During my
last visit to SJF Performance we discovered that the front brakes were done for. I immediately placed an order for new brakes. This time, I switched to Wilwood rotors made from their proprietary Spec37 iron alloy (part numbers 160-11839 and 160-11840). I was told that the premature brake wear was likely due to us exceeding the temperature envelope of the brakes. These rotors are designed for much heavier use and should help manage heat better. They're also slotted which should help keep the pads clean and avoid a lot of the grooving that happened on the old rotors. I went with another set of Hawk HP+ pads (HB100 N.480) and ordered new brake hat bolts just in case the old ones needed replacement.
 |
| New rotors, pads and bolts - SJF Performamnce - 8/20/2016 |
 |
| Wilwood Spec37 performance rotors - 8/20/2016 |
SJF made quick work of replacing the rotors and pads. The old bolts were still in good shape so he just cleaned them and reused. We'll just keep the fresh bolts as spares. The bolts were torqued to 150in/lb (12.5ft/lb) and red loctite was applied to all bolts. The new rotors have more vanes and smaller gaps between them and is a pound or two heavier. I presume the added weight is needed for thermal capacity and more efficient braking. Even though the added weight does kill some performance in the form of more rotating mass, it should give us better stopping power and many races are won/lost in the braking zones.
 |
| New pad left, old pad right - 8/20/2016 |
 |
| New rotor left, old rotor right - 8/20/2016 |
 |
| New brakes installed - 8/20/2016 |
With the brakes out of the way, we took the current set of "practice" tires off the set of wheels on Bumblestook and mounted some fresh Hoosiers. These will be our tires for the championship and we'll scrub these in either next weekend or on the practice course in Lincoln. The four tires we'll be using were all won by Hez during the past two ProSolo wins so thankfully we didn't have to shell out cash for new tires this year.
 |
| Fresh tires getting mounted - 8/20/2016 |
Finally, since we don't leave anything to chance, the engine oil was replaced with some fresh Amsoil. This is probably a bit overkill considering it's been only about 100 miles since we replaced the oil earlier this year but with the car being run so hard and running on Ethanol, we do this before Nats just for peace of mind.
 |
| Oil Change - 8/20/2016 |
Last year we also made a silly mistake of not removing OPR from the tires between competition days so I picked a Dewalt brushless battery powered oscillating tool. I had SJF dull the edges and corners off the blade we'll be using for scraping so it doesn't cut into the good rubber but still be able to separate the OPR effectively from the tires.
 |
| DeWALT Oscillating Tool - 8/20/2016 |
 |
| Oscillating blades - 8/20/2016 |
Tomorrow we'll be running with the NNJR Porsche Club to bed in the brakes and test out the new alignment. The other set of wheels with the tires we'll be running at the ProSolo Finale are on the car. Those were our Nationals set from last year and tomorrow's event will be a good way to scrub them in nicely and clear out any left over OPR from last year. It is now only 11 days until we leave for Lincoln and we'll have just two more events to give her a final shake down.
