Cornering and braking issue.

[2ndGenGuy]

I've got a strange issue with my brakes. Its been this way ever since I've owned the car, but I've never really worried about it until I started autocrossing. After taking a short, sharp corner really hard, my brake pedal will go to the floor. I have to give it a quick pump before they will come back. Then they will operate normally, as long as I don't really push it around a corner.

I'm thinking its something about the way they are designed, and I'm not going to be able to avoid it. I've put a new master cylinder and brake booster in the car, and I've bled the whole brake system before to no avail.

I'm going to rebuild the calipers off of my 87 and put them on my 84 and see if the problem goes away.

Just wondering if anybody has had any problems with this in thier cars...

Thanks,

John

[Ichiban]

I bet you were wondering who was gonna respond to this thread...

The only thing I can think of is a loose wheel bearing...here's why:
when you are off of the brakes the pads and calipers are still riding really close to the rotor, but if your wheel is moving laterally at all, it will slightly collapse the pistons back into the calipers, so when you go to make a brake application you have to pump twice to take up the slack. I had this happen on my Toyota, but it has a fixed caliper with 4 pistons. I'd think our single piston floating calipers in the Honda's would just move around, but when my rotors were bent (beyond warped) the same sorta thing would happen. I'd drive for a bit and the rotors would push the calipers out of the way. Somehow though I don't think this is your problem. If the pedal goes to the floor, then all of the brakes are being affected. Is something funny happening with your drums or the flexible lines anywhere? I'm assuming you're loosing no fluid?

I've absolutely brutalized Accords older than yours and never had this problem, other than when with the bent rotors.

[Ichiban]

The drums have a mechanical slack adjusting system, therefore wheel play cannot compress the cylinders any farther. On the front disc's, the slack is "adjusted" by the friction of the piston seal which is easily overcome.

[2ndGenGuy]

Yeah, I didn't know if anybody was going to respond... :p

Well the front end has relatively new bearings in it. Had them replaced a couple years ago. I did have an incident where I blew a rear brake hose, but this problem happened long before that. The hoses on the rear are now braided stainless steel. No fluid loss. Well I'll rebuild the 87LX calipers and install them and see how they do.

I just ordered 2 sets of AEM pads for the 87 calipers (since they're discontinued) and some Brembo cross drilled rotors. So the whole front end brake setup should be nice and new. Hopefully that will take care of the problem. I'm thinking of doing a complete brake line flush too and putting in some DOT4 or DOT5 fluid.

[PhydeauX]

Definitely flush the system and refill with some good fluid. The cross drilled rotors are a waste of money, you'll gain nothing from them. I don't know about the aem pads. I like hawk hps, good steet/auto-x pad. You can get them for the 85 front calipers and prelude rear disks. A rear disk conversion might bump you to a higher class in auto-x though so look into that before thinking about converting.

andy

[2ndGenGuy]

Yeah, I'm scared about getting bumped into a higher class. But the way I see it, nobody's going to have a clue. And it's not like its going to give me an advantage at all.

And yeah the drilled rotors won't do anything, but they look pretty cool (rice!), since I need new rotors anyways and they were cheap. Definitely wanna do the rear disk conversion soon though. Probably best to do all the brakes at once, so I should pick up the rear discs soon.

[2ndGenGuy]

A quick question about the rear disc conversion... I know that those discs bolt right onto your hatch, but I read somewhere that the LX hatches have different rear suspension from the sedans or S hatches. Will the conversion still just bolt on, or will I need to swap out some of the rear suspension? The guy at the wrecking yard said that I might even need to swap out the control arms if I was going from a drum Prelude to a disc.

[Ichiban]

The knuckles (the part that the drum backing plate/disc caliper bracket) are all the same from 82-85 regardless of body style, as far as I know.

[PhydeauX]

They'll be fine. They even work on the earlier 82-83 2nd gens. I had them trial fitted on mine but never did the conversion. The diferences between the hatches and the sedans is the hatches have the rear sway bar mounts in the control arms. The rear swaybar is about as thick as a coat hanger and I don't think converting it over to the sedan is worth the hassel. You have to replace the rear control arms for that and they are a real pain to get off.

andy