How The New Copper Ban Is Affecting High-Performance Car Brakes:
Dialing in brake pads has become somewhat of a challenge for high-performance auto engineers. The ban on using copper in the pads—which collects as dust and washes into the ecosystem, where it can be toxic for both animals and humans—essentially goes into effect in 2021, and all manufacturers are working to eliminate copper and replace it with something else. Problem is, copper is really good for deflecting heat and so far, it's proven difficult to find a suitable replacement.
As Andrea Gavazzi, friction manager for the Brembo Group explained to The Drive, California and Washington have set the limit of five percent of copper content for friction material starting on Jan. 1, 2021. The next deadline is Jan. 1, 2025, for the complete elimination of copper content, and responsible manufacturers like Brembo are doing that now, rather than waiting.
[...] The problem dates back to the 1990s when cities south of San Francisco were having trouble meeting Clean Water Act requirements to reduce copper in urban run-off flowing into San Francisco Bay. Studies showed that brake pads were a significant source of the copper, washing into water runoffs from the street.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @08:34AM (8 children)
Use Asbestos.
(Score: 3, Funny) by mhajicek on Monday November 23 2020, @08:51AM
They're trying asbestos they can!
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Monday November 23 2020, @09:27AM (6 children)
Naah, beryllium. This has the best heat dissipation characteristics of any metal per unit weight (copper is better but much heavier). Unlike copper it's a naturally hard metal, and you find it in Brazil, India, Russia, and the US, so it can't be held hostage to national interests. So it's the perfect replacement for that evil, toxic copper.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rich on Monday November 23 2020, @09:37AM (1 child)
Favourite of 20th century brake engineers! I knew some exotic Porsche had beryllium discs, I had to look it up: 910/6 Bergspyder, it is. What I didn't know is that the Lockheed C-5A Galaxy use(d?) them too...
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday November 23 2020, @09:43AM
Are any of them still alive? Given that the 910 was created in the late 1960s they must have known what they were working with by then...
(Score: 5, Informative) by Muad'Dave on Monday November 23 2020, @01:03PM (3 children)
I hope you're being facetious. For those that don't know, beryllium dust is very dangerous. It can cause both Acute beryllium poisoning [wikipedia.org] and chronic Berylliosis [wikipedia.org].
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @05:03PM
Well FUCK IT! Let's use depleted uranium. Or just just fucking walk you moronic eco-Nazi.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday November 23 2020, @06:03PM
The copper isn't even that dangerous to humans. It's getting banned mostly because it kills the crap out of fish eggs.
So the fishermen around here should support these bans.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday November 23 2020, @09:43PM
A little berylliosis is a small price to pay for getting rid of that nasty, nasty copper.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @09:55AM (7 children)
Define high performance that for racing vehicles and put an extra $5k sticker tax on each pad so idiots don't put them everywhere. Case closed.
The problem is never usage of copper. The problem is always TOO MUCH USAGE. You can have copper in your high performance whatevers. That clearly does not include your day-to-day car now, does it? It's always ridicules how sales man would sell anything to a mid-life crises individual.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @10:07AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 24 2020, @03:24AM
I did it the one foot way until I got a manual transmission which requires two feet , then never went back
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @01:43PM (1 child)
So you propose a racist solution to hurt black and latinx people whose bosses don't let them work from home?
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @02:24PM
Sobbing alt-right incel got triggered by the word "latinx" again!
(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 23 2020, @01:48PM (1 child)
My initial thoughts went along those lines. The words "high performance" aren't at the top of my mind when shopping for auto parts, since I don't drive race cars. Sure, if $20 brake pads are called "heavy duty" and $22 pads are labeled "high performance", I'll research a little bit to see if "high performance" means anything. I'll be more interested in how aggressive the pads are, to be honest. More aggressive pads wear out the disk faster, less aggressive pads mean it takes another 12 feet for me to slow to a stop from 60 mph. As always, you have to compromise between several parameters.
Putting an extra $40 charge on the pads that have copper in them will assure that I'm not going to put copper pads on my vehicles.
"Lemme think here, $20 for heavy duty, $60 for high performance? Gimme the $20 pads, Joe! I'll just skip the F1 circuit this year."
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 24 2020, @06:53PM
Thing is for normal driving I've never had problems getting the tyres of my car to squeal or near lock for emergency stops. So I'm not convinced that more "aggressive pads" will help for reducing braking distances. If you have a car with ABS and you can get it to trigger when braking then your brakes are more than strong enough to stop the wheels right? So tyres with more grip are likely to be far more helpful than stronger brakes.
