Project Pathfinder Part 2, Brake Upgrades

By Mari Umekubo

Even with our prior upgrades to Project Pathfinder, our brakes still had much room for improvement.  Although we could now lock our wheels on clean dry pavement (amazingly the stock brakes could not lock our big sticky Yokohama tires!) it took pushing with all of our might and several revolutions of the wheels to get the pads hot enough so they could get enough bite to lock the wheels.  This sort of braking added precious feet to our stopping distance and made pedal modulation difficult, critical for limit braking performance.

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Project Pathfinder Part 1

By Mari Umekubo

Project Pathfinder started out as a necessity, not because we are into SUV’s or off road but because of a need.  For the last two years we have been racing in NASA’s SE-R cup series and using our old 1993 Pathfinder SE as a two vehicle.  This taught us a couple of things, 1 a stock old Pathfinder is not a good tow vehicle due to a lack of power and brakes and 2 a SUV is probably not the safest vehicle on the road for carrying your loved ones due to its tipsy handling.  

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