Give us a BRAKE: DC Bell finds the ultimate stoppers work by placing the brakes in an oil bath

摘要

I'll start by telling you something you may already know; disc brakes don't work at all well when they're wet. So how come you can still stop in the, rain? This is due, in fact, to that great enemy of braking systems, heat. When you get on the picks in driving rain, things heat up in no time, turning the water into steam. Wet brakes are seldom a problem in day-to-day motoring but there are some situations in which they can be a real handful. Dedicated off roaders who do a lot of creek crossings know that they won't get much in the way of stopping power when their brakes are partially immersed - a real bugger when the creek suddenly starts getting a whole lot deeper than you thought, And deep mud is always a challenge. The problem with mud is that it doesn't really evaporate as steam when the brakes get hot - in fact mud keeps the rotors nice and cool. There's one place, however, where all of these problems pale into insignificance - in a mine. Down there the atmosphere is always humid and the road surface is often just thick, deep mud or, if you're a miner, slurry. This coats everything thickly and certainly won't be dissipated as steam any time soon.