International Lancia Forums

Has anyone tried the EBC green stuff brake pads on their S1 Fulvia? Any feedback? A search on the forum did not turn anything up.

I ordered some front and rear for my Rallye 1.3S and received them today. I have noticed that it has a wider groove in the back plate, rather than the slot where the piston "mushroom" slides in to normally. Does this matter or change anything? Wouldn't they rattle around?

Last question, do they fit without hassle? My last pads (Autobahn brand someone gave me that they had sitting on their shelf, never heard of them before) were all slightly (1-2mm) to high so I had to grind a bit off them top and bottom so they would move freely. Interestingly I got some Girling branded handbrake pads a few years ago and had to grind them flatter on the face as the handbrake caliper couldn't open wide enough to get them in.

The answer is not simple. Most Serie 1 cars have an 18 mm master cylinder. The amount of fluid the plungers displace per mm of travel is some 30% less than the displacement of the Series 2 mbc and about half the displacement of the mbc’s on Flavia and Flaminia. In hydraulics one calculates with surface area rather than diameter.

The series 2 Girling is a different system. Retraction is minimal through the rubber trapezium seal. The pads have a large surface area. The thickness, of which a large parts is steel, is less than the thickness of the pads of the Dunlop system.
The Dunlop pads are much thicker than modern pads. The thickness is friction material which may be compressible. When the Dunlop system was developed the friction material was asbestos. The asbestos insulated the heath from the liquid, did have good friction coefficient and was available in various degrees of hardness.

The softer the material, the more it compresses and the more fluid you have to pump when braking.
Other factors determining the amount of fluid you have to pump are inflation of the flexible hoses, retraction of the pistons in the wheel brake cylinders, flexing of the callipers, wobbling of the discs, wear on the disc. Wear on the disc is always uneven. They wear more towards the centre as there is simply less material there per revolution.

The Green Stuff pads are (were) not always hard enough. I was very happy when I started using them some 10 years ago. Some years later the formula was changed and they became too soft. I hear they are harder again but I had already switched to Yellow Stuff. I still use the Yellow Stuff.
The Dunlop brake system is brilliant. I very much like the Flaminia and Flavia system with the proportional Lockheed servo. If it is 100% in order the braking power and sensitivity is awesome. I also like very much the system as put on the Fulvia, both the system without servo and the system with the servo on the front wheels. It is necessary though to be very very precise. Micrometre precision.

Many complain about the corrosion of the Dunlop wheel brake cylinders. This is solvable. If you want your S1 Fulvia to brake better than most modern cars, that is not the issue. Retraction is the issue. The Dunlop system was developed in the 40’s in a world of drum brakes. Drum brakes have spring retraction. The Dunlop wheel brake cylinders have it too. Very complicated with a pin, a clamp, a double flanged bush, a spring inside the piston, a very precise chamber in the piston, a cover of the hole in the piston which has to be mounted at a very exact position. Manufacturing is complicated and open for many errors. Many parts are inside that wear and can go bad otherwise.

The pods I sell here https://viva-lancia.com/specials/dunlop ... inders.htm have done away with the complicated retraction. I have the grooves machined such that retraction is practically zero. In fact the pads are pushed back by the disc. The pads push back the pistons just enough to be just free of the disc. The pads keep the disc clean and dry. Very little fluid is needed to press the pads against the disc. Response is instant.
It is important that the pedal is high even during an emergency stop. The reason is that you want some braking power in case one of the circuits looses its fluid. The corresponding chamber in the mbc will be empty. You have to move the pedal down more to compensate.
If you rebuild your braking system it is important to test it with an empty rear circuit and with an empty front circuit.

To avoid rattling and other vibrations stick the 3M material that comes with the pads on the back of the pads. If discs and pods are ok it should not be an issue.

You may need a grinding stone to fit the pads.

The Dunlop system is very good but you have to very precise and buying pads which happen to be on the shelf is a NO NO.

That was the long answer.

The short answer is:
Do the test with one of the circuits empty and then the other circuit empty. If you can still brake without pushing the pedal throughthe floor, then you are ok.

