Performance pack preferences and experiences?
 

Recently grabbed myself a 2017 BRZ PP and it's time to track prep it.


I've been researching and reading a lot (holy crap that suspension mega thread took a couple days).


I have however had trouble finding info about the PP brakes. I hunted a PP down because I hate being under-braked but I want to get an idea for what these brakes are actually capable of in advance so I can keep the money flowing toward track time.:burnrubber:



I'll be hiding from the track during the Texas summer months until I get oil temperature under control but assuming July in Texas with NA power levels, proper track alignment, proper tires (RE71, 615K+, RS4), and a competent driver;


Are ducts required or just recommended?


How do drivers feel about XP8's vs XP10's, G-Loc and other equivalents with respect to the performance pack?


Do drivers tend to prefer staggering compounds?


I feel like the PP pads and calipers already have strong initial bite on the street but I have no reference point as this model of car is new to me. I have no idea if I should start with high or low initial bite characteristics. I've made mistakes with too much initial bite on my RX-7 that I would like to avoid repeating.

There’s tons of helpful threads/people on these forums. I messaged CSG Mike In regards to brake pad compound and ended up going with gloc r12’s based on his recommendation. They were incredible on track and never faded. Even my instructor was impressed with how strong and consistent the brakes were.

Welcome to the 86 club! It's a great platform especially for HPDE use. I also run a 17 with the Brembo's (Series Yellow car).

There's lots of great brake options out there. I prefer using Hawk products personally (I run the HT10 pads). I also have a bunch of customers that use the DTC60's and DTC70's.

Brake cooling ducts aren't really a necessity, but you'll certainly want an oil cooler especially where you live (again lots of great options).

There's a great group on this forum with lots of great info. Feel free to fire away with questions.


Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

Don’t go crazy spending a lot of money changing your car. Unless you just want to and have the money. Make sure you buy quality replacements. The cheep replacements are not as good as what Subaru put on the car. Not sure how much track time you have but chances are the car is not the limiting factor of your track times.
I would look at getting some oil cooling installed first.
Change brake fluid regularly.
Good tires/better alignment.
From there what every you want or find out you need from doing track events.

Where in Texas and what tracks/event operators are you lookin at?

IMO:

-Run a quality synthetic oil and tighten up those oil changes (during track session)
-Especially for texas heat, grab yourself an oil cooler
-The stock PP suspension is quite decent. If you are going to stay on a stock sized wheel (with 200TW's), I would simply add camber bolts (https://www.ft86speedfactory.com/whi...E#.Xbl6V1VKhpg) and max them out. Otherwise, you will be dealing with horrendous understeer all day.
-Get mad seat time (not sure how new you are), but definitely stick around this level until you are at or beating local Spec Miata times. That is a great benchmark that basically anyone can use at any track.


Brakes:

As far as brakes go, I'm still messing around with running either square or staggered pads. I've heard both things and I'm currently on staggered GLOC R12's but will try square here soon. I think GLOC and PFC make some of the best track pads out there. PFC's are quite expensive but really are absolutely top notch (as long as you swap track/dd pads). Recommend R12 Front/R10 rear or R12 square otherwise.

My plan at the moment is to keep it mostly stock. I'm in an interesting situation with my FD. I was slowly building it to be track worthy (must control thermal runaway...) but at this point, I need proper facilities to complete some of the work. So for now I am going to keep things simple as the BRZ is not intended to be a track toy, yet. It replaced my 03 NB as a daily driver. And will be serving as a track-able daily until I get the FD finished or give up and sell it at which point I will start making spectacularly stupid decisions with the BRZ.

I want to fit it with cooling, alignment and rubber. I am looking at Jackson's dual cooler radiator/oil.

And I haven't decided on width for track wheels yet and my biggest hangup is suspension mods. I'd like at least 245's but best I can tell, a 9 inch is hard to fit on an OE setup and that gets more difficult if you gain camber at the hub. 8.5's are rare and 17x8 isn't really a large increase over the stock 7.5's so I might as well hunt down another set of stock wheels and slap sticky 215's on those in that case.

The main goal suspension wise is track/street alignment. I don't really want to hop off the PP setup yet. Camber bolts alone aren't enough. Raceseng plates are the goal but buying plates for the OE coilover and then deciding I want V3's or Tarmac2's is an unnecessary re-fitting cost attributed simply to indecision and poor planning...

In regard to pads, I have second hand knowledge that R10's last longer than R12's by a wide margin but to be fair, that applies to a friend who insists on tracking the USS Mustang and I'm surprised he hasn't boiled his ball joints yet.

I'm all about spending for the proper parts. I'm just very picky about what needs to change.

I'll be running around MSR Cresson, ECR, and COTA. Focused on safer organizations so, The Drivers Edge, Apex, and I hear Park Place has a new thing going on but I'm vague on that.

