Standard n/a 949 recipe. 2350 with driver 150whp. 1.8l brakes with singular 2.5" ducts. Running r12/r10. 225 rs4 on 9s. I'm curious on the pad life I'm getting out of this setup. I would think I'd get a little longer life?

ive been buying them pre-bed. Slap them in with a new set of centric rotors, drive to track and hammer. I havent been tracking the pad life too close, but I think I'm getting around 5-6 hours of track time on the fronts and 8-10 on the rear. Happy with the pedal feel down to the last drop. Very even wear on all pads. I ripped through about 60% of the pad life yesterday at mid-O which got me thinking about this subject.

A couple tracks i run I think are pretty hard on brakes -- PittRace and Mid Ohio. Not many familiar with pitt race but I was running1:46/1:47 yesterday ~2 sec off the nasa GL SM record at midO club course for speed reference. Rs4 have ~40 heat cycles. Amazingly still good tread but the grip is noticeably falling off.

Just a thought-- Wondering if my lack of corner grip and slower corner entry required compared to running a RR or RC1 is causing me to work the brakes harder than if I were on R comps? Or is this normal for pad life? Or I just need to learn to drive better?!?

thanks guys....

 

Pad life on my MSM track car isn't particularly great. I run GLoc 12/10 F/R on TSE's 11.75" BBK (with Dynapro calipers) and stock Sport Brakes on the rear. 2.5" ducting runs from the fog light openings to the caliper. I think I got 4 events out of my first set (Carbotech XP12s, which are purportedly exactly the same compound).


Driver-side pads (outside/inside). Note the piece of friction material that broke off when the pads were removed.




There is asymmetrical taper top to bottom. The bottom outside is wearing better here.




Whereas the top inside is wearing better




Passenger-side pads (inside/outside). Note the wear pattern, where the top two-thirds of the pad seems to contact the rotor more (visible on driver-side pads too).




Inside pad is wearing better, which is what you would expect given the brake duct location.




No significant taper top to bottom

 

I'm running G10's on the front, XP8 rears, I'm 5hrs into the front pads and not even half way there. This is with ~250hp and stock sized 1.8 brakes.

You need to bed the rotors as well, once you have the rotors bedded you can stab a set of pre-bed pads in and go.

 

thats interesting and I've seen that a couple other times on the web, but when I talked to someone at gloc several months ago on the phone they said just put them in with new rotors and go? Probably worth exploring more?

And thats amazing pad life. If I had 250whp in my car I can only imagine how fast I could destroy r12's with decent rubber on stock brakes. I have a set of R18's on way to try

 

What you're using the brakes? the best thing I did was follow around a fast Miata (spec guys) and try to match their braking points and speeds in turns. Then step out and add the extra strait away speed and make slight adjustments to your braking points. I found I was over slowing and then relying on the HP to catch up, so I was putting way more heat into the brakes then necessary. Once I got my cornering speeds up to theirs the brakes did fine.

To put that into perspective I was in the low 130's down the front strait at summit where the stock HP guys were 108-111.

 

You really have to qualify this with pace or lap times. If I put 1.8L brakes on my S1 car at just 220whp, they'd be gone in a single weekend. Even with 12mm Wilwood pads I would only expect to get maybe 5-6 days from a set. With the 20mm Superlites, that goes up to 10-12 days on a set.

 

With ~25 less whp, ~50lbs more weight, same tire (or 225 RC1), XP8's on all corners, and running ~1-2 seconds off typical NASA SM pole my pads last nearly forever. Just replaced fronts recently and they went through a year+ of daily, a few days at Harris Hill (small track), 3 NASA TT's (I run the entire session vs one hero lap), and a few days of PDS at TWS (up to 7 sessions a day). They finally bit the dust at Hallett, but there was no point in running them as they ended up killing my rotors, so won't really count that. Maybe it's the ~25hp or Texas tracks aren't hard on brakes (MSR Houston, MSR Cresson, TWS), but I've been getting great life out of less pad.

EDIT: Ah crap I keep missing the GLoc vs Carbotech. I figure the compounds can't be too much different, but I'll be giving GLoc a go in the near future and guess I'll find out if they have (for whatever reason) a shorter life span.

 

Invest in a Trackspeed 11.75 kit and your pad life will be 2-3x over what it is now. The kit will pay for itself in no time.

I was amazed at pad life differences between stock and the 11" kit I had. Once I stepped up to the 11.75" pad life got soooooo much better still.

 

And that's kind of what I'm drilling towards.... These pads and rotors are adding up quick. Is it a driving style issue? A mechanical issue? Bedding issue? Or just normal wear? If Normal wear are the economics there to go with something like the trackspeed 11.75 kit?

Any further advice or questions on how to get to the root is greatly appreciated.

 

​​​​​ I was running 1:29 to 1:30 which is 2 seconds off the NASA spec record. RS4'S so ultimate grip was less than spec cars, I was carrying 20mph more speed down the main strait and 10mph more in the other straits. Combine that with the fact I was 5mph shower in the turns and I'd say I was way harder on the brakes than a spec car could ever dream of.

 

Swapped my G10/8 out this weekend for XP10/8's due to a little too deep of a pedal, wear looks exactly the same as my 2016 carbo's. Both used sets lasting around 14hrs of podium SM pace in a vvt car. Pads still have ~40% easily left in them bit of a taper though.

 

I had a conversation with Andrew at Trackspeed about my pad life. He asked if the speedclips are perhaps touching the pad backing plates. It took me a few minutes to process the question and then the penny dropped. I have two 11.75" BBKs - one with Dynalites on my '93 street car and one with Dynapros on my MSM track car. Both have interference, as you can see in the following pics:


The Dynalite uses a single "speedpin". Unfortunately, Carbotech (and now GLoc) use a backing plate that is too high and a relief cut has to be Dremeled. Also unfortunately, I only ground enough to allow the pin to close properly and there is still interference.




The Dynapro uses a W-shaped "speedpin". These XP12 pads were bought for my Dynalite-equipped car, so I had to cut the backing plate to fit. As before, I didn't remove enough material to prevent interference.




Andrew postulated that the speedclip interference causes the pads to bind and stay together at the top. Once one considers this, the problem becomes quite apparent. As you can see by the wear pattern on my GLoc Dynalite street pads, the bottom of each pad is wearing significantly less.




So, out comes my trusty Dremel tool:


It's not pretty, but it got the job done






As you can see, the speedclip doesn't touch or interfere at all now




A little more work for the Dynapro pads. Even less pretty, but it works.






Hunky and/or dory




Now if I free-spin a front wheel, it keeps on a-spinnin'. Before, it would only revolve a few times, so I definitely had some drag. Hopefully this will help extend my pad life a tad.

Also, I rotated my track pads before the last track day (left-inner to right-outer, etc.) and it evened out the taper completely. I'll start doing this as a matter of course after every event. Another to-do item that makes perfect sense in retrospect.

 

Update: My latest set of pads (Carbotech XP12s that had the backing plates cut in order to fit Dynapros) lasted for several track sessions on my home track, a 3,000 km drive to MRLS and then one-and-a-half days of track driving there. They were brilliant in terms of performance and I can't complain about pad life. Here's a picture of how they looked before being changed out. Minimal taper and fairly even wear (a little more on the passenger side, but not much more). GLoc 12s are now installed, with no discernible change in performance.