  Watch a Corvette blow by on the back stretch and then hit the binders while we were on full throttle two more seconds! and dog them through the next couple of turns. First timers felt sick, it was great!

 

Remember this car sat brand new in storage for like three years before she came to our garage. 
 

Please share your experience, strength and hope.

[KnifeySpoony]

The brakes are very wooden and have very little bite when cold, and it can indeed be scary trying to get the car slowed effectively. You better be ready to boot that pedal if there is need for a panic stop with room temperature brakes. When hot, they bite nicely and will easily lock, but still require much more leg than an overboosted setup like an Elige (yes I owned one). The front pads that my 2021 build came with (and I assume yours?), the Ferodo DS performance, are theoretically street biased, but have very little cold bite. I recently changed my front pads to Pagid RS14 (which is in theory a more track oriented pad) and they actually bite wayyy more when cold, but still work best when up to temp of course. Basically, you may want to "upgrade" to a higher friction compound. And you definitely can't trust those graphs the manufacturers publish; IME they don't correlate to actual COLD pad bite/feel.

 

And we haven't talked about the rear brakes at all. For street work you can leave them alone but for hard track work, they need a lot of work...

[Xhilr8n]

Thanks.  I liked those Pagids on the Elise.  
 

Not beyond some changes of hardware.  A performance car outta perform going and whoaing.

[Christopher smith]

Just a thought for anyone with an old Lotus 7. I think Triumph Spitfire front brakes were on some. If originality is not as high a priority as performance , might be worth looking at Triumph GT6 front brakes. At least the ones that bolted right on to my sries1 to replace some very tiny original drum brakes seem to work great even when cold since they were deigned for a much heavier car. At least I think they are bigger than the Spitfire

[Xhilr8n]

The silence was deafening so I’m thinking folks are not especially impressed with the brakes on their modern 7s?

 

We have the upgraded master cylinder, AP Racing pads.  
 

Today I bled brakes (no bubbles), changed the oil at 600 miles and took her out for a serious brake bedin.  Four hard stops, “leg press” Pause, four more.  Four more again and got a rear tire to lock a touch, ‘new’ Avons on dry road. Hard stopping very straight.  Seemed to develop more pedal travel and feel, modulation improved.  I have no experience to help me judge whether this is par for the course but is improved.
 

Nice drive on the Parkway after dark, half hood off.

[KnifeySpoony]

Unless you have much more aggressive pads in rear than front, I'm not sure how a rear would lock first. You should able to easily lock the fronts, esp on the street with cold tires. 

[IamScotticus]

We don't actually know what brakes you have?? Front or rear. 

Girling Type 14LF up front? Uprated?

Sierra rear?

I couldn't lock my T14s either.  I attributed to possibly being stock Triumph Spit pads, which would be horrible.

Edited July 28 by IamScotticus

[KnifeySpoony]

56 minutes ago, IamScotticus said:

We don't actually know what brakes you have?? Front or rear. 

 

 

 

Oh good point. Being a recent "R" model, I assumed it had the uprated front brakes (also I assumed the uprated master cylinder as mentioned above was only paired with the uprated front brakes), but if not that would explain rears locking first. If on standard front brakes disregard all my comments in this thread as I have no experience with them.