crash lessons

[leggwork]

here is a track-day crash worth reading about for lessons learned
http://www.msprotege.com/forum/showthread.php?t=123684925

I've never seen pads wear differently on the inside and outside but perhaps it happens on some styles of brakes.
bruce

[Weston]

I've seen the inner pad wear faster than the outer on at least 3 different kinds of cars... my daily driver (Ford), my old Time Trials car (Acura), and Chris' race car this last weekend (Porsche). It's definitely a good thing to check.

[Snymo]

So, would that type of pad wear be caught by our tech inspectors?? I check mine, but not sure about those that do this for our students.

Rick

[MHISSTC]

I read all the posts and watched the video all the way through.

I'm more of the opinion that the driver should be responsible for the condition of basic wear items such as tires and brakes and should not rely on the tech inspections to catch everything. In order to see pad thickness on most cars, every wheel has to be pulled before every event. That should be standard practice for the owner/driver.

It was also pointed out more than once in that thread that you shouldn't be tracking a car the bank owns and you shouldn't be tracking a car you can't afford to throw away. I know the same has been said many times on this forum about the W2W racing cars, but not necessarily about HPDE cars. I agree with that for the W2W cars, but don't necessarily agree with that view for HPDE cars...especially in HPDE 1-3 where we're not mixing it up with the TT or W2W crowd.

I have to ask others opinions on another topic.

Do you think it was safe for the driver of the car taping the incident from two cars back to stop on the edge of the track to assist? (Forget about the fact that he was running the car all out and pulled the emergency brake with zero cool-down time on the car.)

[Snymo]

I just answered my own question. From the HPDE Tech Form (http://www.nasaproracing.com/images/rules-forms/form_hpde_tech.pdf) that every HPDE driver must fill out and bring to the track, it says:

INSTRUCTIONS (Read carefully):
Prior to bringing your car to the track or to the HPDE tech station, inspect each item on the car as listed. Consult a tech inspector if there are any questions. Have the top of the form filled out prior to going to the tech inspector. Making sure your car is track ready is your responsibility. More information and all rules are available online at www.nasaproracing.com.

Under the Brakes section, the only items listed are:
pedal pressure
fluid level
lines (condition)
brake lights

So, pad thickness/condition is not an item that would be caught durning an HPDE Tech and would fall under the "Making sure your car is track ready is your responsibility" comment in the Instructions.

As for stopping on track to help. The short answer is you should never stop on track unless you are shown the Red Flag or instructed by your instrctor to due so (would be extremely rare to stop on track). However, practically speaking, if the situation was life threatening and you were a trained professional lifesaver (EMT, Fireman, etc) and you could provide care during the time it would take Safety to reach the person, I could understand stopping. However, I don't condone that or encourage it at all.

Rick

[Weston]

I read all the posts and watched the video all the way through.

I'm more of the opinion that the driver should be responsible for the condition of basic wear items such as tires and brakes and should not rely on the tech inspections to catch everything. In order to see pad thickness on most cars, every wheel has to be pulled before every event. That should be standard practice for the owner/driver.

It was also pointed out more than once in that thread that you shouldn't be tracking a car the bank owns and you shouldn't be tracking a car you can't afford to throw away. I know the same has been said many times on this forum about the W2W racing cars, but not necessarily about HPDE cars. I agree with that for the W2W cars, but don't necessarily agree with that view for HPDE cars...especially in HPDE 1-3 where we're not mixing it up with the TT or W2W crowd.

I have to ask others opinions on another topic.

Do you think it was safe for the driver of the car taping the incident from two cars back to stop on the edge of the track to assist? (Forget about the fact that he was running the car all out and pulled the emergency brake with zero cool-down time on the car.)

Yeah, the driver really needs to check his own car out before going to the track. He does have some responsibility for his own safety and his car's track-readiness. Tech inspection won't catch everything.

When you track a car, you're taking a certain risk... If you wreck, most insurance companies will not cover the damage, so that can be a real problem if we're talking about a person's only car, or a car that the bank owns. Being a good driver helps, and so does being in a relatively safe environment (ie NASA HPDE), but parts can break and other things can happen, so there are no guarantees. It's up to each participant to be aware of the risks and decide if it's acceptable for them or not. In HPDE, a lot of participants seem to consider it to be an acceptable risk, and I can understand why. But if we're talking about wheel-to-wheel racing, and maybe even Time Trials, then the risks are high enough that I really don't think it's justifiable for most people to do with their only car or a bank-owned car.

As for getting out of the car on the track, I think there are really very few circumstances where you should ever do that, whether it's to assist a crashed driver or not. Being on fire would be the exception. At the very least, those guys needed to find a safer place to park their cars. Course workers are better equipped and better trained to deal with what can happen out there, so unless there is no other help nearby (ie an open track day), by stopping to help, you may just be getting in the way. We have a great safety team at NASA events, so that's not really an issue for us.

[chris_venturini]

Though Ive never seen it before a similar thing happened to me on sat. luckily I was able to figure it out off track. My outer pad still had sufficient material while the inner was pretty much metal on metal. Its very difficult to tell if the inner pad has material even with the wheel off so checking it could still be imperfect but a good precaution. What i did notice was that it occurred on the front driver side while on the passenger even wear was on both pads. it still doesn't fully make sense to me but could it be because of the nature of the track and the majority of right hand turns, or perhaps a worn rotor, or pad failure?

[Weston]

The thing I noticed on Chris' pads is that it looked like they were crumbling a bit, so the inner pad could have just disintegrated or separated all at once. It wouldn't be the first time I've seen that happen to a pad that was getting low.

[cullenwinter]

What i did notice was that it occurred on the front driver side while on the passenger even wear was on both pads. it still doesn't fully make sense to me but could it be because of the nature of the track and the majority of right hand turns, or perhaps a worn rotor, or pad failure?

That would be correct, I always come back from La Junta with that type of uneven wear on the LF even with brand new brakes.

[RichV]

The inner is typicaly the side with the piston so it is possible. I have seen it on my vehicles as well. Specialy my truck. I did the rear pads on the E30 on friday night at PMP and they were both evenly worn. There was about a 16th of a inch on each pad but all 4 looked about the same.

I was thinking it was a little careless of him to get out of the vehicle. Unless maybe it was a tune session and there were no track workers, even then it is dangerous for him and all other drivers. I don't think I would have done it.

[95sprtcpedrvr]

I agree about the other driver coming to a stop and getting out. This isn't your residential road/highway. Especially if the track hasn't been put under caution or at least that section having a waving yellow.
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I think it is kind of retarded that the guy put partial blame on the ABS. From my understanding from what he said that his ABS works on his car is also the same way mine works and there is over a 10 year difference between my car and his.

I also had uneven pad wear but that was mainly due to poor caliper maintenance. So I rebuilt the calipers put on some fresh grease on the sliding rods and PRESTO! no more uneven wear. Talking with some techs from Baer some time ago, freshening up your brake fluid, especially in your daily driver, will help keep your system in good working order.

[Evil86Saleen]

VW passats ae notorious for wearing the left rear inner pad faster than the other three sides.

I dont know about all of this ABS dump mode stuff. VW doesnt have anything like that. Even if one side was worn down to metal the piston should still push the backing plate against the rotor the ABS sensro will still see the wheel slowing down even if less than the other. Well that how it works on VWs anyway.

kyle