Oh yes another brake pads thread
 

Car setup
Suspension: Tein Flex Zs, SPC LCAs
Alignment: -3.1 deg camber front, -2.7 camber rear, no toe all around, Firehawk Indy500
Brakes: HP+ front, HPS rear, ATE TYPE 200, DBA T2 rotors, OEM calipers
Engine: E85

Use case
This car is a daily for me, so I'd like good pad and rotor wear characteristics. Like everyone and their mother this is also a car I'm using to track.

Currently I've done 1 track day, a handful of autox, and ~25k miles on my hawk setup and there's a good amount of pad and rotor left. A good portion of my daily use is on highways and I engine brake a lot so I think that has something to do with my low wear. I did notice on track (AMP) that I was fading the pads in later sessions and I possibly boiled the fluid in the calipers (mushy).

In the new setup, I'd love for those wear characteristics (or something similar) with the ability to not fade or boil fluid on these Atlanta tracks. Furthermore, as this is a car I want to learn on, I'm looking for good pad modulation to develop good braking habits. Given my schedule I'll probably do only a handful of track days in a year.

Currently I've narrowed down my options to the ones below for each product. From what I've read on here, these pads all have decent life and aren't tough on rotors while maintaining good performance on track. Also from spec sheets, I can't tell much difference between RBF600 and 660 so I'm leaning to either getting 600 or straight to SRF. Centric blank rotors because.

The two main combinations I'm thinking of are CSG CP + RBF600 or PMu 999 + SRF. Notably, I'm somewhat worried the CP pads won't stand up to multiple track days as I improve as a driver so, maybe substitute in C1 there.

Options
Pads: CSG CP, CSG C1, Project Mu 999
Fluids: RBF600, Castrol SRF
Rotors: Centric blanks

You could pick a pad you can live with for daily and be good for autocross. Then the occasional tack day have appropriate set to swap out for that. Otherwise you'll burn thru pads, rotors, or both. Performance and longevity will better in each situation. Look at operating temps for your choices.

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Hawk HP+/HPS pads are known to be woefully insufficient for the track. Their dedicated DTC race compounds fare much better.

Tire compound also plays a role in an ideal brake compound for your use case. You should also consider the braking profile you prefer (digressive, linear, progressive)

With regard to brake fluid, just make the jump to a better fluid. I found that I needed to bleed/swap RBF600 almost every other track day. I use PMu GFour now, and it's already lasting much longer. SRF a lot of people like.

For 2 years I daily drove on Project Mu Club Racer (Racing 999 is a close equivalent), but these days I swap out my race pads after events. From my experience, it's just a pain to dual-duty a true race pad. Rotors and pads wear quickly as they're often below operating temperature. You need to constantly keep up with maintenance or the dust can eat away at your paint, especially if it's humid or rainy.

However if dual duty is truly what you're after, people I have spoken to have been pretty satisfied with CSG CP. You probably won't outgrow them by the time you need to replace them. A set of pads and rotors probably won't last more than 8-14 road course events before needing to be replaced (fronts often wear out closer to 8 events and rears closer to 14 events). By that point, it's a good time to transition to something new anyway if you prefer.

Have you looked at any brake cooling? Could help reduce the need for going to wild on the pads. RBF600 have slightly lower dry boiling point than 660, but its cheaper and i think its better to buy the 600 and flush more frequently.

How come you chose hps for the rear? On my track car which is similar weight (maybe 50kg lower) and power to the twins i found Hp+ petty good for track and road. But i can see them being a slight bit on the fence for longer stints and more power.

Dont forget hard and short brake applications, dragging the brakes pushes so much heat into the calipers. :)

Yeah I've considered this. My main hangup is that I live in Midtown ATL and won't have a place to swap normally. Also it would be nice to only pay for one set of pads right now lol.

From what I've seen dailying on the pad options I've listed isn't awful, happy to hear contrary opinions from those who've tried it though.

Yep. For my first time tracking I figured going out with what I had was fine just to get a bit of experience, it was cool feeling the pad fade and having to account for it--good learning.

Forgot to add that to the post. I run Indy500s. I don't think I've really developed a braking profile I prefer on track yet since I'm so new to this.

My hangup on this is that 600 and SRF have very similar boiling points dry. It seems that SRF's differentiator is the absurdly high wet boiling point. Also, from what I've read from users of them, it seems CSG pads don't run that hot so I figure it might be fine to run 600 vs something like 660 or GFour.

