First time here.
Got a quick question about brake bias on shifter karts. I have a friend who runs OTK Lando Karts & Rotax DD2 engine. He said that he needs to run the brake bias in 90/10 (front/rear) in order to be fast.
This is just a bit counterintuitive to my experience in GT cars & formula…
Most cars including GT cars & formula are running 50-70% front.
Does the 90/10 proportion really means 90% pressure on the front and 10% pressure on the rear?
Or
Does 90/10 mean differently from my understanding of “brake bias” in normal cars? (i.e it actually means 60/40 or something?)
The bias setting will vary by manufacturer. I’d ditch the idea that the bias distributor translates to a literal percentage of brake bias, as some run best near the middle, and others run best more towards the front. TB Kart brake systems, for example, seem to perform best with the bias nearly all the way to the front.
Make sure that the brakes are bled, and then take a couple of laps to dial in the bias based on what feels best.
I agree with the above, depending on my karts one is way more front biased on adjuster then the other and that is with nearly identical brake systems only difference being rear caliper and pad compounds but both feel very similar on track.
I’ll share my practical way to set it: start with some front bias, then on the straight before the hardest braking zone, you move a little more bias to the front. Next lap move a little more and you keep going until your fronts lock during braking. Once you reach that point, you back off a little bit. That would be my standard setting, then I mark that setting and all adjustments are done from there. I think there are too many variables between tires, weight and position of the driver, brake pads, pedal pressure etc that there’s no real pre-set based on chassis alone.
On a different note, I don’t think you’ll ever be able to do 90%-10% on a kart, because of the way the system is designed. It works more on the modulation phase and how the pressure is distributed along the way, but at full pedal pressure when the front is 100%, the rear is very close to that in terms of pressure at the master, which doesn’t translate in stopping power as there is little to no weight on the rear tires so maybe that’s what they were referencing with that ratio…doesn’t mean you need to move the brake bias mechanism all the way to one side to achieve it.