If you have your Brakes Tested with a Taplow Meter.

When you put the Brakes on, does the Meter hold onto that reading after the Car has come to a standstill, or does the Tester have to look at the dial as the Brakes are applied before it rocks back to Zero?

 

OB,

Apols for correcting you, but I think you mean a Tapley meter.

Yes, the figure is held until it's reset to zero with a button. I have one of these meters in my garage should you ever want to borrow it.

My local MoT place still agrees to do my XJS with the meter for the rear brakes. Probably because they know my car, they just reverse off the ramp, drive forward 8 feet and then hit the brake pedal! None of this taking it out on the road nonsense!

I well remember the first time an MoT tester used one of these meters on my old 2-door Range Rover (Wish I'd kept that now, with early ones making £50k!!). I asked him how it worked. He explained to me how he had to carefully position the meter on the passenger seat, drive down the road at precisely 30moh and apply the brakes hard. If the meter then flew forward and landed on the floor, he considered the brakes were good enough! Happy Days!

Paul

 

is this part of testing the uk or something? If the system isn't leaking and doesn't have air in the lines, why would you need to know a specific pressure range? The system will do what it was design to won't it? The only variables are going to leave you with an extremely noticeable difference, so I don't see what a meter is useful for

 

sidescrollin,

A Tapley meter doesn't measure pressure. It's just a standalone box that measures deceleration rates (g). So it's used in the UK as a fallback method if the car can't be tested on one of the older brake rollers. This is the case if the car has a mechanical LSD or if it has mechanical 4 wheel drive.

The modern brake rollers are supposed to be ok for LSDs but my testing station still uses the Tapley meter for my rear brakes as they are scared of anything going wrong with my diff that might be their fault!

Paul

 

Hi Paul

My Bad! At least I know how to spell it now! although I think that I had gone word blind.

This is a garage that seems to be a bit of a Magnet for the 'Hot Hatch' Brigade but as this isn't my bag, I'd rather keep away whenever possible.

 

Hi Paul

With that kind of Car they really have to be careful, or they could end up having to drop the IRS and working on a very expensive repair!

 

Paul's explanation has covered this Topic far better than I ever could.

 

Ohhhh, I glanced at "when you put the brakes on," and thought it you were saying "when you put it on the brakes." I thought you meant it was a meter you put inline with the brake lines. So it is basically a decelerometer then?

 

Yup I guess that's what it is but I didn't know if the reading was locked, or returned to Zero, when the Car came to a halt but now I do.

 

Last time I saw one of those was when I got stopped on Kirkcaldy prom in my MKII in 197? and they wanted to test the brakes. I can vouch for it holding the reading and my brakes were good!

 

yeah I would assume they would design it to lock in the reading so you aren't distracting while driving