115 brake pedal travel

["Watry, Andrew (LNG-MBC)" <Andrew.Watry@domain.elided>]

Many 115 US cars seem to have unusually long brake pedal travel; I'd call it
common and one of those "they all do that[s]." It doesn't mean anything's
wrong necessarily, but it can be disconcerting after driving earlier cars
with solid-feeling floor-pedal MCs, or other types of cars.  And I too have
noticed radical variations from one car to the next, which doesn't make
sense to me, as the system is essentially the same on Berlinas, GTVs,
Spiders, other than than the distance from the front wheels to the rear.
Maybe it comes down to who made the MC (there appear to be several different
OEM suppliers), and whether it's new or rebuilt.  I've always been baffled.

It's a common enough problem that one of the machinists at Norman Racing
told me he made a brake MC pushrod extender, in an attempt to shorten the
pedal travel on his 74 Spider.  He succeeded only in making it work worse,
due to the piston not being able to retract far enough to allow new fluid in
from the reservoir. He said he gave up and returned to the stock setup.

Andrew Watry
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