by Keith and Terri Gerhard
I always thought the Fiero brakes where justfine and couldn’t understand why everyone dogged them. I never had aproblem with them autocrossing and at Waterford Hills raceway. Maybe itwas in part due to the fact that the Pumpkin’s brakes actually workedproperly, including the rear brakes (emergency brake and all). Or the factthat I’m a strange one and race an Automatic, that with the rightdriving style you almost do more braking with the transmission than thebrakes (especially with the TH-125’s steep gears and being only a 3speed.) Then I met up with Gateway Raceway. With over 100mph straightawayfollowed by a hard braking left-hander, I had no brakes after my firstsession. I mean no brakes period, pedal to the floor. After they cooleddown I had to change my driving style by dropping into 2nd gear for theinfield and using the transmission to slow me down and save my brakes forthat nice long straight. This did slow my laps down a bit but not as muchas if I couldn’t slow down enough to make a turn. Then I drove KeithHuffs car with drilled rotors and boy could that car pull hard.
This, along with the fact I hadto change my brakes before I headed home, made me think about a brakechange. What made things even worse was when I got home my brakes wherenever the same. I actually seemed to notice brake fade during spiriteddriving and panic stops. I changed the brake fluid and swapped out the oldrotors figuring the heat from the track may have done some permanentdamage to the rotors, plus God only knew how old the brake fluid was.After I changed it I noticed an instant improvement but the fluid wentfrom clear to black in less than a week. On a side note, I’ve started tochange the brake fluid at every oil change. Just get a turkey baister andsuck out the old fluid, wipe out the reservoir and refill with new fluid.Only takes about 5 min and I figured that if it’s done every 3,000 milesthen I might get away without bleeding the system, which can be a pain. Istarted doing this with Terri’s old GMC Jimmy that had ABS, and theworst brake system I’ve ever seen. I kept hearing about how old brakefluid (which likes to soak up moisture) would gum up the small passages inthe $500 plus ABS module. Then I was wondering why I never did this on thePumpkin. But I still wasn’t totally happy with my brakes and was stilllooking for the answer to better brakes, just in case I ever get to goroad racing again.
I thentalked to Alan Mooty (407-275-5040) at the Daytona show, and I decided totry using the Grand Am brakes on the front only, since the biggest problemI had was brake fade from the rotors heating up too fast. I could lock-upthe stock brakes if I wanted too so I couldn’t justify the cost of overa $1000 of going to the bigger rotor even though a bigger rotor would alsotake longer to start fading. With a bigger rotor brake system if you don’thave a big tire to help you slow down then your not using the fullpotential of the big rotors and wasting your money. In simple terms if youcan lock-up the tires with your stock brakes, going to the bigger brakesyou’ll just lock-up the tires quicker and you may even have longerstopping distance. Remember the time your car is braking the hardest isright before lock-up, which is why Anti-Lock brakes work so well. Sure thebig brake kits are better but are they three times better since the GrandAm conversion is under $300 and the other kits are over $1000? Sorry, mymoney tree died a long time ago. I decided to do the Grand Am conversionand a bunch of my friends were waiting to do theirs until they saw howmine come out. Can we say Guinea Pig...squeak, squeak? Since my frontbrakes where getting low anyway (again) I sent an old set of rotors toAlan with a check for $90 where he cut off the rotor part leaving just thecenter hub and installs new lug studs. I decided to only do the frontbrakes since I wanted to retain my emergency brake to keep the car legaland mine still works great. The rear is just a one for one swap of theGrand Am rotor and caliper, easy but you have to work out an E-Brakesystem. Alan says some people have used a mechanical (verses electrical)line lock to hold on the rear brakes on. They usually work by pressing thebrake pedal to engage the line lock and then when you let go of the pedalthe back brakes will stay on until the lock is disengaged. Alan alsosuggested a master cylinder from a 92 full-size 4x4 blazer. While I waswaiting for the hubs to come back I bought all of the other parts from PepBoys: Rotors, and calipers from an 88 Grand Am, (if you get the “loadedcaliper” they come with pads and pins etc) Fiero wheel bearings, and theBlazer master cylinder. I also decided to order a set of stainless braidedbrake lines since everything was coming apart anyway. Since the mastercylinder only