Scary Brake Drama...

We knew the brakes were bad but this is a tad dangerous don't you think? In the last race, we used up quite a bit more brake pads than we expected to use. Mike finished the race with no front left bad basically. We didn't know how bad it was until we were swapping them out this weekend. Check out these photos!

Here you can see the naked piston. The heat melted away the dust cover. Eeek.


Here is a side profile of the two left pads. You can see where the piston pushed into the melted back plate which has totally been pushed out of shape. There is only a slight bit of useless pad remaining. The other pad has no pad left either and is also down to the back plate.


Here is a front on view. The pad meat should be there but its just shiny metal that remains. Yikes. Mike - how the hell did you complete that race! Not to mention you guys bringing the car home in 3rd! Lesson learned me thinks - no more "it should make it"... Lets not skimp on essentials like tires nor brakes!

Gotta repair the caliper now. Have ordered a caliper repair kit from Honda. Should get it tomorrow.

Strap on!

I was at the DIY store picking up the Vinyl and remembered, This first ebisu event finishes at 9pm ish. A good idea for everyone to have something like this.

Stick it on your list. Mine is a projector style, it produces great range and lasts for 33 hrs on a single alkaline. It was only 1400 yen.

Russ.

Motorola Radios!

First - I think what's left is for the group to come up with a list of items we will need during the race, as well as finding a few items WE STILL NEED like a folding table (anyone reading this anyway?)

Ok- to radios - I ordered these radios only a few days agao, and they've already arrived! Supposedly have a range of upto 35 miles - but probably more like 2 in mountain terrain, which is fine by me. (the watt rating is only 1.5W it turn out - which is well under the 5W limit Ebisu circuit imposes).



Here is the headset for the pit crew chief (list of duties and clipboard to come!)


This is a driver headset with a "throat mic" - apparently translates the vocal cords into speech, so ideal for noisy situations like motorcyling and motorsports. We shall see...


Of course, I don't want that ick from Tom's ear to be inserted BACK into my own ear, so I got everyone their own earpiece. Although to be honest the ear plugs are a bit small and not too comfortable. I may modify mine with my own ear plugs.


Finally - in case for some reason the throat mic concept is better in theory than in execution - I went out and got this too - a standard helmet set up - although the problem is this is really for open face helmets, so we will have to squeeze the mic into the helmet somehow - and we'll have to figure out a way to swap out the unit during driver changes!


Sunday will be a welcome break for Alex and me - we will not be at Camp Zama to work on the car. However, will be at my local home center to pick up a few things like fire extinguishers, etc. Need to come up with that list - we have less than 2 weeks left!