No really. (Remember: we don’t diss Autoblog any more.) Scribe Sam “Is There a Draft Out There” Abuelsamid has noticed a new technology on the otherwise Lincoln WTF– I mean Concept C that’s way cool. I think. “Take a close look at the brake caliper in the photo above. Typically, the brake rotor is attached to the wheel hub and the caliper grips the disk from the out edge. On the Concept C, the braking surface is attached to the inside edge of the wheel rim with caliper wrapping around the inside edge of the rotor… An internal caliper mount has the advantage of allowing a larger effective radius for where the braking force is applied. Since torque is defined as a force applied at a distance from a pivot point, the greater the distance, the greater the braking force. Such a setup allows more brake force with a smaller caliper, which in turn can provide better brake feel since the fluid displacement is smaller. The downside is that changing wheels becomes a much more complicated matter since the brake hardware is mounted on the wheel.” Man, I’ve got to get out more.
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I always wanted to see electric cars with electromagnetic braking systems.
This is an interesting concept – and probably one that would work very well, but the problem is, if you bought this design, you’d be stuck getting parts and service from ONLY Lincoln – since the brake standard has already been set.
It would work best for a luxury car – at luxury prices.
For example, would this design decrease the stopping distance of a Veyron or a Lambo or an R8?
In theory it should…but how much will it cost to replace?
Nice brakes.
Pity about the rest of the car.
Yes, but what are the odds that this will reach production? 100:1? 1,000:1?
I’m tired of seeing concept cars with great technology that has no chance of reaching the consumer. Especially gullwing or suicide doors, or cameras for side mirrors. You aren’t fooling anyone.
To reach a producable form, most concept cars have to be so heavily modified that they lose whatever made them so special in the first place. And that’s always sad.
how do you take the wheel off? do you have to take off the caliper from behind somehow? seems impractical if you got a flat tire
“The downside is that changing wheels becomes a much more complicated matter since the brake hardware is mounted on the wheel”
Also, the rotational mass of the wheel would be greatly increased. And I could see some issues with transferring that much heat to the wheel. I also imagine a smaller contact patch and cross sectional area of brake rotor material would make warpage a bigger problem.
Cool idea but I’m not sure the tradeoffs are worth the benefit.
The interior-wheel brake thing is old hat.
Do-able, but yes, it would be a biotch in the field. Assuming the lugs were short enough, you could wiggle the wheel to compress the pads, and voila, the wheel could be pulled. But it would suck.
Beyond that, connecting the rotor to the wheel increases unsprung weight. Which is mondo bad.
Some things that work on motorcycles do not work on cars.
Noting Porschespeed’s post above…
Generally speaking, just because something has never been done before doesn’t mean that it can’t be done, but there’s usually a pretty damn good reason that it hasn’t.
The cameras as side mirrors have some chance of reaching production. The technology is mature and cheap. Many local delivery vehicles already have backup cameras. Look at the roof on the back of your local UPS package car.
If Toyonda was making an extreme no-holds barred fuel economy at all costs model the drag reduction from ditching the mirrors would be tempting.
porschespeed:
I fail to see how it would increase unsprung weight. I’ve never seen a brake rotor attached to anything other than the hub in a common car, which is… unsprung.
Depending on weight compared to a traditional setup, if it was higher it would increase rotational mass which is bad… but doesn’t seem to bother people as they buy larger and larger and larger rims.
Lincoln needs this car!
The most memorable Lincolns were the ones that broke prevailing style conventions: the original Zephyr ushered in the streamlined look and the unit body; the original Continental looked like nothing else of its day; the suicide-door Continental of 1961 looked nothing like a Caddy or an Imperial of its time-no tailfins lots less chrome, lots less bulk (although the bulk was back as of ’67).
This concept doesn’t look like the neighbor’s two-year-old Japanese/German Alphanumeric Whatever, nor is it an obvious Ford re-badge with slightly nicer leather on the seats.
Now, just PLEASE give the car a REAL NAME!! No more LT-Whatsis names. REAL NAMES like Continental, Cosmopolitan, Premiere, or even Town Car Mark II.
Redstapler- I don’t think they could get rid of the side mirrors. I believe the law is that you need at least 2 mirrors (either the 2 sides or the rearview and a side). So I think the law would need to be changed to allow them to remove the side mirrors.
I thought Audi had already done this on the A8, but, I guess they showed it and didn’t implement.
Ford has been working on this for some time (I have got to watch less Discovery Chanel).
I agree with porschespeed, this is bad news on the roadside and, most likely, in Lincoln service bays.
And the physics (greater unsprung weight) are all bad.
