Track Brake Pad Discussion Thread

[fminicooper]

Proper bedding is a must. If not, you are risking losing money or wasting time at track.
In my personal experience I did rotor and pads both together. My choice was a less expensive rotor, around 35$ each. At that cost it is a no brainer doing pads and rotor at the same time.

Again was on what is working for me. Braking hard on track. No babysitting the car.

Hope it helps, you can see my post about that.

https://www.ft86club.com/forums/show...&postcount=374

[HaXx]

Originally Posted by fminicooper

Proper bedding is a must. If not, you are risking losing money or wasting time at track.
In my personal experience I did rotor and pads both together. My choice was a less expensive rotor, around 35$ each. At that cost it is a no brainer doing pads and rotor at the same time.

Again was on what is working for me. Braking hard on track. No babysitting the car.

Hope it helps, you can see my post about that.

https://www.ft86club.com/forums/show...&postcount=374

I read that proper bedding is 3 or 4 moderate brakes from 45 to 5, then 3 to 4 hard brakes from 45 to 5. Is this on par? Did you do this on the track? Or find an empty road before your event?

[snoxracer183]

Originally Posted by HaXx

I read that proper bedding is 3 or 4 moderate brakes from 45 to 5, then 3 to 4 hard brakes from 45 to 5. Is this on par? Did you do this on the track? Or find an empty road before your event?

You're going to want to do it from a faster speed than that (like 70-80 safely). You need to get them HOT, try to never completely stop, then drive around for 5-10 min to let them cool. But 5-8 times is probably required to get them that hot (like stinky/smelly/smoking hot). I use back country roads to do it. You need them to off-gas

[14stu]

Originally Posted by HaXx

I read that proper bedding is 3 or 4 moderate brakes from 45 to 5, then 3 to 4 hard brakes from 45 to 5. Is this on par? Did you do this on the track? Or find an empty road before your event?

For track pads, you'll need more stops from higher speeds to build up enough heat for a proper bedding. 10 or so increasingly hard braking events from 60-5mph is usually about enough. The goal is to brake at about 80% of ABS engagement (you don't want ABS to come on) for the last 4-6 braking events.

You should smell your brakes by the time your done. Once you smell them drive at 40-60mph for at least 5min to cool them down before stopping and try not to use your brakes during the cool down.

Feeder/service roads are good places, or if it's early in the morning before an event you could do this on empty stretches of highway (only takes about 15-20min to get it done).

You don't have to use fresh rotors, just spray the old ones with some brake cleaner, dry, and bed the new stuff.

If you can't get the bedding done before your trackday, just use the first session (remember your green pads won't work great and you're goal is to bed the brakes and not set laptimes).

[CSG Mike]

Originally Posted by HaXx

I read that proper bedding is 3 or 4 moderate brakes from 45 to 5, then 3 to 4 hard brakes from 45 to 5. Is this on par? Did you do this on the track? Or find an empty road before your event?

Here's the short version

- Get pads hot enough to smell
- Maintain heat level for ~5 minutes
- Cool down evenly (aka don't go under 15mph, keep rolling for 10+ minutes)

[fminicooper]

perfectly explain.
HaXx here you answer. Do not perform bedding at Track itself.

[HaXx]

Awesome, thx for the help everyone, great community here!

[Pat]

Originally Posted by CSG Mike

Here's the short version

- Get pads hot enough to smell
- Maintain heat level for ~5 minutes
- Cool down evenly (aka don't go under 15mph, keep rolling for 10+ minutes)

This. It is going to vary by car, pad compound, caliper, rotor, ducts, ambient conditions, etc. For my BRZ with stock power and AP Sprint kit with DTC-60s, I can get it done with three 90-10 mph runs.

[jayliu.jiayu@gamil.com]

Brake Pad Manufacturer: hawk
Compound (F/R): DTC-60/stock with stop tech rotors
Tires: 245/40/17 RE71R fornt and rear

Feedback:
very good pad with torque release, strong but not hard instant bite compare to stock pad. which is good for control the brake pressure. i also use it for daily drive, alot of brake dust with some noise but i like the noise tho. i am in west coast so, the temperature is around -10 to 30 c^o all year long
this pads is not friendly with rotors, after one dry track day and some daily driving and another rainy track day both of them need replace


right now is waiting for bda 4000 t3 rotor. should be stronger than stop tech
will see how it goes

[atomicalex]

How did I miss this thread? Lots of great info, thank you all who have contributed.

All of my experience is with Hawk on either heavier or much lighter cars, so we will see how I do switching to HP+ for summer and HPS for winter. I have yet to do a brake job on this car, will see how simple swapping out pads for track is as going to the DTC60s would make more sense for track day, and with the weight of the car, HPS should be fine for daily use.

[Pat]

It's super easy to swap pads. I've been using 60s for track and HPS for street for years. Works great.

[EAGLE5]

I don't find swapping pads easy at all. Gotta undo the bolts, jack the car, get under there so you really want jack stands, open the caliper, push the pistons back, put on the new pads, etc. Probably also want to lube up to avoid squeaks.

So I just run PFC 08 street and track. Great bite cold. Great bite hot. A bit of squealing. Whatever. Also a bit hard on the disc, not that I mind.

[rice_classic]

My racing season is more than half over in the Touring 4 FRS. I may need some input from the other really fast guys or racers. T4 is a pretty restricted class so I'm on OEM rotors front/rear but with brake ducts. Car is 2925lbs min weight. always use pedal dance.


I started the season:
Raybestos ST47 front, ST45 rear. Under initial hard threshold braking the front and rear of the car didn't squat together aka too much initial nose dip vs rear. The initial bite of the 47 over the 45 is apparent. Also I was getting ABS intervention on rear in the hard/slower braking and trail braking areas.

I switched to Cobalt XR2 front and rear. Ok, so now the car would squat together - good. However the pads wore quickly and did not bite like the ST pads from Raybestos. Not enough pad for the front.

I switched to ST45 front with XR2 rear. Had more bite in the front and now it didn't feel like the rear did "enough".

I am now on ST45 front and rear. I love how the car squats evenly but under hardest of braking zones I'll get ass wiggle and in tighter corners with trail braking, lots of ABS intervention. The pattern on the rear rotors is AMAZING.. but would be more amazing if it wasn't there.



So what I need is a front and rear pad that "bite together" but a rear that isn't as aggressive as the 45 on the rear. I need to dial the rear a bit because the ABS intervention is not allowing me to use the brake pedal to toss the car around in the tight bits. I was thinking of trying the DTC70 front with 60 rear or DTC80 front with 60 rear. On the previous car I raced the DTC pads were inadequate but I'm willing to try them again since a fellow racer can get them for me for very cheap (owns a shop in Canada). What I'm curious about is why everyone things we should have a square setup on this car. When I was square with the XR2s I didn't have enough bite in the rear and with the square 45s I have too much bite in the rear. In all of this I've only had the front ABS engage once and I liken that to my 15 years of racing without it.

[Icecreamtruk]

When I had stock rotors and caliper all around, I tried staggered front/rear as well as same compound front/rear. I did not like staggered, maybe it was more braking power but the car would not rotate at all (or very little) during trail and would just plow into corners. ABS engaging has always been an issue, but I just usually attribute that to me not being good enough with the brakes. Your setup is wildly different from mine, so it might not apply at all. I like the DTC-60s on this car, they eat thru rotors and pads get used up relatively quickly, but the modulation is very good and they are very hard to fade (if you can, even).