Brake bias tools

[Todd TCE]

With all the talk of brake bias the past few years, the spread of a lot of misinformation on forums and many people having little understanding of it, TCE has added an interactive calculator to its web page under the new heading of "Tools". The calculator is there for your use 24/7.
http://www.tceperformanceproducts.com/brake_bias_calculator.html

 

[wret]

Very nice Todd.

Question: would you say that having optimum bias is somewhat less important in a car with ABS? In other words does ABS prevent or reduct the effect premature locking of the wheels on a car with less than optimum brake bias?

 

[Todd TCE]

I'm not sure I'd go that far. Under low load conditions proper bias can help slow the car as rear brakes can do more work. And not over work the fronts.

As braking g's increase the weight shift to the front places more load on the fronts. If one were to over bias the rears currently then as the weight shift moves forward you could find the ABS is kicking in more. On the other hand if you keep up with the weight transfer using a sticky front pad you might well exploit the rears ability a bit longer. All this is done with pressures not sizes. Since the car has some sort of proportioning valve in it to reduce line pressure to the rear. The key would be to keep the pressure lower in the knee of the valve so that the rears can do some work. The only way you can do that is to have a front with a package not requiring way amount of pressure.

Try this: work some numbers in there with small amounts of piston area. Maybe a four pot with 1.25" pistons and stock rear numbers. Look at the front tq value compared to the default. Lower? So see how much 'leg' is needed to get that tq. Now look at the line pressures. The rear will not be near that much now after reduction.

I'm working on a way to do the prop work on that page as well. Difficult however with different values of reduction or knee points.

Also a dynamic program is in the works.