You are going to be doing some traveling. I will be at Cresson on December 7th with Apex. I have not done a lot with Apex but had a good fried track his Elise with them for years and was happy with them. I am looking into Drivers Edge just so at some time can run ECR.

For your intents and usage, I say run it without an oil cooler first and see what oil temp does. If as on my car in highish ambient temps the oil temp cruises up to just over 270F and holds, IMO you can skip the cooler. If it continues to climb up towards 300F, pull in, limit your sessions accordingly, and *then* see about getting an oil cooler.

I ran camber plates with 1.25" lowering springs and it sucked due to no front bump travel. Probably OK at stock ride height down to *maybe* 0.8" lower than stock, but I wouldn't go any lower than that with camber plates without coilovers designed to run at lower ride heights. Stock struts just don't have the bump travel to deal with lost travel from lowering PLUS another lost 1/2" to 3/4" from camber plates.

225 vs 245 is not a big difference on these cars, so for your intents I'd go 225 on stock wheels or aftermarket 8"+ with lower offset, and run camber bolts, and maybe lower/stiffer springs

Square brake pads have always been fine for me on this car, FD, S2000 (even with nonfunctioning ABS), 240Z, every car Ive tracked. I think staggered pads *can* work for specific pad pairings on specific cars, but IMO for cars like the above, they are way overprescribed for the most part for no good reason...

I loved the Winmax W5s I ran last year except they are loud as fook! Even in a paddock full of seasoned track hounds they got attention. Also ran Project Mu ClubRacers but didnt' like them as much.
Previously ran Carbotech XP10s on other cars and always had good success with them. Also ran XP8s on the S2000, no problemo...
On Cayman I ran PFC 11 on the Cayman this year and they were fine as well.
I like a bit of grabbiness fwiw and in that regard the W5s are the grabbiest of the above mentioned pads. All of them fine for street as well, except maybe Project Mu CR which suck cold.

How much track experience do you have?

- Andrew

Oh how I can relate. I'm always the loudest car in the paddock when putting around with cold W5s. It's comical. Luckily I'm switching to something else for next year.

Zero HPDE's. 1 autocross on an actual track (that just seemed goofy). 5-6 time trials at Mineral Wells (think high speed autocross). And 2 full years of local group autocross. My on-board video records suggests 27 autocross events.


My plans for next year are about 1.75 track events a month. Avoiding mid-summer. I'm pretty much burned out on autocross. It's not worth the money to seat-time ratio.

You need an oil cooler even outside of summer months.

That is what I expect. I found a series of roads where I could run the car at about 7/10 for a couple minutes non-stop and the factory oil temp gauge measured 235ish. That seemed to suggest a 15 minute session is too much.


I have no idea how accurate the factory gauge is though.

With a RacerX 19-row oil cooler my oil temps stay in the 240-250 range during hpde sessions.

Camber bolts, fresh brake fluid, torque wrench, tire pressure gauge, seat time, lots and lots of seat time!

I ran Hawk HP+ F&R they are great entry level with a low initial bite, descent modularity, and good beginner operating temp range. I never even bothered with the TRD pads on track.

Skip the ducts at least for now, these cars aren't particularly hard on brakes.

Doesn't suggest that to me... 90F track days, mine goes up to just over 270F and holds there. If it had ever shown signs of continuing to get hotter uncontrolled, I would consider an oil cooler. As it is, I'm not.

The risks of not running an oil cooler IMO tend to be overstated, especially for "casual" HPDE usage. 275F is not a problem for good 30 weight synthetic oil for 15-20 minutes at a time.

Also consider that the risk of adding and running an oil cooler is not zero. Leaks are fairly common, occasionally leading to loss of engine and even loss of car (fire).

You have to assess what is the actual risk you are mitigating, vs. the actual risk you may be adding.

Plenty of us are tracking these cars without a cooler...

I recognize that. This was in 50F weather so I am concerned but not panicked. My plan was to start tracking in winter so any thermal issues have the best chance of being spotted early.

Gotcha. FWIW mine *always* goes to just over 270F and holds there, whether in 90F temps or the coldest temp I've tracked in, probably ~45F. So I think it's somehow either internally thermostatically controlled, *or* the temp reading displayed on the gauge is programmed to go to the same spot and hold until temps start to really get hot, to prevent people from freaking out.

Aww yes, the old "People don't know what this means so we will hide the truth from them. Even though the only chance for them to learn is to tell them the truth...."


Like my NB's oil pressure gauge. "What is my pressure?" "Yes":slap:

The truth????? You Cant Handle The Truth!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueLFRHQSnhk[/ame]

I am a little older.



[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWSx0bBiNIs[/ame]

Cool.

