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Brake pads, need better understanding

Cardude99

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What is the down side of using the same pads front and rear for track (obviously track pads). I'm told by my friends with more experience than me to do same pads front and back and pull the fuse for the abs on track as it's best to learn that way and not become dependant on the abs. I know the consensus here is to do better pads front and worse pads rear due to brake bias but I do trust my friends and want to get input on their setup advice. However they don't drive an s550 so I want to learn as much as possible and I am looking to the community here to educate me on what the pros and cons of each setup is. I would like to start doing about 4+ track days a year on my car and I know I need pads before doing so, so this is very important before I start.

Thank you in advance for any and all help/ advice
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Norm Peterson

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All that pulling the ABS fuse while keeping the same pad compounds all around is likely to teach you is how to do threshold braking at a lower level than what the car is inherently capable of (chances are that with rear brakes designed to accommodate ABS, TC, and AdvanceTrac the rear is inherently overbraked and would set an "early" upper limit to your braking intensity in the absence of ABS).

Seems to me if you were going to pull the ABS fuse for track time for any reason, your only remaining means of adjusting brake bias would be by staggering the pad compounds.

The harder you brake, the greater your need for more front pad relative to the rear becomes. But this does not mean "less rear pad". Philosophically as far as brake balance is concerned, it's normally better to go up the pad 'mu' food chain on the end that needs more pad than to go down on the end that could do with less.


Norm
 

NightmareMoon

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The staggered pad compounds are a unique thing to the mustang. If your friends don’t have experience with the S550 on track, don’t listen to their advise on pad compounds for this car. They may be right for whatever they drive, but it doesn’t apply here.

pulling the ABS fuse would make more sense with older ABS systems and cars to learn to drive, but its dangerous to do on track because it significantly lowers your margins for error. You do want to learn how to not ask too much of the brakes, but IMHO just paying attention to when ABS has kicked in should be enough. ABS is kind of normal in a lot of situations and your goal should not be to never use it. Bumps in the braking zone? ABS kicks in. Thats a good thing. Flat smooth braking zone and you’re in ABS the entire thing? Ok maybe you asked a bit much.

This car isn’t the same ABS from years ago. IIRC rumor was that the car hits the rear brakes hard even with light pedal pressure and expects to manage rear traction with ABS on the rear axle. You won’t even realize its doing that. Turning ABS off and you’re operating outside the zone the car was intended to function in.
 
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Cardude99

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The staggered pad compounds are a unique thing to the mustang. If your friends don’t have experience with the S550 on track, don’t listen to their advise on pad compounds for this car. They may be right for whatever they drive, but it doesn’t apply here.

pulling the ABS fuse would make more sense with older ABS systems and cars to learn to drive, but its dangerous to do on track because it significantly lowers your margins for error. You do want to learn how to not ask too much of the brakes, but IMHO just paying attention to when ABS has kicked in should be enough. ABS is kind of normal in a lot of situations and your goal should not be to never use it. Bumps in the braking zone? ABS kicks in. Thats a good thing. Flat smooth braking zone and you’re in ABS the entire thing? Ok maybe you asked a bit much.

This car isn’t the same ABS from years ago. IIRC rumor was that the car hits the rear brakes hard even with light pedal pressure and expects to manage rear traction with ABS on the rear axle. You won’t even realize its doing that. Turning ABS off and you’re operating outside the zone the car was intended to function in.
Thank you for that. I was not aware that this is unique to the s550 platform, that might be why they think im nuts lol. I appreciate the feedback.
 

Grintch

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The staggered pad compounds are a unique thing to the mustang. If your friends don’t have experience with the S550 on track, don’t listen to their advise on pad compounds for this car. They may be right for whatever they drive, but it doesn’t apply here.
Pretty sure it NOT unique to the Mustang. As the front brakes do more work than the rears on most cars (maybe not a 911 with a high rear weight bias). But in the past, I think some brake supplies would design a pad for a given application, and might sell and name them in a full set, which would hide the fact that the actual compounds used differed front to rear.
 

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NightmareMoon

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Yeah all cars have different braking components front and rear, but not every car uses different compounds front and rear. Some surely do, I think some cars use the same pad compounds, just smaller pads.
 

Norm Peterson

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Cars that are using the same pad formulations all around would only have wheel cylinder piston areas and mean swept radii to put the mechanical brake balance where it needs to be. I suppose they could play around with different master cylinder bore diameters as well.

Pad area mainly affects things like pad operating temperatures and pad longevity. Any effect on brake balance would probably be downstream of operating temperatures (IOW, as an indirect effect).


Norm
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