Braided Brake Hose Kit

[oldokie]

Ithink RaceTech is a US company, seats,suits,belts,etc. safety stuff. At one time braided lines were illegal for street use in US I think, I don't know about now, I've always used them anyhow.

[msd1107]

If your wife can out brake your elan, it is not because of the brakes, it is because of the tires.

Most reasonably priced tires for the Elan (155-13) are (to put it succinctly) passenger car tires with very low performance, both compared with the high performance rubber available when our cars were new, and with modern day high performance rubber. That is why you cannot stop quickly!

This subject has been discussed before. One approach is to use Michelin XAS in 155-13 or 165-13. They are expensive, have a low speed rating, but give good performance. Another approach (probably more suitable for S4 owners) is to use 185/60-13 in which there is some availability of higher performance rubber. But these tires are smaller in diameter than 155-13 tires. Unless you go to a wider rim, the tires will need less than recommended inflation pressure for optimum braking and cornering (one way of saying that the 4 1/2 rim is not wide enough).

Spyder sells Minilite pattern wheels in 14X6 so you could use 185/60-14 tires. This is the same tire diameter as 165-13.

The next step is to go to 185/55-15. This is the same rolling diameter as the 185/60-14 or 165-13 tires. Reasonably priced high performance tires are available for these wheels. However, I do not know of any wheel manufacturer that makes this size for knock off wheels, and there are very few manufacturers for the 4 bolt 3 3/4 inch pcd wheels that the Elan needs.

This is a by product of trying to own and maintain 45 year old technology in a world that casts aside anything older than just a few years.

David
1968 36/7988

[RotoFlexible]

Ithink RaceTech is a US company, seats,suits,belts,etc. safety stuff. At one time braided lines were illegal for street use in US I think, I don't know about now, I've always used them anyhow.

My understanding is that the braided teflon hoses were illegal for road use because they were not DOT approved, not because the hose itself was not approved but because the company assembling it wasn't. There are now companies in the US that sell DOT-approved hoses.