Rear brake pad lifespan
 

As they are on the rear, I don't really have enough opinion to post in the brake pad thread about this, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to let people know that I got 16 track days and 9500 miles out of Ferrodo DS2500 pads on my rear brakes. This is without pedal dance or anything like that. One pad was worn past the wear grove, the other three still have some of the grove visible (not sure why only one pad). Dust boots were still pretty intact (only noticed a small amount of crustiness on one of them) so I don't think I really cooked the rears too much at any point.

hold on a second


so what you're saying is


there are brake pads in the rear... and they wear?

I'm saying that I got 9500 miles and 16 track days out of DS2500 on the rears...

The idea being if you are using DS2500 and you are getting close to either of those values you might want to take a wheel off and check the wear indicator groves more frequently.

Alternatively, if you are thinking about using those pads which cost $160, you could have an idea what your running costs will be.

In the end I am trying to provide some information that at one point I would have liked to have had; you know, for the good of the community and such.

I'm just making a funny


that's a very short life for rear pads!

I would agree <10k miles is short except for the part about 16 track days. If that's four 20 minute sessions each day, that's over 21 hours of on-track time... Depending on the track and driving style, that might not be so bad.

My buddy roasted through a new a set of DS2500's on an old E30 325 in 4 track days.

Most of them are actually 5, 20 minute sessions, so more like 27 hours of on track time. Overall the tracks I've been on are probably in the moderate to hard on brakes range (mostly T-hill, Buttonwillow and MRLS). By that I mean I am able to get endurance pads up to bedding-in temperatures on the fronts without any trouble.

What front pads/setup are you running?

Also, what tires are you running?

What kind of power are you putting down?

Brakes are one of those YMMV things...

sup.

16 track days is a LOT.

Front brakes have been Essex sprint the whole time, started off with DS2500 for street and DS3000 for track, got lazy and mostly used DS3000 which kind of turned to dust on the freeway. Now using DS 1.11s and keep meaning to swap back to DS2500 for street use. I never tried the DS2500 on track and when I started I wasn't even getting the DS3000s up to temp. I didn't realize for quite a while that I hadn't even managed to get them bedded in until I was half way through them (took me a while before I gained the necessary skill to hit higher speeds and threshold brake enough to get them to bedded in).

Started off with Michelin Pilot Super sports, now using Yokohama Advan AD08Rs

Power is stock, only engine mods are catch cans and oil cooler.

Alignment started off with stock, then got crash bolts to -1.2 camber in front, nothing in rear, 0 toe all around. Got it changed more now but that doesn't matter since the pads are off :p

Best way to learn is to do something a bunch of times in rapid succession. That way you keep a constant train of thought and have comparable experiences. :)

It's all relative. Some drivers go once or twice a year, and some are out there 40-50 or even more days a year.

I'd recommend you use the same compound front/rear. You're probably noticing that the fronts wear faster than the rear; that's because theyre doing more work. You want to distribute the work as best as you can to even out the wear.

If you're not doing the pedal dance, then the ECU is distributing the brake force as best as it can for you automatically.

yeah, originally I choose the compound distribution because I didn't think I would be going pretty much every other weekend and I wanted to keep the noise and dust more in check. I was figuring that the rear brakes would be more work to swap than the fronts so I just kept with one compound for the rear. Then I kind of stopped swapping the pads and after mucking up some rotors in the process I realized that I should be swapping rotors also which was alot of work :p

I'm not yet doing the pedal dance but it is something I want to move up to; so far I have only tried it on some autocross runs.

I've been running the Ferodo DS2500s front and back on and off the track for a year now. About 15,000 miles, with 10 track days. I still have considerable life left on the rears, while the front's may only see one more track day.

They squeal a bit when it rains, and even have had them stick to the rotor if you park with wet rotors ...

Other than that - been really happy with their performance. I'm most likely going with the track only 1.1s as well as the DS2500s when I buy pads next.