RE: brake upgrades - for spiders?

["Brian Shorey" <bshorey@domain.elided>]

> In my humble opinion, it would be a waste of money to spend anywhere close
> to $1600 on "upgrading" the brakes on a normal Spider, and even the $600
> system Zamani suggested is excessive.
>
> The stock brakes on 105 Alfas are excellent--certainly more than equal to
> the power generated by a stock '80s vintage Bosch-injected motor.  Racing
> Alfas making in excess of 200 HP still use stock brake components and get
> along just fine.  So, unless you have a turbocharged monster motor that
> puts out really serious horsepower, buy a set of good pads from
Porterfield
> or Performance Friction Products, save the rest of the money, and
> enjoy the car.

One slightly different point of view might be that it makes more sense to go
after the brakes before going after the motor.

Yes, the stock brakes are a fine match for a stock motor.  However most Alfa
people beef up the motor without ever touching the brakes.

One philosophy for speed is to throw money at the motor.  This is expensive,
and results are pricey.  My preference is to start with the suspension,
wheels, tires, etc, which will help pick up speed in other parts of the
track and the overall package is probably safer too.

After the suspension, the question is how do you get from one end of the
straight to the other in the shortest possible time.  Again, you can toss
money at the motor, but another, probably cheaper route is to throw money at
the brakes, the theory being that you can carry whatever speed you've built
up for a longer period of time (because it's going to take you less time to
slow down).

It might not be as fun as having more hp, however it's safer and probably
costs a lot less for similar results.

Fwiw,

bs

--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided