Brake Pad Advice?
 

I've been reading up here and everywhere, but still a bit confused on my choices. So for reference the basics of the scenario is:

The car is a DD (although I don't have a commute, so I can go a bit extreme on what "DD" means), it's on street tires (currently Conti DW, but lets say at the outer limit I might switch to Pilot SS or similar grade of street tire) which I plan to also use at the track, stock calipers, SS brake lines, Motul fluid, and I'm only using one shared set of brake rotors. The rotors are a bit upgraded from stock (they're Relentless 2-piece, better cooling vanes, slotted, thicker than stock in the rear). The rotors are brand new, and I have a set of HPS pads (what I've been using on the street) that I could bed in on them for right now on the street.

My driving skill level is still definitely in the novice category, but hopefully will improve soon. I have an instructor-led 2-day HPDE type thing coming up in about 6 weeks, on a 2.38-mile road course (MSR Houston). I plan to run on this and Texas World Speedway mostly, and in the long term we're probably talking once a month to once every 2 months.

So, I'm looking for one of two things: either one set of compromise pads that are streetable without a huge noise level, won't tear up the rotors, but will survive 20-30 minute track sessions on this street tire setup through several days of HPDE. I haven't yet seen one pad that looks like it can really do dual-duty like that though.

The other option is to decide on two sets of pads, one for DD and one for road course use, but again they need to be compatible for easy re-bedding switching on the same set of rotors, and preferably the race ones aren't too aggressive (seeing as again, I'm on street tires, I'm not an expert, and I'm not a fan of quickly destroying rotors either).

I guess at the upper end of cost, it looks like I could do say Carbotech XP10 + XP8 for track only, and swap back to another set of lighter Carbotech (AX6 or the street pad), since they say the CT pads aren't compatible with non-CT pads on the same rotors for swapping. Looks pricey considering the CT street pads too, and I don't know if I need that level yet.

Another option would be to try something like EBC Blue+Yellow, or all Yellow, (or similar, like Fedoro DS2500?), and again switch to something else for the street (but hopefully it's compatible with something cheap like my current HPS's)? Or are the Yellowstuff all they're cracked up to be and can be used dual-purpose on all 4 as a single-pad solution?

Thoughts?

sorry I admit up front I didn't read your whole post since my eyes started glazing over,

BUT, if you don't want to be switching out your pads for every track event, then a decent compromise pad IMO, are the carbotech XP8's. A little bit extra squeal, dust, harder pedal etc, but totally liveable, at least for me, and they will survive a track event no problem. Esp if you are new to HPDE, then as you get faster, you will most likely either a. move to a more aggressive pad and not care how much dust/noise you generate on the street or b. have to switch pads for your HPDEs with a compatible street only pad.

Sorry for the long post then :) Was just trying to pre-empt answering all the standard questions people would ask about my brake pad needs.

I worry about the noise level running carbo XP8 or higher on the street though. I know it seems petty or silly, but I don't want to be squealing around everywhere all the time. I've still been reading up more since I posted, I'm starting to lean towards maybe EBC Blue. Seems like they've gotten pretty good reviews as a single mixed-use pad for low noise and decent performance for short track sessions. (or maybe yellow if Blue's a little rougher than what I need).

on the rare occassion I drive mine on the street, I have XP12s and they rarely make any noise.

Scratch the bluestuff idea, seems they don't make blue for our stock calipers, just yellow.

no worries, not you it's me, your post was very thorough. :tup:

xp8's don't squeal that bad at all honestly, I don't think they dust real bad either for what they are. I can only compare them to our last car (GTR) and those oem brembo pads were easily twice as bad for street driving as the xp8's are so I suppose it's all perspective. ANY pad that's more aggressive will seem loud/dusty compared to the Z's oem pads which are really really good at being quiet and clean.

XP8's all around is doable? Based on the above I'm willing to give it a shot and see how it fares on the street for now. The description on the XP8 talks about fronts for lighter cars, vs XP10 for a heavier car though. They'll still perform reasonably well on the front of our car (compromises considered and all)?

DO NOT USE XP10 on street tires, you will just hit ice mode and scare yourself. Or EBD can kick in. You might not get it as bad as I do due to your experience, but you will poop in your pants if ice mode or EBD kicks in at the wrong time. See my video here, car pulled to the right on its own 0411 370z WGI Unstable brakes.avi - YouTube

XP8 is rotor friendly, but you will always get a little wear and you have to make sure you bed them in right. As for the noise, there is some. I would be more concerned about the dust as they can pit the wheel within a week. Here is how noisy XP10s are Carbotech XP10 brakes - YouTube

If I get in a working mood, I will do some testing with the XP8/XP10/stock pads I have to see how they change the braking distance.

