Stoptech Brake Pads
02-20-2011 | 06:49 PM
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From: Montclair, NJ/Phil., PA
Stoptech Brake Pads
Has anyone tried the Stoptech Street Performance Pads? There are some positive reviews on the BMW sites. The pads are supposed to be as good or bettern the HPS pads for less money.
The pads come in the Stoptech Brake Kits, but they have started to make them in other fitments.
The pads come in the Stoptech Brake Kits, but they have started to make them in other fitments.
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01-04-2014 | 04:20 PM
#10
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Joined: May 2011
Posts: 108
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From: Colorado
I recently decided to try a set of Stop Tech Street Performance pads on the front of my '03 AP1. I knew going into it they weren't going to deliver the bite and braking power as Hawk HP Plus pads, but was willing to experiment and see how far off they would be, especially at the substantially lower cost... about 40 bucks cheaper for a set of front pads: the Stoptech SP 309.08290 pads are currently only about $45 shipped, as compared to $85 shipped for the Hawk HP Plus HB245N.631.
My experience with brake pads and performance driving (autocross and track driving) goes back more than 20 years. In that time, I've used all of the following street pads: Hawk HPS (terrible), Hawk Performance Ceramic (also terrible), Axxis Ultimate (my favorite street/autox pad), Hawk HP Plus (excellent autox and light-duty track use pad, but dusty), EBC Yellow Stuff (terrible, didn't work worth a crap on the street or track), Porterfield R4S (not terrible, but I wasn't impressed either), as well as these full-on track compound pads: Hawk DTC-60 and DTC-70, Carbotech XP10 and XP12, Raybestos ST-43, Performance Friction PF01, and Carbone Lorraine RC5+ (all of these track pads work very well and have huge heat capacity, but they dust a lot, are very expensive, and wear quickly under hard use).
Overall, I am pleasantly surprised that the StopTech SP pads performed well on the street, and were fully acceptable at the track as well. I bedded in the pads properly with plenty of 70 mph to 5 mph hard stops after I installed them of course (until the pads were lightly smoking and stinky). I've now put about 300 miles on these pads—about 100 miles on the street, 200 miles on the road course. The initial bite of these pads is not as crisp as the Axxis Ultimate that were my favorite street/autox pads, but this can actually be a good thing as it makes for less abrupt weight transfer to the front wheels if you're not as smooth with your pedal inputs as you should be. Once you've stroked the brake pedal into the "meat" of the travel for hard braking, I found the feel acceptably firm and consistent even after 6 flying laps at 8 to 9/10ths (on my local track, about 15 minutes' worth of driving).
My S2000 is mostly stock except for coilovers, swaybars, and a square (9" wide wheels w 255 section width tires front and rear) setup, so it represents a very different "test case" than someone with a forced induction S2k with tons more power than I have, but I was still able to turn about 200 miles on track, driving to the limits of Bridgestone RE-01R tires for 20 to 25-minute long sessions without experiencing drastic pad fade. Each lap included a significant brake event from 112–114 mph to about 70 mph and another hard decel from about 75 mph to 35 mph. Also, for the majority of my track sessions, I had a passenger, so my vehicle weight was about 3100 pounds.
Before I ordered the Stop Tech pads, I'd read on this BMW forum where someone was complaining that the Street Performance pads were excessively chamfered, which results in decreased pad surface area to generate friction against the disc (and less pad material/pad life as well):
http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum...6#post25494006
I am not impressed with the Stop Tech Street Pads on my 99M3. The chamfer takes up 1/2 the pad area, which means much less of the possible pad area is making contact with the rotor. They stop the car, but I would choose something else. I put Stop Tech Street Pads on my 08M3 and like them on that car, but the chamfer area is not nearly as great a percentage of the pad.
So, I was pleased to find that the StopTech Street Performance pads for the front of the S2000 are not chamfered at all—just a radial split in the material:
You can see that as street pads, the StopTech SP pads are equipped with "squeal strips" to rub against the rotors when only about 1/4 of the pad material is left, and they come with anti-squeal pads mounted on the backing plates. I chose not to re-use any of the stainless steel backing plates that were on the pads I removed (not sure what kind they were; might have been OEM). I haven't heard any noise from these pads, either on the street or on the track. Note that my S2k is completely stock in terms of the intake, header, catalytic convertor, and exhaust, so it's quiet enough for me to hear the pads squealing a little if they were:
There is about 9 1/2 mm of pad material when they're brand new:
This is how much brake pad dust was accumulated on my previously clean mag blue RE30s after the 200 miles on-track. It probably looks like a TON of brake dust, but it's really not considering how much pad I burnt through with that much track driving:
In this picture, I wiped a "clean stripe" in the brake dust to better show how much dust there was. The dust from the Street Performance pads cleaned off very easily with just water—I didn't bother to use any cleaner at all. For pure street driving, I would say these pads dust minimally, although that is still probably a little more than the factory OEM pads.
And here is what that wheel looks like, perfectly clean:
I only took one picture, but I checked the approximate amount of pad material left immediately after the 200 track day miles on both sides... there's 7.5 mm of material left, so I vaporized and turned into dust about 21% of the Stop Tech pads... that is very minimal wear IMO:
The wear pattern on the brake rotor after the track day... perfectly acceptable/normal:
Lastly, here are two in-car videos from that open lapping day where I was running the StopTech Street Performance pads. You won't hear any brake pad noise, but occasionally you'll hear the rear tires rubbing the rear bumper cover under cornering loads (50 offset wheels and not quite enough negative camber and spring rate).