On the Concept C, the braking surface is attached to the inside edge of the wheel rim with caliper wrapping around the inside edge of the rotor…
@MTeator,
Perhaps you skimmed the text of the article. If it is mounted to the wheel, it qualifies as ‘unsprung’.
Technically speaking, most everything that is part of the suspension is ‘unsprung weight’. Just remember, the farther you move the mass out from the pivot point, the more work it does. A 14″ rotor at 6″ from the pivot point is less to manage than the same 14″ rotor at 18″ from the pivot point. Dig?
There is another reason that every stoopid YuSuburbaHo needs a brake upgrade when you throw the dopeman 32″ers on it. Rotational mass.
dgduris:
Audi did use an internal caliper design, on the Audi 200 20v with “UFO” front brakes, but they mounted the rotor to a separate carrier, not the wheel.
The design did not work well enough to justify the complexity, so it went Audi 5000.
http://www.sjmautotechnik.com/trouble_shooting/ecupic/ufo2.jpg
I don’t understand the hate for this car here?
Normally TTAC is right on calling out the BS and shitty designs, but this is exactly what we have been wanting Ford to do with Lincoln. Make a bold statement with style. This is not a giant luxury barge like we are used to, but apparently Ford has seen the writing on the wall, and despite $1.50 gas, they know small is the new big.
This car has tons of style (good or bad depending on the eye of the beholder) that will make people talk about it. And lets face it, a lot of people like driving cars that make people talk. Personally, I don’t find it too attractive, but I do not think it is a bad idea or design. They need to make Lincoln stand out from all the cookie cutters. This car does that. And if they can throw in some cool tech gadgets more power to them. The no mirrors thing is kind of cool, and even if the rotor setup is not practical, it is different and subtle.
Buell uses a similar brake design on their streetbikes. Looks cool but regular brakes work well enough. Give me regeneration (both from braking and from energy dissipated in the shock absorbers) before funky designs like this!
This would have to provide a big jump in brake performance to be of interest to me. And let’s face it, modern real world braking performance already depends more on the abilities of the person behind the fifth wheel than it does on the brakes inside the other four. A cool design exercise, but overall, I give it a meh. Now, for maintenance considerations, find a way to unlock the rotor from the rim (guide studs and a cam lock mechanism?) and it would be a better design exercise.
@MTeator,
Unsprung weight is BAD as it seriously affects handling. Other vehicles have used technologies not on the wheels but via brakes on the driveshaft’s and directly on the transaxle.
In the motorcycle world, American Off road company ATK used a disk on the counter shaft.
The goal is to move everything inboard just like suspensions on F1 cars. Get the weight low as possible but still suspended…
As proof of concept, this isn’t bad, though I’d say it’s largely useless for Ford.
In a Lamborghini with 15 inch rotors, I could see the point of pushing the rotor to the outside in order to reduce braking force required, which would lessen brake fade. The unsprung weight and rotational inertia disadvantages wouldn’t be that bad since you’d be replacing a monster disc with a larger ring.
However, in a normal passenger car this method is useless. Increased braking force is unusable, as any current braking system should be able to overpower the tires (thus, the advent of ABS). Brake fade is not a concern, as the car will never see a track (unless you are foolishly riding the brakes down a mountain). Plus, you are replacing a relatively tiny 12-inch rotor now. So the increased unsprung weight and rotational inertia will be the only effects you feel. Absolutely no upside for a normal car.
Maybe they developed this for Aston Martin, and had nowhere to put it after they sold AM off.
Is there some particular reason why so many recent concept cars are painted vile shades of green? The color alone hurts public perception more than anything about the design itself. I think the Beat, or whatever its called now, would look a lot better in virtually any color but the one they choose to bring to the auto show. Same with this car.
At what point does the ratio of braking force to weight mean the car flips over forwards when you stomp on the brakes at 40?
Guys, what @MTeator was pointing out is that regardless whether the rotor is mounted to the wheel or the hub it is still unsprung weight. Furthermore, just because the rotor is mounted to the wheel does not mean that is further from the pivot point, in fact I would argue that this setup would move the rotor closer to the pivot point on most vehicles. Finally, a normal rotor is already rotational mass, and on most vehicles is completely supported by the lugs which is no difference then this setup. If Ford managed to lower the rotor weight enough to offset the square of the increased radius, then their should be no difference except better braking and more difficult wheel changes. However, I doubt they did.
At what point does the ratio of braking force to weight mean the car flips over forwards when you stomp on the brakes at 40?
The tires would skid long before the car flipped.
