Got mine today, because I picked it up at NSW dealer and took it back to the ACT, had to get an inspection done... scary thing was, they claimed it was unroadworthy, the brakes on their testing rig showed major issues - Rear braking much better than the front, front right was only braking 50% of what the left was, but even that wasn't as much as the rears were. Some quick talking and promising to rush it off to a local dealer to get it checked out meant I was able to register it, but only just.

I called the dealer I got it from, a chap from the service department was obviously rather shocked to hear about it, but said that he absolutely did not believe that the brakes on my car are bad, he thinks it's the test machine. He called back later and claims that the testing machine may be confusing the car's computer and hence the weird results. The test rig is one with roller type things and you only do front or rear, not both at once.

Has anyone else had the brakes in their cars tested? I'm half tempted to slam on the brakes at 40kmh to see if what it does, but not relishing the thought of doing that to my tires or wrapping my car around a tree, if the brakes are dodgy, then who knows what will happen.

Would appreciate any input from people who know about testing brakes... don't want to end up with a big black lemon :(

Not much of a technical dude... but I wouldn't be surprised of the DSC was coming into play here... there is so much electronic stuff on this car.

Most likely the electronic brake force distribution system was confused and defaulting to full-rear. Sounds like something that you should take up with Mazda, since you're obviously not going to be the only person who'll encounter it - I'm sure that if they don't already have an answer, they'll soon find you one.

The test rig is one with roller type things and you only do front or rear, not both at once.



And there is your problem!

EBD will cut the fluid pressure dramatically to the wheels not spinning.

That's it's job to maximize brake performance. Why waste fluid pressure on wheels not turning to begin with?

Plus, if 2 of the wheels aren't spinning then the ECU things you aren't moving and braking is not really needed.

You will need to diconnect your ABS ECU to override the EBD. The ABS unit is mounted right in front of the master cylinder. The ECU connector is the big one.

On top of this you have a DSC (if you have it) that's also trying to get things to some form of "normal."

It's not the DSC, I turned that off, the results got even worse... still thinking I might go get a brake check done elsewhere and see what results it yields...

A broke in RX-8 should stop as quick as a BMW M3.

I think JSG in Japan sait it took 1000km+ for his breaks to bed in properly.

Try finding a clear stretch of road after run in and stamping on the middle peddle. you'll be able to tell if its stoping properly or not.

pepe, if the car's brakes are performing the way the test machine suggests you would have NO problem noticing it.

The car would be very unstable and pull strongly to one side.


It is possible that the DSC off makes things worse, it's hard to predict how the DSC will react without actually knowing the setup of the control software.


But, like I said above. You would know if the brakes where that bad.

It's either the EBD which is part of the ABS software or the test machine itself.