Brake System

The brake pedal on my Fisher Fury R1 is a heavy lump of steel, despite being full of weight-saving holes. These days, there is no excuse not to use much lighter and more complex structure that provides even greater strength.

I plan to use an optical encoder to measure brake pedal movement as well as a brake pressure sensor in the front brake circuit. These will be captured in the data logging.

The balance bar enabled the correct bias of the braking front and rear, when you are using a twin master cylinder design. Rally Design have a good guide on brake balance bar adjustment.

This car will have a remote adjustment knob to change the front/rear brake bias. This is a short length of cable and a light-weight knob, so the additional weight is out-weighed (no pun intended!) by the usefulness of this feature.

The plan is to use a twin design with seperate pistons and circuits for the front and rear brakes. The brake cylinders are mounted on the central chassis bulkhead.

I've used Hi-Spec billet alloy cailpers on my Fisher Fury R1 and these have been pretty good. They are also very small and light. I'm likely to move to Wilwood calipers on this car though.

The brake cylinders are mounted on the central chassis tub bulkhead, so a

T.B.C.

The brake system requires a quality, Dot 4 brake fluid, e.g. Castrol Response Super Dot 4.

As part of the data logging I want to log brake pressure. This requires a special brake pressure sensor, which fits in the front brake circuit.

I will probably use Wilwood calipers again on the rear. This one has an in-built handbrake mechanism and weighs less than 1Kg.

The brakes discs used on my Fisher Fury R1 have worked perfectly on road and track. You could drive round on track all day without them over heating. Despite the additional power, I see no need to upgrade them in size or specification.

I'm planning to use 260mm x 7mm grooved discs on the front.

I used standard Escort Mk II solid rear brake discs (253mm x 10mm) on my Fisher Fury R1. These have also worked perfectly but I want something lighter on this car, as they weigh 3455g each.

T.B.C.

The handbrake in my Fisher Fury R1 is from a Ford Sierra. It's amazingingly strong, reliable and made from a metal that is virtually impossible to drill. It's engineered to last hundreds of thousands of miles and could probably do millions. It's outrageously heavy and totally over-engineered. I've used the handbrake in my Fisher Fury R1 about two or three times in the last 5 years. It also gets tested at MOT time.

I'm designing my own handbrake from scratch. It's a thing of beauty made from carbon fibre, nylon and a few tiny metal parts. It will replace the Sierra part in my Fisher Fury R1 and will be used in this new car.

The routing of the handbrake cable is critical to its efficiency in operation. The plan is to spend a lot more time in routing and mounting the cable as I've had issues with the installation in my Fisher Fury R1, mainly around the cable vibrating on the chassis. This is one of the reasons I've designed a small centre tunnel in the chassis tub.

I really don't think I'm going to require ducting for air to cool the brakes but this is something I'm currently considering just in case.