Brake pad selection

[luvemfast]

Even though its been covered, I've done a search and haven't been able to find the thread.
So the idea is for guys to recommend their personal experience and usage.

I'm looking to buy some new brake pads and thought there should be a sticky of what gives you best bang for buck.
So can mods please stick this?

For occasional street and sprint use.
I'm currentley running TRW (Lucas) pads in my Z32/Skyline 4 spots up front and series 2 280ZX rears. Last time they cost under $100 for the set. They seem to work pretty good and I don't suffer fade.

I can recall that Hawk pads came highly regarded and were well priced. But which grade?

Can anyone here also supply a special price to forum members?

[PZG302]

For hawk pads, buy them direct from the US, about half price to your door than what you cen get them here for. eg, in Aust paying $140-160 for a set of HB100 size pads for my Wilwoods, from the US, $80 at my door.

The best way to get the info you need is the following:

1. Jump onto Hawk's web site and download their catalogue, big at about 100MB from memory.

2. Once you have your pad shape, email the the tech help on the website, I have the email address of the person to speak to but would rather not put it on a public forum, and he will recommend the best compound for your application, for most sprints and road use, Hawk Blue, 9012 compound would be the go.

3. Jump onto www.hawkpadsdirect.com and order your pads. Be careful of the shipping, depending on how many you want to get at once it pays to play with the order number to see how shipping is affected, I saved a bundle doing this and made two seperate orders. The pads took about a month to arrive, but for the rice a bit of pre planning is well worth it.

4. Fit to your car, and have what is in my opinion the best value brake pads money can buy.

Just be careful as some compounds can be harsh on rotors, the compound I was using, DTC60, would chew through standard rotors pretty quick, ie one set of rotors for 2-3 sets of pads, I would however get a good half season out of a set of pads and still have about 3mm of the origibal 6mm left when swapping them out.

The hawk Blue 9012 compound is noisy and does like to be warmed up in my experience, so not really recommended for the road with the car I had them in. On the track, brilliant. And with the compound I enede up using again the same needed to be warm to get the best out of them and if they squealed like a stuck pig on the cool down lap coming into the pits then I knew I had been working them pretty hard.

Matt

[dat2kman]

+1 for Lucas TRW.
Using these on Dato 2000 race car were very good T Bathurst, 5 or 6 lap races, as well as all other tracks.
For single lap events ie a hill climb or a single run street sprint, i have a set of new old stock soft standard asbestos pads! NLA

On the 280 race car, ill swap between Bendix Race, Lucas TRW.
Ferodo DS race pads turned to crumble dust after one meeting, due to excess heat
EBC many years ago, in Greens or Reds were great, but they make them with excess leading/trailing edges chamfered, so you are not getting full pad contact until 1/3 worn.
Their Yellows are full race and harsh on rotors

I dont like Bendix Ultimate, again with hard race use, very harsh on rotors.
Tried QFM race, quite expensive, better value elsewhere.

Stick to Lucas TRW, cheap cheerfull, and surprisingly will take higher heat input temps than many others, second would be the Hawks, only thing is, they have so many compounds it is all a bit confusing on their site!
Some tarmac rally guys love the carbon metallic compounds from Hawk dunno which compound numbers, agian, a bit confusing.
Matt, please give us a simple explanation of their rangesand uses.

[Scando]

I was running EBC yellows but at Symmons Plains which is supposed to be the hardest track in the country on brakes, They would fade in the longer races and I would struggle to get though a meeting on a set of pads!  They did have really nice feel but simply weren't up to the job.

I've now switched to Project Mu compound H16-03 (same as the control pad for the supertaxis).  They're brilliant.  They are double the price of the EBC's but I now get 3 times the pad life out of them.  They are hard on rotors but rotors are cheap anyway.  As soon as I started using them I could go much deeper into corners than with the EBC's and had a lot more confidence that it would pull up.

The H16 compund is quite hard and does need to warm up a little before it works properly so it's probably not suitable for your application.  It would be well worth looking into some of the softer compounds though.

[PZG302]

I think this may be the thread you were looking for about brake pads for the track.....
http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,9205.0.html

[Gareth. J.]

I was running EBC yellows but at Symmons Plains which is supposed to be the hardest track in the country on brakes, They would fade in the longer races and I would struggle to get though a meeting on a set of pads!  They did have really nice feel but simply weren't up to the job.

I've now switched to Project Mu compound H16-03 (same as the control pad for the supertaxis).  They're brilliant.  They are double the price of the EBC's but I now get 3 times the pad life out of them.  They are hard on rotors but rotors are cheap anyway.  As soon as I started using them I could go much deeper into corners than with the EBC's and had a lot more confidence that it would pull up.

The H16 compund is quite hard and does need to warm up a little before it works properly so it's probably not suitable for your application.  It would be well worth looking into some of the softer compounds though.

I ran the EBC yellows with solid rotors and cooked them so much the material was dropping of in huge chunks. I tried GSL rallysports A1RM spec pad but had fade issues again.

Now running the project Mu same as Scando, they don't have great bite when cold but seem to brake better the more you abuse them. Not cheap but a great pads

[PZG302]

Stick to Lucas TRW, cheap cheerfull, and surprisingly will take higher heat input temps than many others, second would be the Hawks, only thing is, they have so many compounds it is all a bit confusing on their site!
Some tarmac rally guys love the carbon metallic compounds from Hawk dunno which compound numbers, agian, a bit confusing.
Matt, please give us a simple explanation of their rangesand uses.

I'll try to put up a summary over the weekend based on my experience and limited knowledge of the brake pads for typical uses of what I expect we all need on the forum for the Hawk pads. Maybe then Jason might be able to make sense of the Hawk cattledog 

[Scando]

I ran the EBC yellows with solid rotors and cooked them so much the material was dropping of in huge chunks.

They did that to me too 

[DAZDA]

EBC is a TLA (Three Letter Acronym) for 'Sh*t'.

EBC are the worst pads I have ever used, co-efficient of friction felt like it was 0.001 for all temperature ranges.  I have had good results with Ferodo DS3000 in the rally car, and resonable results with Bendix Ultimates at trackdays.

[260Coupe]

+1  for Lucus "dusty's".......the work hot/cold and resist fade, cheap and they don't chew discs.
I tried many a compound in my Sc Zed and my Sb spec Roadster and have found these to the best by far. I have these in my road going zed and apart from needing a good hard stomp on the stoppers occasionally (to remove any light glazing  caused by light use in suburban traffic) they are fine for the road......the only down side is that that are very dusty.

Don't forget that pad selection must also correspond to tyre size and the compound, a very agressive pad may be fine if you are running 17" slicks but will flat spot a street legal R spec tyres in an instant .


Alan