Brake pad questions

[RedStallion27]

2016 GT performance pack used for HPDE and occasional street driving (500-1000 miles per year).

Intermediate skill level. 200TW tires. Brembo DOT4 fluid. Stock pads lose a little bite near the end of my sessions.

1. At what thickness do you replace the pads?
2. Would G-Loc R10, R12, or R16 front pads make the most sense for how I use the car?
3. Can I keep using stock rear pad replacements or should those be upgraded at the same time?

Thank you.

Sponsored

 

[NightmareMoon]

If you swap pad compounds, do front and rear together. You have to keep the brake balance and dissimilar pads will mess that up. Slightly higher temp front pads are fine but OEM rears and track fronts are not.

Consider swapping at 50% pad thickness for track. Why throw away so much pad you ask? 1) Because pad thickness also provides a thermal barrier. Thin pads will transmit more heat through to the brake fluid and will boil it a lot faster. 2) because track wear can surprise you and running out of pads during a session is Real Bad. So pad thickness is valualble insurance against two problems.

If the brake pedal effort gets higher for similar stopping distance, thats consistent with pad fade, so worth upgrading pad conpounds. If the brake pedal gets squishier, thats fluid, upgrade fluid and/or swap it more often. If you’re upgrading pads you should probably run a more serious brake fluid too. Track fluids have higher boiling points but they can absorb water faster and thus degrade performance faster, so if you’re on a track brake fluid, you have to change it more regularly (regardless if you’re driving street, track, or if its basically just sitting)

So probably yea you should consider upgrading pads if you are having pad fade. The OEM brembo pads are quite good for street with a bit of track work, but they have their limits once you start pushing hard enough.

 

[GTP]

@NightmareMoon has good advice as always.

50% remaining thickness of 10mm (new) pad material (includes the groove depth) is 5mm. Subtract the groove depth and the remaining "operating" pad thickness is 5-3=2mm. That is pretty much a good time to throw them out. Or perhaps throw them in your kit as emergency, half-day spares.

I am a bang-for-the-buck guy (= kinda cheap). I run take-off OEM Ferodo pads on my GT350 brakes. I find them easy to modulate and brake linearly. I used to log thickness a lot, and I recall that they wear about 1mm per track weekend. That is about a season for me.

I stopped measuring total thickness and now I simply stick my 6" metric ruler into the center groove and read the operating thickness directly. (When the center groove is gone it is time to replace pads. But this rule of thumb is for street use, not track.)

Compressing time during braking is an intermediate/advanced skill, so as you improve in this area, pads wear faster and run hotter. Rotors develop micro cracks.

If I go to Road America with 3 long straights, I make sure I am running new-ish pads and not old-ish pads. Gingerman has one 120mph straight, then 50mph 90-degree turn, then another 100mph straight. IOW, not much time for brakes to cool. And four other brake-from-80/90mph turns. So that track heats up my brakes too. NCM has three fast sections, and narrow off-track runoff, so the risk is higher IMO. I don't run old-ish pads there either.

 

[Optimum Performance]

2016 GT performance pack used for HPDE and occasional street driving (500-1000 miles per year).

Intermediate skill level. 200TW tires. Brembo DOT4 fluid. Stock pads lose a little bite near the end of my sessions.

1. At what thickness do you replace the pads?
2. Would G-Loc R10, R12, or R16 front pads make the most sense for how I use the car?
3. Can I keep using stock rear pad replacements or should those be upgraded at the same time?

Thank you.

R10 fronts, R8 rear G-LOCs. I put them on our shop car 10 years ago. Great compromise for improved heat capacity while not being ridiculous on the street. I have data from Daytona, 1.45g's from 150mph into turn one with a Stock S550 Performance pack on a 340 TW tire. They work well, can you overheat them? Absolutely. Anything is possible if you try hard enough. We have been street driving them for a decade now, not winning any money at an HPDE so why make it hard to show up to a track day always ready, then drive to work the next day.

 

[John S]

show up to a track day always ready, then drive to work the next day.

How does the R10/R8 combo compare with the OEM pads used on Brembo/Mach 1? I'm switching to Castrol fluid and OP's titanium pad insulators as a starting point for my introduction to HPDE events on my PS4S shoed Mach 1 HP. Tires, pads, and rotors are consumables so until I advance with better driving skills, I figure OEM pads with street tires is a balanced approach before switching to R10/R8 with stickier tires?

 

[Optimum Performance]

R10/R8 is our go to for anyone stepping up from OEM pads on a street car. The internet will tell you to jump to a R16. It usually ends badly in our experience because people don't let their coaches run laps in their cars because they all think they a Dean Martin or Billy Johnson.

Every time you move to any R Compound pad from OEM move up progressively. You will be generating more heat so re-learning braking points is critical. Unless you add cooling you will smoke the pads. We have had Customers smoke a set of RST3's in a practice session at Sebring. Pagids are 2 sets of G-LOC's and lunch money.

If you know what you are doing you can go with R12/R10's but they are unhappy on the street because they need heat to work. That said we have had Customers run R18's dropping their kids off at school

Sponsored