The "high performance" brakes could be useful if you're doing significant braking every few seconds, because stuff stays at far higher temperatures and "normal" brakes might not work as well under those conditions. But then your brake fluid might boil too if you're not using high performance brake fluid...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @05:05PM
Bbu... can savez environment with new Porsche?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday November 23 2020, @02:33PM (8 children)
Would it help much to allow more jake braking? I read that there've been ongoing efforts to make it quieter.
Anyway, if our entire fleet of vehicles switches over to electric, maybe regenerative braking will become the new normal.
Something else that could help a lot is smarter intersection design, to reduce the amount of stopping. Sure seems that some traffic lights are anti-socially timed, to turn red rather than green as traffic approaches.
Then there's the stupid sharp curve. In Texas, a lot of property lots are slightly offset from the next east-west row. Roads slavishly followed these property lines, and so, on north-south back roads, you'll often see a jog to the side of about 3 car lengths, with 90 degree turns. At these corners, cars have taken out many a fence, repeatedly. One especiaily bad case, which I suspect was straightened out years ago, was Louisiana state hwy 126 near its western terminus. There was one of those jogs with 90 degree turns, just the other side of a small rise, where the driver could not see it until it was too late to slow down. Not the sort of shoddy routing that should be seen on a state highway! The land owner had moved their fence well back, and the ditch was bare dirt from all the cars that had gone off the road there. You see a similar jog in Iowa, where the land survey working from the northern border met up with the one from the southern border, and found they were a little off. US 20 runs near or right on top of that discontinuity,
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @05:06PM (2 children)
(Pssst - copper. Don't forget to talk about copper.)
(Score: 3, Touché) by bzipitidoo on Monday November 23 2020, @05:22PM (1 child)
Okay.
In the spirit of "let them eat cake", gold could be used instead of copper.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday November 24 2020, @02:39AM
I thought you were going to say, "Where are the coppers when you need them...hey car...get off muh lawn!" ;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @05:49PM
Those are called correction lines and they have to do with the fact that the earth is round, not flat. When you slice up a sphere into equal sized squares of land there are more squares around the equator then there are around the poles. It's a small difference, but it adds up and to compensate, each east/west row of land divisions don't align perfectly with the row north or south of it. Roads have to respect the property boarders, so depending on what land was purchased for road construction, north south roads often have to adjust accordingly.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday November 23 2020, @06:46PM (1 child)
It might help if we had better driver training before we issued licenses. People get furious if you start to coast when a light changes to red, for some reason they think they have to race up to the light and stop hard. Then there's the "defensive" drivers, who hit the brakes at any imagined conceivable threat. You also have the drivers who hit the brakes hard before every curve, when it is almost always better to lightly break at the proper point and accelerate out of the curve. Etc. Too many people accelerate too hard and brake too hard. They could reduce wear on their brakes and save gas by driving better.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday November 24 2020, @02:49AM
My wife, Dog bless her, thinks about EVERYTHING BUT driving as she's driving: our son, grocery list, her kids at school.... Drives me nuts. She has two speeds: accelerate and brake. Coasting does not exist.
If we're in my car, I drive.
Her car, she drives and I try not to wet myself. ;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @08:01PM
Not in Tesla anyway
https://electrek.co/2020/10/27/tesla-removes-regenerative-braking-strenght-option-new-cars/ [electrek.co]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday November 24 2020, @12:47AM
Not only have I observed that happening a LOT, I've tested my theory by driving around the sensor loops the the lights that will turn to stop me, did not stop me. And I asked a cop about it and he turned looking off in the distance and said "oh, that again, I'll talk to them" and sure enough, a few days later it stopped that behavior. But a year or so later it was back to the old tricks. For anyone outside of the US, this is the insanity we the people deal with.
It would save energy, reduce carbon output (CO2 from acceleration), save time, likely reduce accidents, and reduce brake dust and its copper if they'd stop doing this crap.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday November 23 2020, @06:10PM
The copper rules in WA always pissed me off working in industry.
We were required to get copper in our stormwater runoff down to a couple micrograms. It always pissed me off that it was immediately commingling with this copper-slurry coming off the roads and the municipalities weren't required to do crap about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @09:49PM
Well, almost, I didn't actually read it but instead I clicked the video https://vimeo.com/473253788 [vimeo.com] on the page with obnoxious loud music and a hot paid model.
Was not disappointed (with the girl), but sadly I can't tell you anything about the brakes, sorry.
Kinda hard to take them serious with safety for something like fucking car brakes, when they try to be comedians about it.