the brakes on my felly dont seem to good i have greased up all the pins so the calipers move alright and the piston in them arnt siezed, i have put new discs and pads on and have done 700miles since and have been using the brakes quite hard but they dont seem to have the "bite" that other cars i have driven do, doesnt anyone know how to improve this maybe different discs or some thing?

thanks tom

Does the pedal have a lot of travel? Maybe the rear shoes adjusters need resetting.

erm i bit i would say the brakes dont get hard or start to slow down untill the break pedals in line with the accelerator after that the pedal is solid but just nothing seems to happen quickly

:)While stationary, engine off, handbrake on, pump the brake pedal till the servo empties...pedal will go hard. Now try the pedal again with the handbrake off.

If it now goes down noticably more the rear shoes adjusters need resetting.

thanks will try that in the morning, will the rear breaks make that much difference? i thought 80% of the braking was through the front ?

The brakes are a fairly simple piece of kit but should give good braking performance.

Have you tried bleeding up the system to check for airlocks? I realised this was needed on a previous car of mine after going down a steep hill and not being able to stop properly!!:P

hi dave i tried what you said today and the drums seemed fine the pedel didnt really move at all. but i went on some contry roads and after they had a bit of hard use they worked quite well but once they had lost there heat they wernt very go, does any one know where i can get some performance discs or pads from? tom

You don't want performance pads as these tend to need to be warmer before they start working properly.

What discs and pads did you put on? OEM ones?

I've seen some truly sh*te after market pads for older cars.

Have a look at GSF or Eurocarparts and have a look for mintex/pagid/textar pads. EBC pads are ok, but if your car weighs a bit of you really push the brakes then avoid the greenstuff and go for redstuff if you can get them in your fitment.

Also have you changed the brake fluid recently? If you have as above check for air, if not it might be worth doing that too.

Another thing to try would be to take the pads off and lightly sand the surface just in case they have glazed up. If they were really cheap pads however then obviously they have released the resin that bonds it and that means they won't perform properly :(

When i had new discs and pads put on my Felly you could feel the difference.

The pedal and brakes felt a lot sharper.

Have you changed the brake fluid and master cylinder recently?

i use zerosixty grooved discs with EBC green stuff pads.

once hot the plenty for the enthusiastic driver.

but as said before, you have to drive like a tw@ to keep them hot

yeh but once they were hot they were **** hot once they had cooled down though, i don know what discs and pads they are my uncal has a vw garage so he got them from europarts for me on the cheap with his discount they didnt have a name on the box :( + would a fluid change make that much difference? tom

also there apprears to be a high pitch noise that comes from the rear drums when i release the break pedal it also makes the same noise when i use the hand break? checked the pads and theres plenty of meat left on them any ideas? tom

Get your rear drums checked out.

Have you noticed any fluid leel drops?

Master cylinder been changed?

You may need to have the rear brake drums and wheel cylinders changed or at least examined.

thanks will try that in the morning, will the rear breaks make that much difference? i thought 80% of the braking was through the front ?

To explain, the issue with badly adjusted rear brakes isn't so much performance as pedal travel. The rears being badly out of adjustment mean that you get knock-off (or back), which gives you a lot of lost travel before the brakes actually do anything.

also there apprears to be a high pitch noise that comes from the rear drums when i release the break pedal it also makes the same noise when i use the hand break? checked the pads and theres plenty of meat left on them any ideas? tom

Rear brakes out of adjustment, the squeek says it all. strip, clean and rebuild using a bit of copper grease on all pivots