Junk those HPS before they destroy your rotors, worst pads ever. The EBCs are crap too. Grassroot Motorsports recently tested bunch of pads, but I believe they are in the $200-$400 range.

The HPS worked fine for me for street driving on the stock brake setup. The rotors look fine too, but I'm not hard on brakes on the street, I tend to downshift and come to stops slowly. I even used them for a several light trial sessions at the track, but again I was really easy on the brakes.

That whistling in that XP10 video is annoying. I assume that's only under light braking when cold?

This seems to be one of those questions where you ask 10 people and get 10 different answers. Everyone says someone else's favorite sucks for some reason :)

My Prius feels fast to me too until I get into my Z.

Light braking you get more. Cold or hot you will get it

Well the one thing that's clear from this thread (and really, was already clear from other threads) is that the Carbotech pads are everyone's track favorite for sure on the Z, and that I should probably start out at 8/8 given my current situation, and re-evaluate later as I upgrade tires/skill :).

It's really just how "streetable" those are that opens up all the other questions, I guess because that's kind of subjective. If I don't hate the noise I'll just leave them on full time, and if not I'll spring for CT's own "Bobcat" street pads to use between track weekends since they'll be rotor-compatible.

Unless someone comes up with some other creative and divergent opinion here. Thanks for the input guys :)

There are better pads for sure (cobalt friction comes to mind), but in terms of rotor life and price. I don't know what comes close.

Why don't you just use the OEM pads or something?

I have never used the Bobcat, but no one seems to like it. I have used HPS, HP+, Hawks Blues, Carbotech 8/10/12 and Cobalt Friction

You mean use OEM on the street w/ Carbotech 8/8 on a track weekend?

What I've been reading here and there and everywhere is that Carbotech pads leave a different kind of surface deposit than other pads, and it's not recommended to switch between Carbotech-type pads and non-Carbotech pads on the same set of rotors, as you'd have trouble re-bedding properly unless you sanded/ground off the old pad material each time. I suppose in reality it's more about whether it's the same type of compound, not the brand name.

Well anyways, I'm still holding out hope that the XP8's will be quiet enough on the street regardless. If not then I'll look at my street options for rotor-compat. It seems like the reviews on XP8 noise vary a lot, and I'm starting to think this is mostly to do with user/install variations. Seems like probably the key is to properly lube them with disc brake lube of sufficiently high temp rating, and to bed them in fully and properly, both of which I intend to get done right.

As far as lube goes, going to give this a try. The temp range on it is out of this world, way beyond temps that would destroy the rest of my brake hardware: http://www.permatex.com/products/Aut..._Lubricant.htm

i have been doing the xp8/10 swap to oem pads for 6 years on a 350, c6, rx8 and 370. car never had issues related to pad. i can get 15 to 20k out of the stock rotors on each one before the lip develops. ithe noise is annoying, but i am more worried about the dust as they have pitted the wheels on every car i have had. i never had a problem with cold stops either with them, i just dont want to destroy the wheels.

do you have base calipers? i am not sure why you need lubes given the 4 piston design really dont use them.

just learn to swap the pads and call it a day, takes 15 min per corner

I've always used lube on the back of the pad, even in a fixed caliper. Supposedly reduces noise.

I've been using XP10/XP8 since my first track day. Never had an ice mode problem with (RE-11s or AD08s). Maybe I'm not engaging the brake fast/hard enough to cause it. I've also run this setup on the street without any horrible noise... until very recently.

After replacing my stock rotors with a set of PowerSlots the noise level went up 10x. It's ear piercing when I drive next to a wall or building. For an example watch the first 45 seconds of this video: Great Lakes Z Club - LaPeer Dragway 9-10-11 I've got a set of Bobcats on the way because of all this new noise.

Dust from the XP pads is THICK but I've not had any issues with damage on my stock sport wheels or the TE-37s. Maybe I'm lucky... but I neglect my car washing quite a bit (The other MI guys FORCED me to wash my car at ZdayZ : ) and have yet to see any adverse affect on my wheels from the dust.

Well, I'll be using the XP8's on slotted rotors too, which I assume is the difference factor in your noise. We'll see how it goes once I get them on and bedded.

/\ same here, carbotech advertises that their dust is noncorrosive and so far anyway, that seems to be the case, no issues/damage with the OEM Nismo wheels and our car isn't washed on a very regular basis.

