Looking for brake pads that will fare well for daily driving and weekend road track sessions. Anyone has any recommendations for them which are not too abrasive on the rotors especially during daily drives?

 

I autocross but use Hawk HP+ on OEM rotors. They squeek a little, but it isn't bad. You can try Carbotech also. I wanted to use Project Mu pads until I found out how much they cost.

 

Gee, this hasn't been discussed here for at least a few weeks.

Some of us know that there is no such thing as a pad that's very good on the street and the track, by definition (street pads and track pads are designed to work optimally at different temperatures, matching the different temperatures brakes experience in the differing environments). It takes about a half hour to change your pads. Do it.

Some don't seem to care much about their brakes being in optimal shape while driving on public roads, and would prefer to compromise their street safety by running track pads all the time. They pretend that it's fine cuz they're so lazy, and they like to think that their driving skilz are so spectacular. This group tends to claim that Carbotech full track pads are fine on the street, despite the fact that they're not (although excellent on the track).

And some pretend that "compromise" pads that really do work on the street work on the track, too.

There. No need to have another unpleasant discussion.

 

I ran Hawk ht-10 up front recently at the track; they held up fine. Had my friend drive the S back home and he couldn't tell they were track pads. They didn't suck when cold nor squeal like my old cobalts.

 

HP+ work great on the street, fine for me at the track (totally stock AP1). Loud as hell until tracked hard, which seems to quiet them down. Lots of black dust, but it cleans up easily enough if you stay on top of it. Much higher coefficient than stock, higher even than XP8 or XP10s. Work great even stone cold. Probably won't take the heat as well as XP8's, but I've never had any issues overcooking them at the track.

I've also run Carbotech XP8's on the street without any issues. They work better once warmed up, but not too too bad cold. Some noise, fair amount of brown dust that cleans up pretty easily.

 

Not pretending, HP+ have worked very well for me on the street and at the track. The only reason I swap back to stock pads after track season is the dust and some noise. As for braking, for *me*, no problems whatsoever street or track.

Not to say that they will work well for everyone at the track, driving/braking styles differ. Some drivers are much harder on brakes than others (not necessarily related to skill or speed around the track).

Of course, the difference between being just below the limit of the pads and just OVER the limit is a big difference indeed from behind the wheel! Having to nurse brakes is no fun.

 

HP+ have a very high friction coefficient and will eat up your rotors quicker than other pads in its category, they also dont have a very high max operating temp 0-800F. Try looking into the Project Mu HC+, they have a max operating temp rated from 0-1472F which no other street/track pad comes close to.

 

[QUOTE=gen2gsr,Nov 29 2010, 09:43 AM]I ran Hawk ht-10 up front recently at the track; they held up fine.

 

???

I believe I was getting worse wear with XP8s, the car had 40k street miles on it when I bought it, did 2 events and ~5k more street miles with those rotors and had to replace them at the track. I've since done about 12-14 track days with HP+ on the same rotors, and I'm at 110k miles now. Probably 50% of my street miles have been with HP+ pads. If anything they seem to be incredibly easy on rotors.

 

Having said my piece about this issue, I really don't want to get involved in further debate, especially in this internet age when anybody not too lazy to find out the real facts (rather than the subjective opinions of those about whom he knows nothing) can easily do so.

But I do want to point out that Hawk says, on their website, regarding the HP+