How to set your polo on fire! - not recommended

[pomme]

Last night I went for a drive round mt nebo. (brisbanites will know this drive well, i'm sure).

Car was loaded up with mates, just as bored as i was... and so we set off. It was a cold night... which the turbo loved... and it pulled us up the mountain fairly swiftly. At jollys lookout we jumped out to see if the turbo was glowing, and were not disappointed. Not only the turbo... but a fair bit of exhaust as well, quite a sight if you haven't seen it before.

Heading to the other side of the mountain, we made the decision to get the rotors red hot and get some pictures. So on the really steep descent, I was jumping on the brakes much more than was required. Accelerating, just to slow down.... with 5 people in the car, we tortured the poor brakes. After a while, the brakes were fading fast... the pedal almost went to the floor... braking performance was just a glimmer of what it used to be, you could smell that burning brake pad smell, excellent we thought.

On pulling over and jumping out... with the hope of seeing some red hot rotors... i was shocked to not only find the rotors red hot... but flames emanating from the callipers / pad.

We snapped a couple of pictures, then set off.. 1st gear holding the car nice and slow, but fast enough to give the brakes some much needed cooling. We pulled over 500m down the track, and the rotors were the normal boring silver.

While i realise it could have been extremely bad (brake lines melting maybe), and in hindsight was not the best idea i've ever had... there doesn't seem to be any issues as a result of the incident. The brakes still operated like normal, i had the wheels off, and inspected everything... all seemed fine.

So here are 2 photos, right side was with my camera on long exposure.



I didn't realise you could get brakes THAT hot... but i know for next time, and probably won't be trying it again.

did a quick search... and found my pog has something in common with the mcclaren slr.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_1-jP0rXvU

[mikinoz]

My hero!

[SoVeReIgN]

Holy **** lol - Reminds me of a friend of mine who drove to my house (~2kms) with the handbrake fully engaged.. pulled up and his rear discs were glowing.

You might want to replace the pads and change the brake fluid after that - Could have warped the disc too..

[gpk_gti]

psyco!!! you have just won the award for best psyco vdubber on vww!!! woohooooooooooo!!!! I used to make my old vr6 pads smoke like mad but never on fire! hehheheh! get the discs checked mate,might be a bit warped!

[PeterHBne]

There's a lot to be said for mechanically abusing a car - old corolla's, commodores, datsuns and such where they handle it well, you can't get yourself in too much trouble and parts are cheap.

Just don't know if I'd be doing it in something new, relatively expensive and will really cost you to repair.

[GoLfMan]

dear god man, you must have money to burn, i hope you didnt just turn your car off straight away instead of letting it run for a while to let the turbo cool down! thats a way to kill a turbo turning it off after a flogging

[REDMKVGTI]

Can't say thats something I've ever really felt the need to do.

[PoloGTi]

You will need new pads fluid rotors (if warped) umm poor things.

[MACCAA]

Please tell me this is someone's idea of a sick joke

And then post and tell everyone what you did...definitely a contender for the Darwin awards...

[ryan_GTI]

were you under the influence when you did that? haha

looks pretty cool nonetheless...

[shaneth]

ok guys leave it or it gets deleted. Yes it may not have been the smartest idea but pomme obviously wanted to do it. He is the one who is going to have to pay to fix it. And nobody was hurt.


BTW VWW ADMIN doesnt condone this kind of behavior.

[GT3]

well he did say they were bored ..what some ppl do in the name of R&D

[pomme]

Gee, obviously didn't think people would get so agro, wasn't my intention.

Just to put this into perspective, from research, I believe the rotors will start glow around 500+ deg. An emergency stop from say 100km/h would get rotors to 200 degs. An emergency stop from 200km/h, around 500+ deg.

While we aren't allowed to go these speeds here, the vw home has the autobahn, where this car would travel at these speeds... and therefore the brakes have to work, and be safe, and continue to work at these temperatures.

Knowing this, a lot of lower speed braking, esp. when gravity is against you, will get the rotors to these temperatures… and beyond.
Obviously I wasn't expecting the brakes to get that hot, and yes it was a pretty stupid thing to do, but it was my stupid thing to do, and not illegal in any shape or form.
But when rotors are designed to take these kinds of heat, you would have to assume the parts surrounding the rotors can take these kinds of heat, otherwise there would be a catastrophic failure, at the worst possible time.

Warping of rotors comes from excessive heating and cooling cycles, and so long as you allow them to cool naturally they should be fine, much like after a drive you let the turbo cool down instead of just parking and shutting off.
The brakes are operating exactly as they were before. I took off the wheels the day after, had a really good look, and could see absolutely nothing wrong with them.

I would have thought in order to be in the running for the darwin awards I would actually have had to have risked my life. Front brake failure (which let’s face it was pretty damn unlikely in the first place) would have left me with a handbrake and 1st gear to stop the car, which if it didn't, and rolling down the mountain didn't spring to mind... I may have bumped the front end into a guard rail at a terrifying 15km/h.


Again, not my intention to go this way, apologies to those i may have offended.

I'm going for a drive.

[GoLfMan]

well its good to see that you know your facts goes to show that VW are made of sterner stuff!
enjoy your drive

[gpk_gti]

dont think anyone was agro or offended! did I miss something? but thanks for taking the time to photo and post up a very interesting thread! great work!!!