Balance bar adjustment

[Scott e]

Having trouble getting the brake balance bar adjusted. Took car for first ride and cannot lock up the brakes. I bled brakes. No air. Do have brakes but you have to apply pretty much pressure. I notice in the manual on page 188, top picture, that the adjustment rods are threaded in further then mine.. I would assume that you would want more pressure applied to the front brakes. I followed the manual on adjusting but can't seem to get it. Disc brakes front and rear.

Any thought?

Thanks guys.

[gbranham]

I'm sure the experts will chime in, but I just set up my pedal box last weekend. Haven't installed brakes yet, but from what I can tell I think you want those rods set so the pushrod in the MC comes just to rest on it's seal when no brakes are applied. In other words, no preload on the internal MC spring. For mine, that meant the threaded rods were just protruding into the body of the clevis maybe an eighth of an inch. And you did cut off 5/8" from each one, yes? If that's how you have it, and adjusting the balance bar in either direction does not yield either the front or rears locking up, then you likely still have air in the system.

[thriftychicken]

I set mine up per the manual and have the 11" front rotors and I have no brakes either. I tried more aggressive pads that were recommended for the car and bedded them per Wilwood instructions. It's been 5 yrs and 17k miles and they are no different. LOTS of leg!! I'd be interested to see what others have to say.

[Ted G]

I adjusted mine to lock up the front first, but it is a lot of pressure! I'm sure that we are pretty used to "power brakes" and unless you installed power brakes, you will have to push pretty hard.

[Alphamacaroon]

Same experience here— I've never been able to lock my (standard) brakes up no matter how I adjust them. I've driven non-boosted race cars in the past so I know how much pressure is required to make this happen, but even with two feet pressing as hard as possible, I cannot get it to happen. I had a whole discussion about this in the past (I'll try to find the link) and it seemed that there was no real answer other than the usual stuff— pads, bleeding, bedding— all of which I did.

That being said, if you *can* get them to lock up, I think the consensus is that you definitely want the fronts to lock up before the rears (unless you want to flip around). But also note that it may not actually mean giving it more front-bias since the car is already rear heavy. And because the car has a low center of gravity, the weight doesn't shift to the front all that much under heavy braking.

The short answer is (from what I gathered from past discussions), if you adjust it similar to how FF says to do it in the pictures you're going to be fine in most driving situations, even if you can't fully test it by locking the brakes up.

[Namrups]

I have the upgraded Wilwood brakes non-powered. (6 piston fronts/4 piston rears) 40 mph panic stop. Fronts lock first then rears. Nice straight stop.

https://youtu.be/ogBqDJG3gbU