'90 Honda Civic Brakes

[spnkzss]

I have noticed in my ITC Civic, the brake "feel" is not as good as I would like. Now the brakes work fine, but I don't get the feed back from the pedal that I desire. In a VW racecar or any of my GM daily drivers, you can feel how hard you are pushing the pedal with some feed back from the pedal. In my Honda when you hit the brakes the feed back is a on/off style feel instead of a soft pedal to harder pedal the harder you hit them. Again, the car stops fine and I'm not locking them up (unless I go in too hot ). I've talked to a couple of other people about this and they say it's a Honda thing. Is this true, or is there something I can do to change it?

[Greg Gauper]

If you are talking about '84-87 Civic/CRX's, then yes it is a 'Honda' thing in some respects. There are somethings you can do to help improve the feel. The biggest contributor to the 'bad' feel is a spongy pedal. This is caused by a number of things:

1) Make sure you have stainless steel braided lines in place of the stock OEM rubber lines.

2) Make sure you have good, fresh brake fluid and that the system has been bled properly.

3) The Honda calipers flex a great deal. Have somebody pump the pedal while you watch. Kinda scary! Most of the pedal travel is used to overcome the calipers flex. This flexing can be greatly minimized if you periodically shim up the outboard pad as the pads wear. This does two things....it keeps more of the guide pin engaged in the hole to minimize the play in the caliper which in turn minimizes flexing, and it keeps the piston retracted so that there is a smaller compressible volume of brake fluid left in the caliper (brake fluid has a compressibility of 0.5% volume change per 1000psi). I use old brake pads ground down to various thicknesses as shims, and every other race or so I put a thicker shim in.

4) Make sure your rears are properly adjusted. When I adjust my rears, I tighten them and then spin the drum so that there is light drag on the drum. Then I step on the brakes to allow the shoes to reseat after adjusting and recheck the drag and tighten up the adjustment some more. I have found that the rear brake springs do stretch over time and that newer springs have more tension to keep the shoes retracted better, which in turn allows you to set the adjustment up with less clearence. This results in a higher pedal. I try and replace my springs once a year. The shoes themselves have several years of racing on them since they don't do much. The springs are cheap.

5) Try some different front pad compounds. Some pads will have a very high initial bite that is hard to modulate. Unfortunately, if you have a track that is very hard on brakes you may have to live with this.

6) If you are running on a track that is hard on the brakes, make sure you aren't bending the pads from the heat. If so, you need bigger brake ducts.

[spnkzss]

It is a '90 Honda Civic Standard.

They are not spongy and have done most of that stuff you are talking about. You do make an interesting point on there about brake compounds. I think my problem is the initial bite is identical to the rest of the pedal travel. It is tight, but no modulation feel. Obviously the harder I hit the brakes the harder they are grabbing the rotor, but I don't get the feeling in the foot like I'm used to, just seat of the pants.

I have used the same pads in a ITC Rabbit that I have in my Honda. Are the differences in feeling just coming from the way the system works, ie Master Cylinder, pedal angle, line lengths, etc?