In for updates. I am very interested in this same topic and would like to know what you decide.

If swapping pads back and forth the CL Brakes are a good option as well. They don't require bed-in as they are a sintered compound. For street tires and a little beyond I would run C6E front and C5+ rear. They handle 1800F and never give any hint of fade. The C6E pads are their endurance compound and seem to wear at about half the rate of any other pad I've tried. Perhaps they are more aggressive on rotors as a result but I haven't noticed any issues so far. They are pricey, but given the wear rate I find them cost effective.

chris, how many track days do u get out of your pads

The rears seem to last for an infinite amount of time, they simply don't wear. The fronts I replaced after about track 11 days (5 2-day events), and they probably had another 2 days left in them but I keep them as spares. 7 of those days were at NHMS which is brutal on brakes.

I used the Hawk DTC-70 at WGI because they were out of stock and they just weren't as consistent over the entire session.

that is excellent wear for the cars power and weight. i probably get half of that if i really use my brakes

Yeah I was extremely impressed by the CL Brakes performance and durability. Expensive yes, but they last twice as long. Availability is the only big issue.

at least you can say it is $2000 well spent, not just some $2000 ricer parts that add nothing

Expensive, but not that expensive. For the sport brakes the fronts are about $320 and the rears are around $270. An extra few bucks for mine as the AP pad shape isn't as common.

I meant the bigger calipers/rotors. THe pads too. I would love to go back to some Cobalt Friction, but they are over $300 per axle at this point.

Cobalt Friction are good pads too, similar properties the CL's. They are a sintered hybrid pad.

Their marketing strategy is terrible too. Grassroot motorsports rated them highly in their latest test, but it's nearly impossible to order them without calling them direct.

It is a problem with these companies. They put huge resources into engineering with some very bright people, but nothing into marketing.

THMotorsports is a reseller, but of course if you select the 370Z then you see no products. For the 350Z with Brembo's they are showing $269 for XR3's and $189 for XR5's rear. Just need to figure out if they actually make a product for the 370Z.

Like Carbotech, they should have the blanks ready and they can probably make it within a few days.

I am actually curious as to how these places stay in business. They only sell to the race car market, yet they seem to be doing okay. How big is the hardcore racing crowd? I guess they use up a lot of sets in a race. It's the same with all the ALMS cars that barely have sponsors on them.

It beats me how these companies stay in business. Even if you have 10% of the national professional racing crowd it isn't a large number.

thats not too bad. Pretty close to what I pay for Carbotechs.

However, when I got my Stoptechs and put them on 2 days before a track day, we found out that Stoptech used a different rear caliper than we were expecting with the small rotor kit, and the Carbotech pads I had for the rear were useless.

I called Carbotech on a friday morning, and they stopped normal production to make a set just for me. Not only that, they hand delivered them to a friend that afternoon so he could bring them to me at the track the next day.

They have my business for life now.

I've heard several Carbotech stories very similar to that, they definitely go the extra mile and a half. I would probably give them a go but when I was talking to them last Winter they couldn't figure out my AP pad shape. I guess I could just send them some used pads and go from there.

Wow $580 is two sets of Carbotechs for the sport calipers. :) Are the AP pads that much larger?

Typically all the aftermarket caliper pads are more expensive, that goes for Stoptech, AP, Brembo etc. They are a little bit larger but I don't think size is the primary factor determining price, I think it is mostly about volume and how many pads of each compound they can make during a single production run. Small companies like Carbotech can't afford to have large amounts of product sitting around on shelves.

x (ninja removal of braindead morning post) :)

You should take a look at these. Brake Pad (RB ET800) - 370Z (NISMO) FRONT 2009
I run the ET500 with DBA 4000 rotors and love the combination.

For whoever else was wondering: just got done installing and bedding in a set of CT XP8 on all 4 corners, against brand new slotted rotors (Relentless's). Also, I did use the ultra-high-temp Permatex brake lube (on the pad backing plates, the pins, and the obvious wear spots on the spring clip thingies).

Got what I think was "ice mode" (sure seemed like the descriptions here anyways) once during the bedding process, but the brakes came right back a few seconds later for the next stop. Either that or it was just an extreme example of what they call "green fade", but it was pretty late in the process. Looking at the rotors, it looks like I bedded in reasonably well. I may try again even harder if I get the chance, there's still a little bit of "uneveness" to the pattern of the transferred material on the rotor, probably just still leveling out the finer variations in the rotor surface itself or something.

But the good news is, I'm not getting any noise from them, not even riding them light on a slow parking lot turn or anything. Crossing my fingers they stay quiet.