4 pot calipers, just how good are they?
Turbo Mini Forums

At our club meet the other night i gave a few members a passenger seat ride in the mini, a bit of spirited driving was done just to show the performance as quiet a few where intrigued. Had to use the brakes fairly hard a couple of times, then noticed them getting more and more harder on the pedal and not pulling up as good, i originally put this down to lack of servo due to the boost, but when i pulled over into the car park, i could smell them seriously bad, even after a cool down they are not as good as they where, what could have happened to them? Brakes are minisport 4 pot alloy calipers with green stuff pads and drilled and grooved discs, could it be because the discs aint vented, just how much difference do vented make?

keith

133.5 bhp 123 lb torque 116mph @6640rpm 9.5psi
Shakespear RWYB 14.995 91.83mph

i fitted a set of greenstuff pads to one of my cars probablyabout 7 years ago. it had 8.4 2 pot setup . took it for a good blast throught the lanes, when i got out there was a fair amount smoke coming from behind the front wheels?? the car was a standard non cooper spi. i never rated the greenstuff linings to be honnest, have reccently tried mintex1144 over the standard pads, and they make a world of difference

also my dad fitted the surestop kit or whatever it is sold via minisport which includes greenstuf pads. he reccons that the pads have warped 2 sets of discs after very little mileage

Edited by welshdan on 11th Mar, 2011.

hmm.. so could be the pads mine are on a ten inch setup as well.

133.5 bhp 123 lb torque 116mph @6640rpm 9.5psi
Shakespear RWYB 14.995 91.83mph

Brakes basically convert movement into heat. The more you move or the faster you move it the more heat is generated. At a given point it all gets too hot and stops working as well, which is why you have to push the pedal harder and harder.

10" brakes and fast driving will result in things getting hot. Welcome to the world of brake fade.

Solutions are:

1. Brake less (cheap option)
2. Cool the brakes better (vented etc)
3. Bigger brakes (best option)

Pads and calipers make a small difference, but ultimately the brakes are too small for a quick car driven fast.

yes, they're a big pile of wank, std ones are better IMO,

Absolutely -green pads are well advertised rubbish

keith for fook sake DUMP those green stuff pads Pronto!!!!

us some soft chepo pads, they dont wear well....... but dont fook your discs up early on BUT they stop you more!

you must learn to do a little more cruiseing between speed breaking to cool the job down,

the callipers are well up to the job,
Turbo Dave some years ago nearly killed himself raceing a honda tegra in the states when those green stuff pads faded out, quickley ( on a private road of corse)

put green stuff on mine for the lakes Keith and they were wank. put Ferodo Premiums back on and new disks as the green stuff shite had bonded material onto the old disks. I put grooved discs on this time and at Coombe they were great again.
For info I use Fiesta 10" brakes

I run a supercharger and I don't care the TB is on the wrong side.
VEMS + 12 PSI + Liquid Intercooler = Small Bore FUN!

better bin mine before I do some damage then

i have used greenstuff in the past and were crap didnt last long and destroyed my disks on the pug waste of money, i used mintex on the mini and now the pug, mini had trackday pads or something never faided once have std on the pug and they get a tad warm sometimes but still work well :)

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Double post

Edited by hazpalmer on 11th Mar, 2011.

yeh when i changed the pads on mine, i put in mintex M144 because i read green stuff were shite

I had green stuff pads with metro 4ports kill them in a few laps of a track day. Mintex pads seem a much better.

mintex are the better ones. talk to tom at minisport. he also says the green stuff ones are shite. he reccomended some better mintex ones. only cheap too :)

I've got a standard metro turbo 4 pot vented setup on mine. With standard mintex road pads. I've done 2 trackdays, loads of spirited road driving and am yet to feel any fade with them.

Turbo parts collector at the moment, almost ready.

You may also have boiled your brake fluid a bit too, probably worth pumping some fresh through.

As Benross said, I use use cheap pads too on the Sprint, Apec if I recall. But, I bought my daily Mk1 with Greenstuff in S callipers and theyre great

I seriously doubt it!

ive always heard of problems with greenstuff pads, my mate craig had some, they were absolute shite. The blackstuff are so much better imo, but i think ill try the mintex next time around as they seem to be a favourite

Another vote for greenstuff being absolute shite, probably good on a track day where you can warm them up properly but no good for daily driving.

They also give off so much brake dust, my silver wheels were black within a month or two!

Glad I read this - I've got bad disc warping after only 4000 miles. Guess what - Greenstuff! Last set of discs didn't last too long either. Time to change I guess.

133.5 bhp 123 lb torque 116mph @6640rpm 9.5psi
Shakespear RWYB 14.995 91.83mph

Here is some interesting information on the Green Stuff pads.

GreenStuff 0.48cf cold, 0.52cf at 175C, 0.4cf at 500C

It would seem that on extremely hard braking, the c/f drops dramaticaly as the temperature rises beyond 200 degrees. the feel of brake fade is likely due to the fact that the pad is not suited, rather than the pad itself.

When I was looking at pads for My wilwoods I looked at the frxtion info for various pads,

Bellow is the Mintex 1144, from the info the green stuff should be better, but that really isnt my experience based on using both compunds in a mini on S brakes and a metro on std Vents.


http://www.s2central.net/images/1144.gif

These got my attention, but then I'm not sure if they fit standard mini calipers as I'm running ford stuff..
http://www.ferodo.co.uk/ferodo_web/high-performance.aspx

I run a supercharger and I don't care the TB is on the wrong side.
VEMS + 12 PSI + Liquid Intercooler = Small Bore FUN!