I just read the article in the current Ex. comparing the 2 with the 3. Very interesting for a number of reasons.

As the last surviving PCCB advocate on the board , I thought it notable that the reviewers still gave unqualified raves about the performance edge of the PCCB. (Granted, this was a spirited street review, not about track use (which makes a huge difference), and they did not evaluate longevity issues. But these are factors of which the reviewers are certainly well aware, so it is significant that they make NO comment beyond praise for the performance that they observed.

I have been very concerned by the PCCB controversy, and continue to use mine with some real trepidation. I keep expecting to see reflection of this issue in the comments of reviewers (or the absence of comments). Something like, "Despite track wear issues, we are mightily impressed..." or more subtle ways that these guys CTA without offending ma Porsche. Perhaps I'm clutching at straws, but none of the industry writers are hedging or qualifying their assessments of PCCB (other than option cost).

 

Even though the PCCB disintegration horrors are well known to us, I think we are the only ones who know what we know. It is not news that gets out there that easily, and since Porsche are heavily pushing the PCCB's on the 997 I can only assume they are hoping they will work better in the future.

Remember too, Porsche do buy a very large number of advertising pages, and as I work in the magazine world, I can promise you that is very important to the editors and accountants, you really don't want to bite the hand that feeds you.

It seems that something similar to the PCCB situation happened with the wiring on the 993's, and E.J.Alumni put together an owner's litigation of some kind, so he would be a good person to talk to about the PCCB arbitration.

 

Exactly what is it about the PCCB that these bonehead journalists continue to rave about?

To my knowledge they have never shown better performance in an actual objective test. As a matter of fact if I remember correctly they actually showed poorer stopping distance by a couple of feet in some tests.

 

FWIW My GT2 is now equipped with steel rotors and Orange pads. I broke in a new set of tires and all I can say is that the brakes are fantastic. On a local track I know where my brake points are and after breaking in the pads, the iron rotors and orange pads allowed me to go deeper than I was used to with the PCCBs and Yellow Sport pads. I have a set of RS19's on the way and according to the Pagid rep they are superior to the oranges. This kinda worked out - I have better and much cheaper brakes now..

 

CGT, Enzo, 360CS, 996, SLR are coming with ceramic brakes.

It is not secret than journalist and magazines are getting suggestions to promote products.

I think car manufacturers are getting tired of building reliable sport cars because they don't bring extra revenue (post sale income). They want your maintenance money, and they are getting it by fitting cars with ceramic brakes.

 

BRH986,

I am one of the "boneheaded journalists" to which you refer in your post. And one of the GT2s that we used for testing is mine.

I can assure you and NJ-GT that none of the four of us that contributed to the article were compensated (including the magazine) for our editorial by any third party. It was entirely unbiased and purely subjective.

Marco Polo is correct. We did not evaluate the brakes for track use or for longevity purposes. Rather these were subjective opinions based on driving the steels and ceramics back to back. Bob for example has tested both versions on street and track and he has a different perspective.

Once again the purpose of the test was simply to evaluate the two cars back to back and to provide feedback based on one day of evaluation. It was NOT to debate the issues inherent in PCCBs or to discuss what is the more appropriate track setup.


Josh

2002 GT2

 

I will echo Josh's comments, as I was also one of the "bonehead journalists", BRH986 refers to, who contributed to the article, and the other GT2 used that day is my machine.

I have a lot of respect for Bob and though he does have a different perspective and a lot more experience with PCCBs than I do, we do agree that the replacement cost is astronomical.

However, I will tell you that it was apparent to me that the PCCBs provide an initial "bite" that is not evident with steel rotors, and furthermore, with 4 of us driving these cars back to back on some very twisty roads, the PCCBs did not exhibit any fade, whereas the GT3 with steel rotors did. These observations where noted by all participants that day, and if you take note of the contributing authors, you might recognize a well-known and very competent professional race car driver.

 

Wow - am I ever glad I didn't say anything bad about journalists

When I first drove my GT2 I raved about the power of PCCB. A year later when I got my GT3 I didn't notice a big difference. Of course by then my PCCB were already getting "tired".

A fellow instructor (one of my ex students who took 2nd in the 2003 Ferrari Challenge in his rookie year) bought a GT3 with PCCB. He drove my car and reported that the PCCB were better. This suggests that comparing new PCCB and new steel the PCCB are superior. This is the same as you observed.

My test this week was not quite fair. I was using race pads on my iron rotors. In the above test with my GT3 versus another with PCCB both cars had the Yellow OEM sport pads. What I observed was that with race pads on iron rotors my stopping distances were better than with PCCB and sport pads. Maybe that was unfair since the PCCB have a Green race pad and perhaps it would have been superior to my new setup. By the way Mark-GT2 had a similar experience comparing iron plus Orange versus PCCB.

I haven't seen the article. I'm a subscriber to Excellence. That means I get it three weeks *after* it hits the stands. Did you folks happen to mention the replacement cost of PCCB rotors? I wonder how many people would buy them if they knew? I think readers would be done a service is someone pointed out the $8,700 per rotor replacement cost.

Regards,

 

Well I wasn't refer to you specifically but rather ALL the journalists that have been continually telling us how great PCCB is. It would appear that my "bonehead" assessment was not unwarranted judging by your post. I'm not quite show where along the lines someone came up with the idea that they should write articles referring to how great a set of brakes are without doing any sort of objective testing whatsoever. Braking performance is clearly an objectively measurable performance figure and quite easily measured at that. There is no hard evidence out there that says PCCB brakes are any better than the cast iron beyond their weight savings. On the contrary there is data out there to suggest that they are worse. Anyone that writes about how wonderful PCCB brakes are without doing any sort of objective testing to back up their claims (or at least citing those tests previously conducted by others) is not only make a jackass of himself but clearly doing a great disservice to his readership!

Brake performance is about as subjective as the answer to 2+2.

Is it unreasonable to be irritated (to say the least) that journalists continue to write about how great PCCB is when clearly they offer many more negatives than positives? I used to think that automotive magazines while ocasionally biased could still be used to make intelligent reasonable purchasing decisions particularly if you take into account a couple of different articles from a few different publications but aparently that's not the case! If I were to listen to the automotive press (as a whole) I would purchase an $8,000 option on my car that offers me no additional benefits aside from someones subjective idea that the "initial bite" is better meanwhile taking on the liability of having to replace rotors and pads that literally disintigrate in some cases after a day or two of light track use!

 

You are both journalists for excellence and you both own GT2's? I take it your automotive jounralism is more of a hobby than full time job? I'd the fact that both happen to own the test cars is a glaring and obvious bias right there, obviously you think they're great.

 

From someone other than a journalists. In a Car & Driver segment on tv last week (Great 10 min segment about the GT3, with track test, performance stats and commentary from Hurley haywood as he was driving around the track), Haywood was preaching that the PCCB's were the only brakes to have. Granted, he may not have a ton of experience with the brakes, you have to consider him a "qualified" source.

BTW, the C&D segment was great! I Tivo'ed it onto a dvd and would be happy to share it. If anyone has a web site and wants to tell me how to upload it, I would be glad to.

 

Regardless of PCCB longevity issues under extreme use conditions, the advantage to unpsrung weight cannot be overlooked. The handling of a car w/pccb will be better than the one with steel all other things equal...As newton's law says, what goes up must come down...Since the mass is less with pccb, the wheel comes down faster keeping better wheel contact with the road, at least in theory...

 

That's all good and well but isn't haywood involved with the Porsche Driving Expirience program? In addition if what he says is the truth then why haven't we seen a nice little chart like this:

'04 GT3 PCCB '04 GT3 Cast Iron
60-0 106 feet 112 feet
80-0 205 feet 220 feet
100-0 326 feet 340 feet

and/or some ojbective study of logevity along with some numbers for that? I just don't understand it.

 

Yes. He's also been a long time Porsche race driver, Porsche spokesperson and he is a partner at Brumos Porsche in Jacksonville.

 

Well I think that speaks for itself.