Daily drivers, do you swap street and track brake pads?
 

I'm in the market for some brake pads for autox. Lots of race pads will squeak or dust like crazy, some more than others. A guy I was talking to yesterday said he swaps them. For whatever reason I don't get along well with brakes - something always comes up that turns a half hour job in to at least a couple hours.

I don't want to swap pads all the time, but race pads are all pretty expensive (plus the other cons above) to be running on the street. Who does this?

I used to, but then I got lazy.

It takes about 10 minutes with a floor jack, impact gun, and two wrenches.

Also, a major contributing factor was proper bedding. If you brake a little harder on the street with proper bedding, the noise is mostly mitigated.

I will.

I bought a set (F/R) of Project u HC+800 for my car but after driving with them on for about a week, I decided to "save" them for the track. I will go to an HPDE this Saturday and will take them out on Sunday. This makes sense to me as I won't be doing HPDEs every month anyway. I can see leaving them there if I were to attend an event every month.

I know the HC+800 are not as expensive as true race pads, but I think stock pads are good enough for my daily drives.

It takes me more than 10 minutes to change tires :P

What kind of life could I expect on, say, a set of Ferodos doing about 10 events and 10k miles a year? I suppose $300 a year would be better than changing pads all the time.

i used to

then i said fuck it

choose a nice compromise pad and keep your hands clean.

If you're out to win the championship then that's a different story... but sicne you're asking i can assume that you're not.

i don't know about the other racers but at one point i got tired of carrying bins of parts and tools, crawling on my knees early in the morning, getting sweaty, dirty, withour proper facilities to clean myself up.... all for a few tenths. Not to mention the absolute fact that the more work you do the higher your chance of doing something wrong one of these days.

Nowdays i prefer to work on my car in my garage... once a year... and focus on more important things like driving the damn thing. :)

Depends on what compound I am running at the time and how corrosive they are for my wheels.

I do, I take off the wheels, etc to inspect everything anyways.

swap pads - wheels are off to bleed brakes after the event anyways, only takes like 2 seconds to change out the pads.

You should. You can live with Ferodos as a daily pad, though.

I swap pads for HPDE's. I don't autox anymore but when I did it competitively for 4 seasons I never found any gains by making any braking modifications. My car wasn't fast enough for any changes to make a difference.

I swap unless I have back to back track weekends in which case I just leave the race pads in...

I only do when I swap summer/winter tires and wheels.

For Autox no need for a super aggressive pad honestly.
I hate swapping pads all the time. Your hybrid pads will make noise on the street unless you late brake or brake harder often as Mike said.

Austin or Mike what pad is below the HC800 or the XPS8 that would be quiet on the street but pump up initial bite?

NS400, AX6, for the respective brands.

Technically B-force is between NS400 and HC+800, but that's $$$$$

@qoncept

Look at those pads. You won't ever be generating enough heat in autox to fade them. You want something with that high initial bite for those monster stabs on the brakes. Really same concept for most street driving.

If you can live with brake noise then you can go more aggressive.

My DS2500's barely make any noise on the street, even with very light braking. Definitely dustier than OEM, but I wouldn't call them terrible.

I'm sure *most* people who do any sort of motorsports won't care too much about dust.

Carbotechs are pricier, but their dust is EXTREMELY easy to clean off. Literally, hose down the wheel as long as it's not caked on.

Swapping pads is the most economical effective way to get the best of both worlds. Yes, it's a pain, but it's so easy to do, why not?

That being said, I'm don't how important it is to have a dedicated track pad for autoX. I would guess you want it for the bite since fade shouldn't be an issue for such a short period of time at low speeds. Ferodo DS2500 are a dual duty type of pad which might suit your purposes. The negative of those pads is that they dust a ton for street use.

Just FYI, if you are running a cooler flowing vented brake kit like the AP kits, even the Ferodo DS2500 can make noise..maybe a lot of noise. It'll stay too cool and scrub off it's own bed layer and then screech.

Source: my DS2500 killed mosquitoes and broke wine glasses

That's weird. DS2500 are the OEM pads for an Evo X and the noise was only very minimal, if at all. I replaced my OEM pads with DS2500 and nothing changed in characteristics.

I'm currently driving a car with the AP Racing Sprint kit, and Carbotech XP12 properly bedded.

There is no noise except a tiny squeak when you first get onto the brakes, or if you're braking VERY lightly.

Anyone local is welcome to ride to experience :)

My self and one other on these forums have used DS2500 on previous cars without a squeak but now along with the Sprint kit they are squealing badly at low pedal pressure on the street. So much so I sometimes use the handbrake, at low speed, coming up to traffic lights.They handle the track I go to so I can't be bothered changing them.

Everything's a compromise except for those things that aren't.

Don't forget the value of your time :)

(I'm in the finance industry... ROI ROI ROI)

Depends on each person's opportunity cost. Everyone is different. :)

I have the AP Sprint Kit...like Snooze, my DS2500 squeal badly. I switched to Carbotech 1521 on the street for now and it seems mostly silent after bedding.

Edit - to clarify, I think the combination of the j-hook slots making things more abrasive, and then the extra cooling capacity means the DS2500 doesn't get up to temp often enough to maintain the bed layer. I'm no expert and just guessing, but it makes sense. I can clearly see that when bedded (and after track) the rotor is a nice dark metal burnished color. After a few days, it's back to hyper bright shiny silver and squeling. The CT 1521s squeeled once or twice initially, and now bedded the rotor is back to the dark grey color and is quiet. I'm not sure what else the case would be, but I'm certainly open to other explanations.

For the moment I thought your ROFLcopter was going "SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI"

I spend enough time prepping the car already, with events every week (I'm in the middle of 11 in a row right now). I'm already one of the last in the lot changing tires and then I have a 1-2 hour drive every time.

So let me ask this, then.. some seem to think I don't need pads at all. I'm not a great driver but I want to get my car at least close to fully prepped for stock class so I can gauge myself against other drivers. Right now I have pretty much everything but struts, which I'll probably hold off on for the rest of this year (because I somewhat unreasonably want to come up with a set of donor struts for Konis), and brakes. Are better pads worth the money? I've never bothered in any of my other cars.

Oh, and who has a set of front struts they want to get rid of cheap? :D

Honestly you don't need them for autox. But a more agressive street pad with a good bleed will help the car stop harder faster and if you are looking for few 10ths it may help. But its not going to blow you away.

If you are running nationals or pro I would say do it. Mike gave a good street/autox list. For regionals save your money.

I hate swapping stuff after autox. Get stuck working 1.5 hours on hot black top at 5PM you want to get home.

Mine barely make any noise at all on the street, and they haven't been to a track yet since I installed them.

Under very light braking there's a tiny bit of squealing, but with the windows up and music on you can't hear it. It's more frequent than the squealing I had with the OEM pads, but not louder or more annoying.

I swap pad for track and daily, just because track pad is much more expensive, so I don't wanna waste it on daily.

I have ClubRacer front and XP8 rear as long as they are in the heat range they don't make noise which is difficult to do daily driving. I don't care either way since I've gotten lazy with swapping to stock pads. People stare and its fine. I like the bite of the Race pads more than stock no matter how noisy they are.

after my last track day I left the XP8 pads in and it seemed to quiet down nicely to where I thought "oh that's pretty quiet, I will keep them on for street". Then I drove to LV for 86EXPO and they were squeaking like mad again. :iono: I drove it home afterwards and washed the car and things got quiet again. Now it seems to be pretty good, but it's almost like a split personality though. Yeah it's loud at times but if you roll up the windows you don't hear too much of it. Just feel bad for the people on the street as I roll to a stop ahaha. Funny though, in Vegas no one really noticed because its so damn hot everyone has their windows up and AC on blast.