Thank you as always Huib for sharing your knowlledge here. I will fit the pads and report back here for future reference.

I have fitted a new master cylinder and and after a bit of a struggle to bleed the rear brakes I don't have much more than 5mm play on the pedal and very happy with the feel. I had to buy a LHD master cylinder and a fitting kit with longer pedal rod to fit to my RHD car as new RHD units are no longer available. Very happy with the result though.

The pads are very old though as I probably did less than 10,000km in 15 years on pads that were probably old to begin with, so I decided to replace them with the EBC pads. Over the years I had some leaking cilynders etc. which probably did not do the pads good either. All in good shape now.

Tempting to buy a set of the new front upgraded cylinders from you, just have to recover from the cost of the rare NOS RHD steering box I bought last month :shock: I have "new" bored rear cilynders that I bought from you a while ago (Rallye S has slightly larger bore at rear so used standard rears can be bored slightly to reuse.). Will the front/ rear balance be o.k. if fitting the upgraded cylinders to the front only?

I read a lot of comments on the forum around struggles to bleed Fulvia brakes and had my fair share of trials on both an S2 and my current S1. I could not get my brand new 19mm master cylinder to bleed on the rear brakes. After 5L of fluid and a lot of investigation found the circuit actually drew fluid back on returning. Bought from a well known supplier for a lot of money and on querying it did not get any response. A good brake shop took my old MC to compare and found the seals in the new one was not exactly the same as original. Fitted new seals and had success bleeding straight away. So don't always believe a new part will not be the cause of your issues.

My discs rotors are original and has done about 120,000km. I believe the discs on these cars last the life of the car. I have to decide if I skim the discs when fitting new pads but don't want to take life out of the discs and they are still in good shape with almost no lip. If I have no decernible run out or warping, can I just leave them as is when replacing the pads?

Thanks
Albert

Hi Albert

Looks like yo are doing a good job and you get the problems solved. Indeed, new parts are always suspect as they are not original Lancia.

The father of Wainer Mariuzzo, my Italian colleague at the shop, was an Esatau driver. He worked for Fiat. His job was to pick up parts from suppliers. 1000's of suppliers.

It is easy to forget that our Fulvia's when new were supported by thousands of people. There are about 12,000 parts in a car of the sixties. Behind each of those parts is specialized knowledge and experience. Designers, purchasers, engineers, assembly people, people who made the machines for production and testing, warehouse clerks. Brakes, oil, petrol, water, air, They all have their different types of rubbers. A head light is an optical system with a parabolic mirror, a lens and a bulb.Plus a spring and screws to adjust. It is simply impossible for a single person or even a small company with a few persons to come close to the resources Lancia had as a car manufacturer.

Still there a re fortunately guys who have the stuff remade. Someone finds the old mould for a brake cylinder and reproduces what his grand dad did with 100 specialized colleagues. He orders O rings. And forgets to specify they should be brake fluid resistant.He does not even know it is necessary to specify such things.

About ten years ago a friend asked me to go with him to pick up a S1 Fulvia in Bergamo, Italy. When I drive in the area of the river Adda, I always cross the river on the little ferry designed and built by Leonardo da Vinci. Yes, It carries two Fulvia's if the water is not too low. We had already lost all brake fluid at the front circuit when we arrived at the ferry. The seller had overhauled the brakes. Apparently a batch of seals that are not brake fluid resistant had come on the market. We found a brake shop. A friend of mine in the area was so nice to come pick us up to drive into Milano to get new rubber parts. So the brake is were fixed, We even dared to drive up the Gotthard pass on the old Roman cobble stone road with a million hairpins. Now you are never sure if the rubbers you get are brake fluid resistant. Don't throw away the old ones till you are sure the new ones are ok.

The balance is not upset if you buy the new pods. The diameter is the same as for the original Dunlop cinders.

Remember to also bleed the brake force limiter on GTE and Rallye 1.3S. And check if it is mounted correctly. It is easy to mount the other way around.