Track day soft brake pedal - what to do?

[NightmareMoon]

Thanks a bunch. I figured out the front calipers with old pads and a couple of small C-clamps.

The rears really confounded me because I'd never seen pistons that twist before. Needle nose pliers did the trick easily!

Sponsored

 

[Brent Dalton]

Glad you got it squared away.

 

[Vinny@JLTPerformance]

I'm pretty "serious" and in my experience, you put SRF in and forget about of a year; never needing to bleed once!

There are entirely too many variables to make a recommendation such as "don't worry about bleeding your brakes for an entire season". How many events? What tires? What tracks? Racing? DE? Time Trial? Brake cooling?

I managed a shop that built and maintained race cars, DE cars and everything inbetween. Go run Summit Point main in a 3800lb car that makes 600whp in a racing situation and don't bleed the brakes between events. Good way to put a 150k race car in a wall to save $50.

 

[NightmareMoon]

We'll I've now got the G-LOC R12 / R10 pads on my GT, and a track day coming up this Wednesday. I'll probably go out this time with the Ford PM-20 fluid and just a quick bleed, since the fluid only has about 3k miles on it and no track events since my last full flush.

Instead of having the rotors turned, I used a pack of 3M rotor 120 grit resurfacing disks (aluminum oxide) part #01410 to rough up the rotors, smooth them out, and get off some of the old pad material. I did a good wash with soap/water and brake cleaner to get rid of any aluminum oxide dust.

One thing I can say is that the R12/R10s squeeeeeek squeal squeek on the street, and they dust up your wheel super quickly with grey dust. They're not kidding when they say they aren't recommended for street use. I did use some brake lubricant on the back of the pads, so its not just that.

Bedded the pads twice on a completely empty stretch of road. The first session got them up to 650 degrees and they outgassed heavily. Rotors had some nice blue on them from the heat and you can tell where the pad transfer was leaving a coating of grey. Second bedding session was not nearly as dramatic.

Anyway, we'll see how the hold up in a few days. Hopefully that firm-pedal but soft-braking will be gone. The old stock front pads looked ok to my inexperienced eye. No cracks, no missing chunks, and not too shiney (crystallized). The rear pads looked quite a bit shinier so maybe it was the rears that were giving up at the track.

 

[Gatorac]

Interesting. I have the R12's on the front. It took 2 sessions on track until I felt they were bedded in.

They haven't made a single squeak or any other noise on the street. They do dust though as expected. I'll be checking rotor wear as Carbotechs used on the street used to eat up the rotors on my Terminator.

 

[NightmareMoon]

oh ya, backing plates. My stock rear pads had a metal backer, but the GLOCs didn't come with one and it didn't seem to be removable. Is that correct? Run the rears without an extra metal backing plate?

 

[M3Convert]

The brake pads will do a pretty good job on scraping off old pad material without needing to clean them. The blue is from the pad binding resin and shows they are working.I don't think there is a need to turn the rotors.

Race pads squeal when they're warm or even a little bit hot. That lets you know when they're working! I am surprised you got significant enough to notice "outgassing" with modern pads. This has all but been done away with modern resins, the legacy of out-gassing pads being drilled rotors, where slotted rotors are now considered superior.

The recommendation of not using race pads on the street is to do with pad performance at operating temperature, rather than dust/noise. Street pads are designed to work at lower temperatures an designed for intermittent hard braking with plenty of cool down. Race pads are designed to work at sustained high temperatures from frequent hard braking when street pads essentially melt and smear the rotor. Thus race pads are a worse choice for daily driving, even "sprited" driving (whatever that is), as they give poorer braking performance at daily driving brake patterns than those "non-aggressive/fluffy cat" street pads that the regular mooks use.

That being said, there was a noticeable difference in the Ate street pads in my old M3 than race pads, the race pads performing worse at daily driving temperatures than the OEM pads and required noticeably longer braking distance when cold. On the track, it didn't take long for the street pads to overheat and be overwhelmed. In the Mustang, the stock street pads perform very similarly to the Carbotech XP-10s I put on for track days. Go figure!

 

[wildcatgoal]

Here's one to start a convo: Power Stop "Track Day" Pads

 

[stoli]

Here's one to start a convo: Power Stop "Track Day" Pads

You can get their pads AND rotors for close to the cost of just Carbotech/G-LOC pads alone...

 

[Magnificent Bastard]

Skimping on brake pads has probably retired more HPDE drivers from ever showing up again at events than anything else I can immediately think of.

If I literally did nothing else to a noob's car to prepare for a DE, I'd make sure the tires were good, flush the brakes with Motul 600, and use Carbotech XP10/8, G-LOC R10/8, or the venerable PF01/97 as pads. Run them all on a nice, new, cheap set of NAPA blanks.

 

[tedj101]

Skimping on brake pads has probably retired more HPDE drivers from ever showing up again at events than anything else I can immediately think of.

If I literally did nothing else to a noob's car to prepare for a DE, I'd make sure the tires were good, flush the brakes with Motul 600, and use Carbotech XP10/8, G-LOC R10/8, or the venerable PF01/97 as pads. Run them all on a nice, new, cheap set of NAPA blanks.

Which NAPA blank are you recommending, the standard blank (at about $90) referred to as "premium" or the Reactive One Hi Perf (at about $120)?

Thanks,
<TED>

 

[Magnificent Bastard]

Which NAPA blank are you recommending, the standard blank (at about $90) referred to as "premium" or the Reactive One Hi Perf (at about $120)?

Thanks,
<TED>

The Standard ones. You can get a full track season or more out of a set of these for under $300 out the door, and they are surprisingly robust. Not a bad deal at all!

 

[tedj101]

The Standard ones. You can get a full track season or more out of a set of these for under $300 out the door, and they are surprisingly robust. Not a bad deal at all!

Many thanks! That is very useful information!

<TED>

Sponsored