I think it would be pretty sweet if you could choose which brakes to brake on.

What I was thinking is to split the brake pettle into a left side and a right side which move independantly with little or no space inbetween the two sides. This way, when you want four wheel braking, you just press on the middle.

Then the sides could be configured to brake however you want. Have the left side brake on the left wheels and the right side braken on the right wheels, or have the left side brake on the front and the right side brake on the back.

For daily driving you could bridge the two pettles with a little lock so when either side is pressed, the entire pettle goes down.

But if such a thing existed for racing, how do you think it would affect your ability to corner? I would imagine that if you were to apply just a little brake while in a corner to one side of the car, you would be able to corner tighter.
For example, if you are in a right corner, you could apply 10% brake on the right side of the car. This would mean the left tires are rotating faster then the right tires. So you would have the left side of the car pushing the car into the turn more.

 

It's called DYNAMIC STABILITY CONTROL. However, unlike what you describe, it actually works. And, far better/more quickly than any driver could. If you could be faster on a race track by manipulating 2 or 4 brake pedals, race cars would have it. More practically, a brake bias controller can adjust brake pressure between front to rear, to fine tune it the balance. I guess it WOULD be cool, IF a driver could actually divert enough attention to it to make it affective.

 

I'm not even driving right now and I just crashed my car thinking about this.

 

McLaren had it in F1 a few years back. The driver just toggled a switch to bias the brakes either to the left or to the right, depending on which way the next corner went. With increased braking on the inside wheels, the car more or less turned into the corner itself.

They had massive saving in lap times. It got banned.

 

Yeah, Active Brake Biasing would be cool... You'd need ANOTHER supercomputer in the car to handle it, though... I think I'll copyright the acronym ABB right now

 

they do sell brake bias controls for pretty cheap... but im pretty sure that just adjusts from front to rear.

-hS

 

seems like it would be usefull if you were doing a majority of your braking while cornering at the same time....but don't all track instructors tell you to do *most* of your braking in a straight line?? and if your front brakes are biased left/right and you're braking in a straight line, you would be giving up absolute braking force since you'd hit the traction threshhold quicker, no?

 

It allows control grip by applying different left and right brake.

When I went for the skid pad lession the guy use a circle to explain what grip and drift is... and then the whole thing make sense

 

Yeah...the McLaren system worked on the inside rear only, I think.....

 

all the good stuff gets banned, like steam engines, and reduced throttle intake diameter on rotarys to make them slower and uncompetetive.

 

That's called a cutting brake.

I participate in a collegiate design contest called SAE Mini Baja, which involves building small off-road race cars. Many teams that use open differentials employ cutting brakes to keep them from spinning one wheel and getting stuck as well as to help them get around corners better. Theirs are typically activated with a hand lever which is pulled up to brake one side and pushed down to brake the other.

I've also seen a similar setup in Rhys Millen's drift GTO, which he probably needs to break the rear end of that huge car loose.

Here's an example



These things are usually plumbed in line with the rear brake circuit so the brake pedal still operates both calipers. Rhys Millen's GTO actually had separate calipers to operate his cutting brakes.

 

Wow that is pretty sweet.

I can understand banning a system that does this for you automatically, but if it is manual like this level, or like my idea of splitting the pedal, it should be fair game.

 

The aforementioned F1 team did have a split pedal design for front/rear braking. It was banned. Kinda makes sense, motorcycles have seperate controls. I guess it could be considered a safety issue in F1 though. Those things (obviously) go real fast, and if you accidentally didn't grab all the brakes in an emergency situation, it could be bad news.