The guy in the Porsche 997 GT3 RS in front of me should have been ashamed of having a stock powertrain S2000 in his mirrors in all the corners (starting at about 4:00 in the video, 8:30 I'm right on him):
[media]http://youtu.be/MtKy0gVlMws[/media]
Here's the video where I turned my fastest lap that day (the lap starting at 6:36 in the clip). The details of my S2000's setup are in the Youtube video description:
[media]http://youtu.be/fTLHGws-lvw[/media]
My experience with brake pads and performance driving (autocross and track driving) goes back more than 20 years. In that time, I've used all of the following street pads: Hawk HPS (terrible), Hawk Performance Ceramic (also terrible), Axxis Ultimate (my favorite street/autox pad), Hawk HP Plus (excellent autox and light-duty track use pad, but dusty), EBC Yellow Stuff (terrible, didn't work worth a crap on the street or track), Porterfield R4S (not terrible, but I wasn't impressed either), as well as these full-on track compound pads: Hawk DTC-60 and DTC-70, Carbotech XP10 and XP12, Raybestos ST-43, Performance Friction PF01, and Carbone Lorraine RC5+ (all of these track pads work very well and have huge heat capacity, but they dust a lot, are very expensive, and wear quickly under hard use).
Overall, I am pleasantly surprised that the StopTech SP pads performed well on the street, and were fully acceptable at the track as well. I bedded in the pads properly with plenty of 70 mph to 5 mph hard stops after I installed them of course (until the pads were lightly smoking and stinky). I've now put about 300 miles on these pads—about 100 miles on the street, 200 miles on the road course. The initial bite of these pads is not as crisp as the Axxis Ultimate that were my favorite street/autox pads, but this can actually be a good thing as it makes for less abrupt weight transfer to the front wheels if you're not as smooth with your pedal inputs as you should be. Once you've stroked the brake pedal into the "meat" of the travel for hard braking, I found the feel acceptably firm and consistent even after 6 flying laps at 8 to 9/10ths (on my local track, about 15 minutes' worth of driving).
My S2000 is mostly stock except for coilovers, swaybars, and a square (9" wide wheels w 255 section width tires front and rear) setup, so it represents a very different "test case" than someone with a forced induction S2k with tons more power than I have, but I was still able to turn about 200 miles on track, driving to the limits of Bridgestone RE-01R tires for 20 to 25-minute long sessions without experiencing drastic pad fade. Each lap included a significant brake event from 112–114 mph to about 70 mph and another hard decel from about 75 mph to 35 mph. Also, for the majority of my track sessions, I had a passenger, so my vehicle weight was about 3100 pounds.
Before I ordered the Stop Tech pads, I'd read on this BMW forum where someone was complaining that the Street Performance pads were excessively chamfered, which results in decreased pad surface area to generate friction against the disc (and less pad material/pad life as well):
http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum...6#post25494006
I am not impressed with the Stop Tech Street Pads on my 99M3. The chamfer takes up 1/2 the pad area, which means much less of the possible pad area is making contact with the rotor. They stop the car, but I would choose something else. I put Stop Tech Street Pads on my 08M3 and like them on that car, but the chamfer area is not nearly as great a percentage of the pad.
So, I was pleased to find that the StopTech Street Performance pads for the front of the S2000 are not chamfered at all—just a radial split in the material:
You can see that as street pads, the StopTech SP pads are equipped with "squeal strips" to rub against the rotors when only about 1/4 of the pad material is left, and they come with anti-squeal pads mounted on the backing plates. I chose not to re-use any of the stainless steel backing plates that were on the pads I removed (not sure what kind they were; might have been OEM). I haven't heard any noise from these pads, either on the street or on the track. Note that my S2k is completely stock in terms of the intake, header, catalytic convertor, and exhaust, so it's quiet enough for me to hear the pads squealing a little if they were:
There is about 9 1/2 mm of pad material when they're brand new:
This is how much brake pad dust was accumulated on my previously clean mag blue RE30s after the 200 miles on-track. It probably looks like a TON of brake dust, but it's really not considering how much pad I burnt through with that much track driving:
In this picture, I wiped a "clean stripe" in the brake dust to better show how much dust there was. The dust from the Street Performance pads cleaned off very easily with just water—I didn't bother to use any cleaner at all. For pure street driving, I would say these pads dust minimally, although that is still probably a little more than the factory OEM pads.
And here is what that wheel looks like, perfectly clean:
I only took one picture, but I checked the approximate amount of pad material left immediately after the 200 track day miles on both sides... there's 7.5 mm of material left, so I vaporized and turned into dust about 21% of the Stop Tech pads... that is very minimal wear IMO:
The wear pattern on the brake rotor after the track day... perfectly acceptable/normal:
Lastly, here are two in-car videos from that open lapping day where I was running the StopTech Street Performance pads. You won't hear any brake pad noise, but occasionally you'll hear the rear tires rubbing the rear bumper cover under cornering loads (50 offset wheels and not quite enough negative camber and spring rate).
The guy in the Porsche 997 GT3 RS in front of me should have been ashamed of having a stock powertrain S2000 in his mirrors in all the corners (starting at about 4:00 in the video, 8:30 I'm right on him):
[media]http://youtu.be/MtKy0gVlMws[/media]
Here's the video where I turned my fastest lap that day (the lap starting at 6:36 in the clip). The details of my S2000's setup are in the Youtube video description:
[media]http://youtu.be/fTLHGws-lvw[/media]
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