Sebring murdered my brakes
 

Hi everyone. Long time lurker, first time poster.

I'm hoping someone can help me out. I was recently at Sebring International Raceway for a High Performance Driving event and near the end of the event (5th of 5x 30 minute sessions with a minimum of 1 hour rest in between) I felt abruptly increased brake pedal effort, decreased braking performance, and noisier braking. My pedal was still firm and I was able to just stand on it harder to stop nearly as quickly, but something was obviously wrong. When I went to swap back to my street pads, I noticed that the track pads looked terrible. I believe they are glazed? This was my second track day on these pads and they were only used on the street to get to and from the event which was less than 100 miles each way. I did my best to bed the pads into the rotors with increasingly aggressive braking without stopping (and the cooling ducts blocked) the night before the event as I had previously and they felt great until they suddenly didn't. The only differences from the previous track event where I had no issues to this one were stickier tires (previously Michelin Pilot Sport 4S 215/45/17) and a master cylinder brace. The rear pads look perfectly fine.

My car specs are as follows:
2016 Subaru BRZ Limited w/ 46k miles
Engine is completely stock aside from a K&N drop-in filter
Stock weight
Stock wheels
Bridgestone Potenza RE-71R 215/45/17 tires all around, brand new
Stock calipers
Goodridge stainless steel braided lines all around
Motul RBF 600 fluid
Verus Engineering front brake cooling ducts "molded" into the front bumper
Front brake rotors: Centric 120.47021
Street pads: Ferodo DS2500 all around
Track pads: Ferodo DS1.11 all around
Stock springs and shocks
Whiteline WEK001 and WEK002 bushing kits
Whiteline BSK020 front and rear sway bar kit

I believe I've read on here that the stock brakes with good pads should be good enough to lock up most DOT tires but I've honestly never experienced anything close to that even with super cheap tires.

Is Sebring at 86° just too much for the stock setup?
Would a different pad hold up better?
Should I shove electric ducted fans into the cooling ducts? (LOL?)
Do I have to go to a big brake kit if I want to keep playing?

I have some data recorded through TrackAddict for the whole event. Please let me know if that or any other information would be helpful.

Thank youAttachment 199264Attachment 199265Attachment 199266Attachment 199267Attachment 199268Attachment 199269Attachment 199270Attachment 199272

Not being able to activate ABS with ds2500 is a problem, something is wrong there, doesn't matter what tire. Hopefully just a thorough fluid flush.

Assuming there's no driving issues (long and soft on the brakes puts more heat into them then short and hard) step up the pads, it does sound like you glazed them, raybestos st43 is the go to srs bzns pad, lots of options out there. Ds1.11 is good but there are pads that handle heat better.

BBK would make sense if you need to stick with ds1.11 for some reason, but it only spreads the heat on a bigger pad, it doesn't change the energy you're dumping into the system and you may need a tougher pad anyway.

Video will help, data will only help if someone has comparable data.

https://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23680

EAR RAPE WARNING!
https://youtu.be/4eoyl1zyIm0

Sorry, I caught too much of the interior in the frame so it washed out the video.

Edit: also, forgive the excessive leaning. Long day, heavy helmet haha.

I did not pedal dance all the nannies off since my brother was in the car with me.

For your other points: I'll try to find somewhere dusty I can completely stand on the brakes and see if I get any ABS. I drove old Civics forever and I probably just got used to threshold braking. I'll put 2 tires on a road line or something.

I'm not married to Ferodo at all; I just liked that they had the My vs. temperature data so readily available, honestly. I will probably try the Raybestos next time then.

I had forgotten about the thread you linked. I will read through it again with renewed interest.

Thank you!

Cheers, nothing stands out in the vid, time to try a new pad imho.

Real brake ducts will help, pipe the front bumper inlet to the disc, shouldn't break the bank.

Shouldn't need to find anywhere dusty at all, ABS is easy to activate on my 245 RE71R or BFG's with the ds2500 on clean line grippy concrete.

I'm willing to bet you just got a bad batch of brake pads.
Contact Ferodo about the situation and they will probably send you replacement ones.

You shouldn't have an issue with DS1.11 pads. However, if you were running with the nannies on, you will abuse your brakes more. The main tool the nannies use is individual wheel braking. The meat ballast in the passenger seat will use more brakes as well. Perhaps you are just becoming more experienced and using more of the car? Upgrade to the AP Racing Sprint kit. You will be glad you did. The pedal feel and consistent performance are incredible. I was one of the best mods I did to my car. I don't believe a simple brake pad change will get you satisfactory results. At least not at Sebring. Sebring is tough on brakes. And everything else on the car for that matter.

What do your rotors look like?

- Andrew

LF, RF, LR, RRAttachment 199320Attachment 199321Attachment 199322Attachment 199323

Let me know if you'd like the wheels off

Oh! I also had caliper temp stickers on that dayAttachment 199325

This is the kit I use on track: https://www.ftspeed.com/part/fr-s-br...ling-kit-ducts

I tried Essex, who were the ones that i think sold me the pads but no response so far. I'll contact Ferodo directly. Thanks

Makes sense. I was definitely pushing myself and my car as hard as I could, as evidenced by a couple of off-road excursions. I'm sure the AP kit would solve my problems, but I want to make sure that I actually need them before dropping a few grand on it. Thank you for the input

Sebring is a pretty rough track that can murder brake setups quite easily. There are other pad compounds available outside of the Ferodo application that will function well for your application and don't need ducting to work.

Look at CSG pads to be honest.

Yep you exceeded the ability of your pads. Good news is you did not exceed the ability of your brakes(No brake fade/no boiling). CSG will be able to get you a better pad. Make sure your fluid is changed often and good quality. With better pads you next weak link could be the brake temperature.