Lynn,

   I presume the Aero Commander pads were round and you cut a

round pad (backing plate and all) from the chevy pad........How

did you fasten this to the Commander backing plate or is the pad

captured and you just used the resulting chevy puck and backing

plate after trimming to size on the lathe ??.......General aviation

pads are usually not round but if an auto pad of approx the same

thickness as the a/c pad were sourced a little cutting,grinding and

drilling might produce super pads for our a/c !!........IMHO.........

   What do you and the group think ??......

Actually the airplane pads were about 3/8" thick including the backing plate. If I remember correctly, the pad was held in place by a tiny screw through the center. The 1/4" pilot drill for the hole saw was too big to use.

 

The pads had worn through a few times and the outer half of the caliper had run on the disc when the screw head had warn off and dropped the pad out of the caliper. My Go Kart brakes were rocket science compared to the Commander stuff. In fact the early round pads for go Karts were the same size as the commander pads. I was slowly discovering that many airplane parts are just what was available at the time, or what they got a great deal on, or just the cheapest thing they could get their hands on when they assembled the first example. Then the design is cast in stone for liability reasons.

 

What is that giant cast iron starter on your Tri Pacer? Its off a tractor.

 

Great brakes on a tail dragger may be a bad idea.

 

The rotors on the race car look like new after the most severe use imaginable. I used to replace them each winter with conventional pads. A turning wheel removes way more energy through the brake rotor than a locked wheel and tire. The tire to asphalt inter face becomes useless when the tire starts to melt and lubricates the interface. The carbon pads have the ability to flash the rotors to orange should you need that. In normal use they feel like conventional pads. If you have experienced brake fade, one time, you don't want to try that again. Pedal as hard as a rock but the braking effort is reduced over distance. You cannot lock a wheel, you cannot slow down at a rate before the fade came on, and so on. The pads cannot generate enough heat above a certain point, and the pad material produces gasses that lubricate the pad rotor interface.

 

Lynn E. Hanover