I've never really minded excessive dusting from my Hawks but that rotor and pad wear aren't so hot. I've tried to pick pad options that can work properly as a daily as well in the main post and while I think I'm light on my brakes, that thought is off-putting.

That's a good point--I don't think I'll be doing more than a handful of events anyway so it's probably likely that I won't outgrow them that fast. I remember Mike posting about pad wear after some track time recently and it was pretty good like you mentioned. Seems like a good pad.

I haven't, I'd rather not deal with it. I've also read mixed things about cooling, most notably some setups not allowing heat into the pads and rotors so they don't operate correctly. Not sure how true that is/which setups it's true for.

I suppose the Porsche brake cooling setup wouldn't be too bad to go with.

I got my current pad setup like 4 years ago when I was younger and dumber (read: high school), there was no thought put into it lol. Also I think it also has to do with the tracks here--AMP on the front stretch was like 110mph down into a tight left hander, probably cooked my Hawks after a few sessions.

Yep, it's why I like my engine braking habit instead of dragging to stop lights :)

When it come to brakes, I'm still at the shallow end of the learning curve, but it is my understanding that when you bed your pads, pad material is transferred to the rotor. Switching from street pads to track pads the material transferred my not be compatible with what is on the rotor. Your braking may be less efficient. I have 2 sets of rotors and pads. I switch to my street set in the off season.

In the part of the world where i mostly hang out, which is among track day and racing stuff brake cooling is seen as the cheapest and simplest way of making brake pad least longer and overheat less. There's a reason it's so common on racing cars.. The best is of course removing fog lights and run ducts to the brake disc center, though you might want to keep the fogs for esthetic reasons.

Im thinking of trying the hawk HT10 on the track car (not twin though not that dissimilar), anyone tried those?

I’ve really liked my Hawk DTC-60 front and DTC-30/street race rear. I personally find they start to fade a bit near the end of the session but I’m ok with that as they are pretty usable on the street minus the brake dust.

I used to have DTC-30/street race in the front and it felt good for the first couple braking zones, but after that it would start shaking uncontrollably as they started to get hot.

Also have the Rooducts control arm brake ducts.

That sounds terrifying lol. I've heard good things about DTC-60s on track but I haven't heard of anyone streeting them, I might take a closer look at them then if they're acceptable, thanks for the recommendation.

I think I might have realized part of why SRF is so hailed among it's users. This chart goes from the dry to wet boiling points over the course of the fluids' lifespan. SRF is pretty quickly the best here. I'm just gonna get SRF.

Edit: Apparently brake fluid actually scales nonlinearly as well so I added logarithmic trend lines on each fluid. I'm pretty sure this isn't quite right because of the scaling of the data points but I'll mess with it later. Regardless, makes SRF look even better.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...34/unknown.png

This is my recommendation, and I think it'll make more sense.

The CP, while a street pad, has enough capacity to outperform most entry level race pads, such as a Carbotech XP10 or Hawk DTC, when it comes to raw heat tolerance.

Start with the CP, and the brake fluid of your choice (Endless RF-650 or Project Mu G-Four are my recommendations).

If and when you start fading the CP on track (will take quite a bit, and you will have a lot of room for learning before this happens), retire the CP to Street and AutoX duty, and use the C1 on track. With Indy500 tires, and paying careful attention to NOT over-using ABS, you should not encounter any fade with the CP.

Wet boiling point is irellevent if you're changing your brake fluid regularly, as you should be if you're doing any sort of performance driving.


IMO, spend the money you save from only getting 1 set of pads on an AIM Solo 2 DL, so that you can focus on improving the driver mod, which you will keep for the rest of your life as well as any other car you get in the future.

Mike, can you please clarify what Hawk pads you're talking about? DTC is a range of five different compounds. In my experience, the most street-friendly (30) isn't up to the challenge of a stock-powered 86 on SX2s at the track. I use 60s regularly on track and like them. That is the middle of the range. I believe they don't last as long as the CSG track pads (C2?), but in the big picture have similar feel. Then there are a couple even more heat-tolerant DTC compounds over the 60s.
I don't think I've ever driven the CSG CP compound. That said, I have a tough time believing any street pad is as heat tolerant as a DTC-60.
I could be wrong. It has happened once or twice before. :D But if you could clarify which DTC compound you're referring to I think that would be helpful.
Oh, and I totally believe the CP compound could be better than the XP10. The fact that Carbotech claims them as track-only pads is laughable. At least for an 86.