Initial review of Winmax W5
 

So I've had a week of street driving on the Winmax W5 brake pads and figure I'll share my experiences so far here. I'll be comparing them to the Hawk HP+, OEM and Wilwood BP10 pads.

Edit for clarity: Please note that I'm using the RR Racing Sport Performance front BBK which uses a Wilwood 4 piston caliper coupled with an STI rotor and the OEM rear brake kit with the W5s at all 4 corners. If you are on a different setup, your experience may vary. Hell, your experience may vary even if you are on the same setup!

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I did mostly regular commuting to and from work (20 minutes each way) and I ripped through a quiet twisty back road on a return trip from visiting family on Easter so I have an idea of how they performed with some heat.

Regarding dust, so far it seems relatively low for a pad of this type. There is no noticeable dust on my wheels yet after around 150kms of stop and go daily driving plus my trek through the back roads. Much better dusting behaviour than the BP10s or Hawk HP+ which had plenty of build up on the wheels after a single week of much less driving. I doubt they're as good as OEM in this department though.

Regarding noise, I chose these pads because others noted that they were mostly quiet and at first, they were silent under light braking but made noise under heavy braking. Then I did the bedding procedure and now my car sounds like a bus when coming to a stop no matter how much braking force I'm using. I'm not a fan of the attention so these are too loud for my taste. They sound about as bad as the Hawk HP+ which I didn't run very long due to the noise. I'm hoping it's a result of vibration caused by poorly bled brake lines or perhaps some shims can help out but I'm not confident. I'll be doing a full fluid flush in the next few weeks so I'll update this if the noise improves. If not, I still have a set of unused EBC Yellowstuff which should be better so I might use those for street use and save these for the track if it doesn't improve.

Regarding cold bite, I notice the pedal is pretty vague and spongy but they have stronger cold bite than the BP10s and possibly the OEM pads too but not nearly as much as the Hawk HP+ which had so much bite that they were difficult to drive. These are a bit too vague and spongy for my taste while cold but they work and are controllable enough.

Regarding hot bite, as mentioned, I took a rip down a twisty back road on the way back from visiting family for the Easter last weekend. The run lasted about 20 minutes and I got to give the brakes a good workout. With some heat, these brakes transform, the pedal goes rock hard and bite increases as heat comes in. I was engaging ABS with only around 30-40% pedal travel around midway through my 20 minute blast down the road. Granted, I'm on some 215/45r17s with 300TW Walmart special tires but these aren't the worst tires I've driven on by any stretch and I'd guess that the grip level is similar to the Primacies.

Anyways, the first time I accidentally engaged the ABS with so little force, the reality hit me that these are serious brake pads. These are probably overkill for my application, they are intended for use with semislicks and full slicks so I think they will still overwhelm the RS3s that I'll be running on this season. I was hoping to street drive these brakes but that's not likely going to work either due to the noise levels but we will see.

Reading the marketing information, the W4 or possibly even the W3 might have been better suited for my application but I'll update this thread as I get experience using them on autocross and track days.

I had W5s before on my car too, the noise was only an issue if I use it under "normal driving" conditions.

Never had any issues at the track, noise was only an issue whenever I dragged the pads with normal brake pedal pressures.

-alex

Whoops just realised I put this in the wrong section, can someone move it to the brakes, suspension section?

I had the W5's on an OEM setup and they were great at the track for me. I got tired of having to re-bed the pads every time I washed my car (which was about every month) so I just let it be. the noise did not bother me too much. I only got squeals when I was braking from roughly 15 MPH to 0 MPH and light pressure. I would work out the brakes real good for my first few laps at the track as a partial bed-in process instead and it worked fine for me (as long as there was no one on my ass).

now I am currently on the BP20's with the RR stage 2 front and stage 4 rear and I actually like them better than the W5's. for street driving, they are firm and although pretty sensitive, they have better cold bite and less noise. I have yet to take it to a track so I will see later on

I have W2's I use for DD and 5-6 track days a year. Work great!!

Nice review.

I been eyeing these pads for a while.

Running Hawk HP+ right now, and they have good initial bite and overall really happy with them.

I dont mind the loud squeal but they're super dusty lol my wheel look dirty all the time.

I might give Winmax a try after im done with these HP+

Please note that most people that have minimal to no noise with the W5 are using OEM calipers. Your AP caliper does not have any harmonic damping, which contributes to the (large) amount of noise you're getting!

Thanks Mike, I forgot to point out that I'm using the RR Racing Sport Performance front BBK which uses a Wilwood 4 piston caliper with STi rotors so it stands to reason that my experiences may vary compared to someone with a different or OEM brake setup. I'll make a quick edit to my initial post pointing that out.

I just want to note that it seems they are back to how they were when I first installed them, mostly quiet, just makes noise when using more than a certain amount of brake pressure under a certain speed. Mostly avoidable with changes in braking technique.

I think they got noisier when the transfer layer went on from my initial bedding procedure and as it wore off, it got quieter again.

My winmax w5 on oem all around was noisy on the last 5-10mph with light brake pressures. And not much modulation for slow street driving. Mine come off asap after track days and old stock pads work fine for daily commute.

Just curious lynxis how's the brake Balance with the rr brake kit up front and oem calipers back? Worth it or do your front pads just last longer with the rr kit?

Regarding the brake balance, this will be my first time running the same compound in the SP kit front with the OEM rears. Last year, I ran the BP10 fronts with EBC Yellow in the OEM rears. The BP10s are noted for a hot mu rating of .35 while the Yellows have a .40 so this evened out brake balance anyway. This setup responded well on the street and the track, was mostly quiet but dusted like mad. Both wore quickly though being pretty much finished after a single season.

It seems fine on the street with the little bit of driving I've done so far but I suspect EBD is compensating if things get too hairy. That said, I don't think that I'm experienced enough to be able to tell such a small difference. Ultimately, I'll need more track and autocross time with pedal dance mode to get a better feeling for it.

In terms of wear, it's hard to say at this point. I've only done a couple hundred street kms on the W5s so far and there is no noticeable wear yet. I suspect the fronts will outlive the rears but not by a large margin but we will have to wait and see.

That said, I can talk about the BP10s and the Yellows that I used last year. Both wore at about the same rate but both only lasted a single season including 3 track days, 6 autocross events and 5000kms daily driving before they were down to around 20% pad material. Both pads are cheap and are known to wear quickly so this is no surprise. Taper wear was virtually non-existent which is good news. I wanted to get a better pad this year because they chunked terribly and I want something that would last longer.

Right on! Thanks, the sport rr kit looks pretty nice for the price.

Another question should I use those metal bracket things the oem pads when I swap brakes? Noticed your rears had the metal plates on the outside.

Those are the shims, they're supposed to help reduce vibrations and noise in the brakes. It doesn't hurt anything to have them there so I always swap them with my brakes. Some people mentioned that they burn theirs up with track driving but the ones pictured are the originals that came with the OEM pads and they're still in good shape. Those are the rears though so they won't get nearly as hot as the fronts. I did a few track days on the OEM fronts with the shims before I upgraded to the RR kit and they're in slightly rougher shape but still completely serviceable.

Ah got it. Makes sense. Thanks for the input!:thumbup: