Brake pad selection is all about comprimise. A dusty pad is very quiet and keeps rotors happy enough to re-use through a few sets of pads. Dusty pads also typically have a much better thermal profile for a street car.
From what you are looking at you basically have two good options.
Axxis Deluxe pads. However their braking performance kind of sucks (still better than stock). They are quiet though and work well when cold.
EBC red stuff pads. They make very very little dust. Their performance is awesome. There were a few national rally champions a few years ago that ran these pads. They can be fairly loud at times. They annihilate rotors (don't expect to see a rotor live through more than a single set of pads). They can be a little sketchy to stop those first few times on a really cold day. Their life is OK.
Here's the thing about rotors.
Rotors are 100% about heat management and coping with heat once it's in the brake system. They do absolutely NOTHING to improve braking performance. The one and only time you will ever see the difference between an OEM rotor and a really nice high performance rotor is on a road course. If you never plan on having the car on a road course it's probably a waste of money. If you are road racing the car or doing some nutty canyon driving they are indispensable. Good rotors let pads live longer. Don't warp as easily. Reduce fade. AND keep wheel bearings alive.
All that heat in the brakes on a track car has to go somewhere. Whatever heat doesn't go into the pads goes into the hub assembly. All of that heat will eventually cook the wheel bearings. When I still had time to do serious road racing I was eating up a set of wheel bearings every 3-4 months. At $400 a pop per axle that gets annoying. Good rotors will keep bearings alive longer.
I will NEVER run a set of drilled rotors on one of my cars or a customer car. They ruin pads and every single one of them will crack eventually. It's slotted or nothing.
Slots are once again only useful on a track car that gets the pads VERY hot. The purpose of the slots is gas extraction. Ever pushed the car hard and noticed your brakes smelled funny afterwards? That is the smell of all the chemicals in the pads outgassing. Problem is on a solid rotor those gasses will become trapped between the pad and the rotor causing the pad to "float" on that layer of gas. Kinda scary to feel. Once again. Unless are you getting your brakes stupidly hot, an OEM solid rotor works very nicely.
DBA makes the best rotors in the world if you are going that route.
I've had a set of DBA 5000 rotors glowing glowing bright orange/yellow in broad daylight with 0 fade and warpage. Those things lasted a whole season. Amazing stuff.
Another thing:
ATE super blue fluid is only blue so you can verify that all of the fluid has been flushed from the system when you change it. When you change the super blue change it with the ATE TYP 200 fluid. It's the EXACT same formulation. Just yellow. So you can keep going from Blue -> yellow -> blue. Change the fluid every 3 years with no track use. Change the fluid with every set of pads on a track car.
Time for brakes...
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (No-Coast-Punk @ Feb 9 2008, 09:31 AM) [url=index.php?act=findpost&pid=24149]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/url]</div>
I've found that the dustier the pad, the better the bite. The stock pads on my Protege did not dust at all- which was nice. Braking performance was OK. When I changed to the EBC Greens, dust increased by leaps and bounds- but so did braking performance. The Hawk Blues I had on my track car would also dust like crazy- so much so that I would have to wash it off the paint after a day at the track.
And rotor "warping" isn't really a function of the rotor becoming non-flat due to isolated heat distribution or from overheating. The "warping" sensation is actually from an uneven pad material build up on the face of the rotor.
Read more about it on the StopTech website:
http://www.stoptech.com/tech_info/wp_warped_brakedisk.shtml
You can also immerse yourself in loads of information here:
http://www.stoptech.com/tech_info/tech_white_papers.shtml
Brake pad selection is all about comprimise. A dusty pad is very quiet and keeps rotors happy enough to re-use through a few sets of pads. Dusty pads also typically have a much better thermal profile for a street car.[/b]
I've found that the dustier the pad, the better the bite. The stock pads on my Protege did not dust at all- which was nice. Braking performance was OK. When I changed to the EBC Greens, dust increased by leaps and bounds- but so did braking performance. The Hawk Blues I had on my track car would also dust like crazy- so much so that I would have to wash it off the paint after a day at the track.
And rotor "warping" isn't really a function of the rotor becoming non-flat due to isolated heat distribution or from overheating. The "warping" sensation is actually from an uneven pad material build up on the face of the rotor.
Read more about it on the StopTech website:
http://www.stoptech.com/tech_info/wp_warped_brakedisk.shtml
You can also immerse yourself in loads of information here:
http://www.stoptech.com/tech_info/tech_white_papers.shtml
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
1997 Explorer XLT - 4.0 SOHC V6 Controltrac 4x4
mods- 30" BFGs, AAL + TT = 1.5" lift, more to come
1997 Explorer XLT - 4.0 SOHC V6 Controltrac 4x4
mods- 30" BFGs, AAL + TT = 1.5" lift, more to come
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SpeedRacer
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Tom and Coast seriously thank you for that information I'm sure everyone here will love that and learn a lot from it. Thanks guys.
Heavy duty adjustable dog leashes
http://www.TitanTuff.com
http://www.TitanTuff.com
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DemonOfTheFall
- Senior Member
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I like the Hawk HPS pads OK. The cold bite is a little worse than the stock pads but they bite nicely once they are warm. Dusting seems to be a little reduced vs stock however the stock dust seemed to immediately imbed itself in my rims and I would have to claybar them to get it off. The dust from the hawks seems to come right off in the cash wash.
I think next set will be EBC Red Stuff.
I think next set will be EBC Red Stuff.
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Huzer21
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No-Coast-Punk
Sorry it took me awhile to reply to this. Been pretty busy this weekend. The girlfriend made me get a dog 
Tom is 100% correct about the warpage thing. I just kind of throw that term around because it's much easier for most people to grasp than saying things like "un-balanced frictional co-efficients across various areas of a rotor".
There are two big reasons why cheap rotors give the "warping" sensation more than expensive ones.
One is that they don't have the stable thermal profile an expensive rotor will. This means that different areas of the rotor will accumulate heat in different amounts. This can cause pads to overheat and leave deposits in the hot area, where the cool areas will not pick up deposits.
Second is the casting structure. A cheap rotor doesn't have 100% uniform density through the casting. A cheap rotor is also more porous than a good one. This hurts you twofold. Once again it makes certain areas of the rotor more susceptible to picking up deposits, AND the porosity makes it easier for the overheated pad to shove material into the pores of the metal.
Once again it's all about heat management. If you aren't annihilating your pads with repeated triple digit panic stops, a cheap rotor will work just fine.
As for dust vs/ performance most street pads typically follow a pattern of increased dust = increased performance. Most street compounds are very soft though. The thinking being that pads are cheap, rotors are expensive. It's better to have a soft pad that is easy on rotors, so that you can get a few sets of pads out of one set of rotors. Brake dust is pad material that has been sloughed off the pad. Think pencil erase on a piece of paper. You get a whole crapload of stuff left behind by the eraser. Soft pads also bite a little bit better when they are cold.
Hard pads don't dust nearly as much as soft pads because they wear more on the rotor than on the pad. Iron that has been worn off won't really stick to much. This is also how those $99 lifetime brake job places stay in business. If you notice they always say "lifetime pads, rotors extra". Use the hardest set of brake pads known to man kind. Wear down rotors as fast as you can. Sell tons of expensive rotors.
In the end though I personally prefer the hard pad side of things. Why? I will never use a set of rotors for more than one set of pads to begin with in like 90% of situations. As things wear and become thinner their heat capacity goes down exponentially. By the end of a pads useful life it gets much hotter and more prone to depositing stuff. Most pads will leave some stuff behind by the end of their lives. Your options at this point are
A) (the most common in America, but pretty much illegal overseas) turn the rotor in a brake lathe.
Throw new pads on and run with it.
C) replace rotor.
I always do B or C and NEVER A (I missed all the brake lathe questions when taking my master mechanic exams because I've never used one).
Two reasons I won't turn a rotor.
The exponential loss in heat capacity thing due to removing tons of mass.
You now took a surface that was heat treated and compacted a bit at the factory. Had the shit compacted out of it during normal usage (very little porosity in a used rotor). Then strip that hard layer off and expose super soft iron that is much more porous than ever before. A turned rotor might last 1/3 of the time as an OEM one (not to mention all that extra heat is kinda dangerous). This is incredibly dishonest towards the customer because you ding them up front for all the labor to turn the rotor. Then ding them again in a few thousand miles when the rotors are destroyed along with the pads. Since the rotors are now much thinner things run hotter and pad life is severely compromised.
What does all my babbling mean?
EBC red pads are the shit. They are very hard and perform very well. They will destroy rotors... but who cares. The pads themselves are very long lived and they don't dust as a result. You should be replacing rotors with pads anyway, so running soft pads that are rotor friendly is a waste of time.
Tom is 100% correct about the warpage thing. I just kind of throw that term around because it's much easier for most people to grasp than saying things like "un-balanced frictional co-efficients across various areas of a rotor".
There are two big reasons why cheap rotors give the "warping" sensation more than expensive ones.
One is that they don't have the stable thermal profile an expensive rotor will. This means that different areas of the rotor will accumulate heat in different amounts. This can cause pads to overheat and leave deposits in the hot area, where the cool areas will not pick up deposits.
Second is the casting structure. A cheap rotor doesn't have 100% uniform density through the casting. A cheap rotor is also more porous than a good one. This hurts you twofold. Once again it makes certain areas of the rotor more susceptible to picking up deposits, AND the porosity makes it easier for the overheated pad to shove material into the pores of the metal.
Once again it's all about heat management. If you aren't annihilating your pads with repeated triple digit panic stops, a cheap rotor will work just fine.
As for dust vs/ performance most street pads typically follow a pattern of increased dust = increased performance. Most street compounds are very soft though. The thinking being that pads are cheap, rotors are expensive. It's better to have a soft pad that is easy on rotors, so that you can get a few sets of pads out of one set of rotors. Brake dust is pad material that has been sloughed off the pad. Think pencil erase on a piece of paper. You get a whole crapload of stuff left behind by the eraser. Soft pads also bite a little bit better when they are cold.
Hard pads don't dust nearly as much as soft pads because they wear more on the rotor than on the pad. Iron that has been worn off won't really stick to much. This is also how those $99 lifetime brake job places stay in business. If you notice they always say "lifetime pads, rotors extra". Use the hardest set of brake pads known to man kind. Wear down rotors as fast as you can. Sell tons of expensive rotors.
In the end though I personally prefer the hard pad side of things. Why? I will never use a set of rotors for more than one set of pads to begin with in like 90% of situations. As things wear and become thinner their heat capacity goes down exponentially. By the end of a pads useful life it gets much hotter and more prone to depositing stuff. Most pads will leave some stuff behind by the end of their lives. Your options at this point are
A) (the most common in America, but pretty much illegal overseas) turn the rotor in a brake lathe.
Throw new pads on and run with it.C) replace rotor.
I always do B or C and NEVER A (I missed all the brake lathe questions when taking my master mechanic exams because I've never used one).
Two reasons I won't turn a rotor.
The exponential loss in heat capacity thing due to removing tons of mass.
You now took a surface that was heat treated and compacted a bit at the factory. Had the shit compacted out of it during normal usage (very little porosity in a used rotor). Then strip that hard layer off and expose super soft iron that is much more porous than ever before. A turned rotor might last 1/3 of the time as an OEM one (not to mention all that extra heat is kinda dangerous). This is incredibly dishonest towards the customer because you ding them up front for all the labor to turn the rotor. Then ding them again in a few thousand miles when the rotors are destroyed along with the pads. Since the rotors are now much thinner things run hotter and pad life is severely compromised.
What does all my babbling mean?
EBC red pads are the shit. They are very hard and perform very well. They will destroy rotors... but who cares. The pads themselves are very long lived and they don't dust as a result. You should be replacing rotors with pads anyway, so running soft pads that are rotor friendly is a waste of time.
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SpeedRacer
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No-Coast-Punk
Nobody really knows. Looks like some random pit bull mutt something something. Seems to be about 6 months old.
We were looking at dogs at the humane society to keep our current dog (German Shepherd random mutt something something) company. This one jumped right up into my lap and wouldn't leave me the hell alone. Current dog liked it too. I'm a sucker.
We were looking at dogs at the humane society to keep our current dog (German Shepherd random mutt something something) company. This one jumped right up into my lap and wouldn't leave me the hell alone. Current dog liked it too. I'm a sucker.
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SpeedRacer
- Posts: 5030
- Joined: Wed Sep 19, 2007 9:14
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- Contact:
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (No-Coast-Punk @ Feb 11 2008, 11:58 PM) [url=index.php?act=findpost&pid=24957]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/url]</div>
I've also heard that during the repeated heating and cooling of a brake rotor, cementite will form in the metal structure. I forget exactly what cementite is (Materials class and I never got along too well) but it is a very hard compound in the metal structure. When you get your rotors turned, the cutting tool on the lathe can actually deflect and go around the cementite which leaves a high spot (that's very hard) on the rotor surface which will tend to collect more pad material and heat than other locations on the rotor- which also contributes to poor performance after a rotor is turned.
And FWIW, I used to run what is known in the Saturn community as "Chinese white box rotors" on my Saturn track car. Basically, they are the cheapest rotors that show up on the screen at your local auto part stores. These rotors were very popular with the Saturn owners that abused their cars at road courses with racing compound brake pads. I never had any rotor issues- but I did my best to warm them up properly and to cool them down properly on track. In the paddock, I would roll the car 1/2 tire revolution after the car sat for 10 minutes or so to let the brakes use the other side of the rotor to sink its heat into. Before I started using the racing compound brakes (Hawk Blues), I used my EBC Greens for 2 track days. I never noticed any issues on track but at a rain soaked autox a few weeks later, the brakes were horrible. When I took the pads off, I found that the pad material was chunking away. I'll see if I can remember to post pics of them.
Right now, I think I have the mid-grade Duralast (Autozone's house brand) rotors on my car. And even though my EBC Greens (my car weighs less so I can get away with the greens) comes with some special "bed in treatment" on the pad surface, I took the car out the same night they were installed and did ten 50-5 mph slow downs with increasing brake pressure to bed them in myself. Never had any problems.
Two reasons I won't turn a rotor.
The exponential loss in heat capacity thing due to removing tons of mass.
You now took a surface that was heat treated and compacted a bit at the factory. Had the shit compacted out of it during normal usage (very little porosity in a used rotor). Then strip that hard layer off and expose super soft iron that is much more porous than ever before. A turned rotor might last 1/3 of the time as an OEM one (not to mention all that extra heat is kinda dangerous). This is incredibly dishonest towards the customer because you ding them up front for all the labor to turn the rotor. Then ding them again in a few thousand miles when the rotors are destroyed along with the pads. Since the rotors are now much thinner things run hotter and pad life is severely compromised.[/b]
I've also heard that during the repeated heating and cooling of a brake rotor, cementite will form in the metal structure. I forget exactly what cementite is (Materials class and I never got along too well) but it is a very hard compound in the metal structure. When you get your rotors turned, the cutting tool on the lathe can actually deflect and go around the cementite which leaves a high spot (that's very hard) on the rotor surface which will tend to collect more pad material and heat than other locations on the rotor- which also contributes to poor performance after a rotor is turned.
And FWIW, I used to run what is known in the Saturn community as "Chinese white box rotors" on my Saturn track car. Basically, they are the cheapest rotors that show up on the screen at your local auto part stores. These rotors were very popular with the Saturn owners that abused their cars at road courses with racing compound brake pads. I never had any rotor issues- but I did my best to warm them up properly and to cool them down properly on track. In the paddock, I would roll the car 1/2 tire revolution after the car sat for 10 minutes or so to let the brakes use the other side of the rotor to sink its heat into. Before I started using the racing compound brakes (Hawk Blues), I used my EBC Greens for 2 track days. I never noticed any issues on track but at a rain soaked autox a few weeks later, the brakes were horrible. When I took the pads off, I found that the pad material was chunking away. I'll see if I can remember to post pics of them.
Right now, I think I have the mid-grade Duralast (Autozone's house brand) rotors on my car. And even though my EBC Greens (my car weighs less so I can get away with the greens) comes with some special "bed in treatment" on the pad surface, I took the car out the same night they were installed and did ten 50-5 mph slow downs with increasing brake pressure to bed them in myself. Never had any problems.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
1997 Explorer XLT - 4.0 SOHC V6 Controltrac 4x4
mods- 30" BFGs, AAL + TT = 1.5" lift, more to come
1997 Explorer XLT - 4.0 SOHC V6 Controltrac 4x4
mods- 30" BFGs, AAL + TT = 1.5" lift, more to come
-
No-Coast-Punk
How long ago was this? EBC re-formulated all their pad compounds a couple years back to deal with the chunking issue.
Too many people were bitching about the excessive dust so they removed some of the binding agents and a few other things. Those greens didn't dust too badly. Unfortunately they fell apart. Their new compound seems to not have this issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cementite
In case you're curious. Stuff forms in a brake situation when the iron gets hot enough to get near its first ionization energy and suck up some of the carbon that should have gone into making your wheels black.
Too many people were bitching about the excessive dust so they removed some of the binding agents and a few other things. Those greens didn't dust too badly. Unfortunately they fell apart. Their new compound seems to not have this issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cementite
In case you're curious. Stuff forms in a brake situation when the iron gets hot enough to get near its first ionization energy and suck up some of the carbon that should have gone into making your wheels black.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (No-Coast-Punk @ Feb 12 2008, 09:33 AM) [url=index.php?act=findpost&pid=25025]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/url]</div>
The pads were bought back in summer of 2004 and I noticed the chunking in early 2006. I'll post pics later.
How long ago was this? EBC re-formulated all their pad compounds a couple years back to deal with the chunking issue.[/b]
The pads were bought back in summer of 2004 and I noticed the chunking in early 2006. I'll post pics later.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
1997 Explorer XLT - 4.0 SOHC V6 Controltrac 4x4
mods- 30" BFGs, AAL + TT = 1.5" lift, more to come
1997 Explorer XLT - 4.0 SOHC V6 Controltrac 4x4
mods- 30" BFGs, AAL + TT = 1.5" lift, more to come
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SpeedRacer
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- Joined: Wed Sep 19, 2007 9:14
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