A friend of mine drove his Alfa Spyder into the curb at high speed. He didn’t flip over forwards. He ripped the front suspension off.
all there needs to be is a valve release for the brake caliper to release.
the reason inboard brakes disappeared from formula one in the late 70s early 80s was that the shaft connecting the brakes to the wheel snapped too often and tyres were helped with the heat coming off them.
Here’s why this can be made lighter AND cheaper: with heat dissipation being taken care of by the outside of the rim, you can move from the heavy vented cast-iron brakes to lighter motorcycle-style thin solid disks. Add a smaller caliper mounted to the tie rod part of the knuckle, and you save a great deal of weight and money. This also moves a major heat source away from the axle, improving bearing and CV joint life.
“Outrunner” brake allows you to fit a smaller wheel onto a big rotor, improving ride quality and further reducing weight.
A proper release mechanism (a bypass valve, or even lug bolts) would actually make maintenance easier – no need to unbolt the caliper, just… replace the pads. A 1-hour labor operation turns into a tool-less 10-minute job.
Only thing stopping this from becoming mainstream is the lack of standard wheels and rotors. It also spells the end of cheap stamped steel wheels. Someone has to get the ball rolling.
Make a bold statement with style.
You can make a bold statement without horrendously ugly designs.
Lincoln should be euthanized if this baleen grille makes it to ANY more models.
I am already dreading what the MKEdge will look like.
trk2 –
Quite so.
I reckon “unsprung” is the wrong word. Any brake disc is unsprung rotational mass, so this design is only worse IF it has has higher rotational intertia, for which you need to integrate the density * radius * 2 pi * dr for the brake disc.
Short answer, none of us can say out of hand what the performance impact of this design is.
But it does look cool.
That brake concept is something the motorcycle industry has done over and over, nothing new.
You’ve got to commend the Ford guys for trying something different. Whether the motorcycle world does it or not is pretty moot because a lot of other factors are significantly different between the two applications. Until you build it and try on the track it it’s just ideas and computations. From here there are things to be tweaked, priced out, developed, etc. If the idea is a dead end then the overall cost of doing the development is limited to the concept car.
I think alex_rashev covered the technical points on why this isn’t as hate-worthy as many think. It does put a crimp on aftermarket wheel design, but opens opportunity for aftermarket brake/wheel packages to export the technology to other models.
I think another issue with the design would be the increased knock-back of the caliper piston(s). For a given amount of bearing/hub flex under cornering loads a caliper that is further away from the rotational axis will experience more knock-back deflection than one closer to the rotating axis. This would keep the design out of high-performance applications where it would be more highly valued (if only for the g33k value), or would require a technological application like the use of ABS/EBD to “pump up” the brakes to actively minimize knock-back (which BTW Chrysler patented not too long ago for the Challenger SRT8).
I always wanted to see electric cars with electromagnetic braking systems.
It’s a reliability and liability issue. If you use EM braking, then it’s a simple matter of a fuse going out or the circuit breaking that can potentially take out the brakes. A failsafe on that level of current flow would be doable but tricky; the main issue is that it hasn’t been proven in the field yet.
Not exactly compatible with space saver tires is it?
Lincoln should be euthanized if this baleen grille makes it to ANY more models.
Thank you P71_CrownVic for reminding me of the word for what the new Lincoln grills remind me of. I’ve been trying to figure out the resemblance for a while now…
As a random aside, Pontiac used to offer aluminum wheels with integral drums. They were made by Kelsey-Hayes, and they an unusual eight-lug pattern. The wheel had cast-in cooling fins. They looked neat, and they offered better cooling than conventional drums. Unfortunately, they were heavy, and they were expensive (around $120 in the early sixties, the equivalent of almost $900 today), so they weren’t often ordered.
It looks interesting, especially when combined with run-flats.
I contend there has to be a better solution to improved braking other than $$$ ceramics.
Apart from the problem of changing wheels (runflats *cough* ), this seems like a very interesting idea.
A lighter disc with better heat dispersion and more stopping force sounds like a good thing… Imagine, having brakes as big as an M5’s without the necessity of 19″ rims.
No more of that additional unsprung weight from the hub carrier of the disc. The disc can be held onto the rim with numerous small bolts that don’t really need to be as heavy or as strong. And the rim is already pretty strong at the spokes, so it doesn’t need to be reinforced for this beyond adding the bolt holes. The flywheel effect of having more mass close to the edge should be more than counteracted by the much lower mass, overall. Probably be a very nifty idea for sports cars, as a way of getting more brakes while keeping unsprung weight down.
Without a caliper sticking out from the disc, You can probably run the same size disc inside out with a 16″ or 17″ wheel as you can with a 19″ wheel. The smaller wheels would mean less unsprung weight and better acceleration.
Practicality be damned… I want to try this!