takes about 15min to install I decided to try it first.There was definitely a difference. The car felt like it had been turnedinto a manual disc brake system. You had to push down hard on the pedal toget the car to slow down. This was really noticeable at parking lot speedsand on the road they definitely pulled harder and the pedal was very high.All of this was due to the bigger bore of the master cylinder. Moves morefluid faster but takes more pedal pressure; it’s all physics, dude. Iwish I would have found this out a couple of years ago when I converted my60 Chevy P/Up to Disc brakes, I had a lot of pedal travel (went almost allthe way down to the floor) and it was very easy to push down. I needed abigger bore since it already had a Mopar car disc brake master cylinderbut with truck brakes. It’s all coming together...now if I could justfigure out how to hook the Dakota’s 360 to the Fiero and get the Fluxcapacitor to flux...sorry, where was I? When I went to the Carlisle Showthere was a Fiero Store mini catalog in the goody bag and they had a GrandAm Brake kit for about $280 for everything, including a caliper-mountingbracket. I called Alan if I had needed a new bracket and he said I wouldn’t.That little voice inside of my head was saying that maybe Mr. Murphy mightend up having a little fun with me when I try to put these brakes on.
I received the hubs from Alan, which looked very good. A week later Ihad some spare time so I decided to try to install them. Well Murphy diddecide to make the job a little interesting. The hub went on fine but Ihad problems with the rotor. When I tried to put on the rotor it hit thedust shield and the caliper-mounting bracket. I thought no biggy, I’lltake off the dust shield and get out the grinder out and take a littlemeat off of the bracket. With that done I put on the caliper, or should Isay, tried. The outboard pad on the caliper would not clear the front ofthe rotor. It was just a couple of millimeters too tight. I started togrind off some of the metal and managed to get the caliper on but thewheel wouldn’t spin. I was thinking about grinding more off, but thenrealized that if the bracket wasn’t ground exactly parallel with therotor the brakes would wear funny. If I had used used parts I might nothave a problem since the rotors and pads wouldn’t have had as muchmaterial. Although I might have a problem the first time I did a Pad orRotor change. I didn’t want to cut a brand new rotor and getting thebrakes shaved was just wasting money and would have to be done every timethe brake pads where changed. I decided to take an extra set of bracketsand have the pads that the calipers mount to shaved down at a localmachine shop. It took me half a day just to find one that would do it forme, and it cost $65 (about one hour worth of work).
With the modified brackets, and after doing ananti-Murphy dance, I tried the swap again. This time everything wentsmoothly. I had left the braided steel lines on after the first attemptand the moment of truth was coming. I got in the car after Terri helped mebleed the brakes, and the pedal felt good. I went down the road and gavethem a try and Murphy decided to give me one last poke. The car pulled tothe right. I figured it was that the machine shop just cleaned up the oneI ground by hand and matched the other side with the same amount materialremoved. I told them to take a little more off of the one I started butsince I had to wait for them to have an opening in their work schedulethey had probably forgotten. As the brakes heated up it got lessnoticeable. They weren’t tight when I installed them; I figured that theright side must have less air gap between the pads and the rotor so thebrakes on the right side grab first.
The Pull is almost completely gone now that the brakes are broken in orseasoned, as they would say (no not with salt and pepper). I like the waythey feel. They don’t fade as quick and cool down much faster. Aftersome spirited driving (or as my dad would say “driving like an idiot”)on the back roads of PA, the brakes before would start to get mushy, startsmoking and would smell so bad I got nauseous. Now they’ve never fadedonce and you could only smell the brakes a little bit. For under $300 andthe ease of installation (when Murphy stays out of your hair) you can’tbeat it. The kit from the Fiero store looks like a very good buy since itcomes with the modified brackets. But, if you get Alan to modify an oldset of rotors and shop around for the best price on the other stuff, youcould save some money, plus you won’t have any cores that have to beshipped back. If you use Alan’s hubs try your stock bracket first beforehaving it modified since he said I was the only one who had that type ofproblem. Maybe Murphy just likes me…
Keith and Terri Gerhard
The Great Pumpkin