I would choose a tire that is not the RE71R in the 200 treadwear category.

In response to your other post:
You don't necessarily need 9 inch wheels and 245s to track your car. A season on the OEM 7.5 inch wheels, 225 tires, and OEM suspension will teach you a lot. You'll really want some camber though, which we can help you with.

G Loc R12 and Cobalt Friction XR2 are great options for you. I have not used the CSG pads but hear good things. Same pad front and rear in most cases.

Seat time, good pads and fluid, and a good alignment will get you really far.

- Andrew

How would you describe the main differences between R8, R10, and R12 compounds? What are the release characteristics as they relate to each other? And is there any point in the hierarchy where noise gets insane? I will end up being lazy and just leaving the pads on for the street. I can handle noise but if people start looking for out of control trains while I'm around, it's going to get old.:bonk:

Any decent pad for the track is going to make noise.

One of the pros of the PP cars is the quickness of changing pads with the Brembo's. I can do all 4 calipers in less than an hour....and that's taking my time.

With that being said, it's in your best interest to swap pads. Not only is the noise annoying, but you don't want to wear out expensive pads by street driving them. You also don't want to ruin rotors with using "cold" track pads on the track.

That's my $0.02.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

I doubt it!
Knowledge of the "A Few Good Men" scene is assumed, required as context for full appreciation of The Simpsons scene ;)

Not nearly to the same degree though! WinMax W5 are in a totally different league vs. most track pads, SUPER loud. Meanwhile PFC 11s are practically street-pad quiet, I streeted on them through the entire track season.

A lot of us find it super-convenient to run streetable track pads. I've been doing it for years and will continue to do so, as there are a decent selection of not-too-loud, not-too-dusty, and decent-cold-bite track pads out there like the PFC 11, Carbotech XP8 and XP10 and others.

I'll have to try these PFC11's at some point then.

Every other track pad I've run makes noise and I've never been a fan of the "street/track" pads. There's always a compromise with those as they can't be great at both disciplines.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

I just remembered that I was interested in quick caliper spreaders. It appears the Lisle ones are junk and everything else I can find is stupid expensive. I don't get it. They are just reverse pliers....

There is loud, and then there is freight train coming to an emergency stop. @mistople's car was really loud. My XP10's were almost as bad, not quite. I am on CSG C1's now. They make a bit of noise at low speeds but are pretty quiet.

Yep. My car goes full freight train with the W5s when even remotely under regular track temps.

I have used the Lisle ones for two years, and well over a dozen brake pad changes without a single issue...even on my 2500HD.

There is *always* a compromise with *any* pad, period.
As for "street/track", for *me*, Carbotech XP8 and XP10 and PFC 11 have all worked great for me as street/track pads for entire track seasons. I would like more initial bite than any of these have but not willing to go noisier or dustier or less effective when cold.

Pads that didn't work for me as "street/track":
WinMax W5 too loud, Project Mu CR not enough cold bite, and going *way* back, Hawk HP+ way too much corrosive hard-to-clean black dust and way too much noise on the street.

The C1's feel like they have better initial bite then XP10's. I don't think the friction coefficent is much higher but I think they are less compressible which also leads to more consistent pedal feel. They are also much quieter and don't seem to dust any worse. They are much more expensive though.

How did you like the 9012s on my car? I find them twice as noisy as the HP+. My Pagid Yellows on the Porsche were very quiet.

Are you mostly driving the Porsche on the street?

I don't remember them so they musta been fine! Do you run them on the street a lot or swap them out?

I'm back and forth between CAyman and BRZ on the street. Cayman is nicer (i.e., less wind and road noise and feels noticeably more solid), mucho bettero engie noises :), but BRZ feels lighter which I like and also has better steering IMO. Cayman steering is too slow and also too heavy, and the steering wheel is too big. Also mine feels very nonlinear at ~45 degrees steering wheel angle particularly on right-handers. Honestly I'd like the Porsche twice as much if it had the BRZ's steering.

It is close but I have you by 5 months. :respekt:

Haha well thats good then!
I run them on the street, I have no issues. Even my Genesis has HP+.

My Porsche's steering although heavy was never non-linear, that sounds pretty awful. I did like it better at high speeds than the 86s, but that could have just been the car itself?

Could it be a steering geometry issue? I wonder if there is an upgrade to make it 981 steering?

Just get the oil cooler. Do you really want to be running multiple sessions in a day at 270*F?

I never understood the 'oil cooler isn't needed' crowd. engine makes less power, oil gets thinner and breaks down faster, and you have to constantly monitor it. Even if it isn't absolutely needed, it seems silly to not get one given how critical oil is. By the time you realize you need it, it might be too late.

*shrug* looks like this is your regular topic here, @ZDan lol. guess we'll have to be on different sides of the coin.