ruexp67

I boiled the stock fluid with stock pads at my first HPDE. The pads held up OK, but did fade periodically throughout the day (Not a comforting feeling.)

I now run ATE Superblue, Stainless Lines and Carbotech XP8 pads. I know two S2000 owners who track their cars with Hawk pads and have had to powdercoad/paint their wheels because the dust worked its way down into the finish on the wheel and could not be removed. When I pulled the wheels to put the stock pads back on 3 days after my HPDE day, I cleaned the wheels. 90% of the dust came off with just rinsing the wheel down with water. The rest came off with a single wipe of a soft cloth. Absolutly no pitting or problems.

That said, the XP8s were AWESOME! I think I got them to fade exactly once on the track that day with one straight at 105 and another at 110 and BOTH into very tight turns.

I did one event with JUST the ATE Superblue, and stock pads. I absolutely decimated the pads. I baked them down to the backing plate, warped the backing plate from the heat, warped the face of the piston and siezed one of the calipers completely. I put on all new stock rotors, two new calipers, new pads all around and while I was at it, bled the brakes with more ATE. The stuff that came out (and I did at LEAST 10 pumps per corner) was clean, and bright blue. No hint of burning or anything. I was impressed. I have never tried Motul or Castrol SRF. I won't run DOT 3 (synthetc or otherwise) on the track.

MarchHare

Just to add fuel to the fire , here is another option. I have a MY02 and use factory pads for MY04-5 S2000s. They are a more aggressive compound and have held up well. I get 2 track days and about 20k street miles to a set. I have never fried a set of these pads at the track. I change them out at about 50% wear more because I think I should than they really need changing. They dust quite a bit more than the MY00-03 pads but the dust just wipes off .
My 02 has Neuspeed stainless brake lines (look cool, slightly better feel), ATE blue fluid (the only true necessity for track use) and I have removed the splash shields for better cooling. With stock engine and street tires, that set up works fine. I just got R compound tires and put in a fresh set of MY04-05 pads. After one track day and 10K on the street they seem to be holding up well.

TubeDriver

Cobalt GT spec pads are not really track ready (on the fronts). Some people use them on the rear (were heat really is not much of an issue). You want the spec VR? (I think) on the front. Carbotech XP8s front and rear work great for me.

TubeDriver

The front pads were upgraded for MY04+ (rear pads are still the same). I run MY04+ front pads on the street and autoX. They work fine but I did notice that one of the front pads had a 1/2" corner chunk just fall off after an autoX. Not sure if they got hot and hitting ABS caused it to crumble? That was with brand new cryo treated blank rotors. I do not know if it matters but I have been using RA-1s for the last two seasons.

SC_Highlander

Annual flushes with ATE for me as well. If I am swapping between pads that have a noticable difference in thickness, I will usually do a quick bleed on each corner and top off the fluid.

ruexp67

This tells me you are not braking hard enough.

MarchHare

No. It says that that street rubber is the limiting factor not available brake power. I run SOW and Fontana as fast or faster than other similarly prepared S2000s so its not a question of underbraking. Maybe I just don't overbrake ?

RACER

At 13.5k mile's, (only one track day) I have used up two set's of tire's, one set of OEM brake pad's and one set of race pad's.

I too am using ATE fluid. I haven't checked it since last summer, but the pedal still feel's hard. I haven't done nearly the amount of track time as other's have, but after 16 month's or so, I will be performing a thorough flush and bleed job, as well as install a new set of OEM pad's.

Whether or not there is air in the system will be determined when I begin to flush the system. One thing for sure is, after 15-16 month's and 7k mile's, the ATE fluid could have absorbed water.

I have had the same pad's on my car since April of 2004. (Project Mu, or some shit) They are supposedly "race pad's". I also flushed the system with ATE Gold brake fluid that Rylan sold me. I have a feeling there may some air in the system as I believe I did not thoroughly flush all of the OEM fluid out.

The Project Mu pad's worked ok on the track, they slowed me from 110-112 mph approaching T10 at Sear's They just don't seem to have the bite I am looking for. I really had to stand on the brake pedal to get the thing's to bite. They work ok for me on the street.

At 16 month's and 7k mile's, the Project Mu's (or whatever the hell their called) are approaching 2mm's of thickness and are now toast. 180-190 of these mile's were on track and the rest were on the "street"

In the future, I will be using the Cobalt Spec pad's for future track event's. For now, I will be installing a new set of OEM pad's as I am tired of cleaning my wheel's every 100 mile's

CoralDoc

Brake Fluid
Here's another vote for regular brake fluid changes. Even though cthree has been successful with his schedule, it is prudent to change fluid more often than once a year when using the car on the track. It is also important to consider your local environment. I live in south Florida and it is much more humid here than in other parts of the country. Since brake fluid is hygroscopic, it absorbs moisture over time and that lowers its boiling point. Also, as TubeDriver points out, the fluid in the caliper is exposed to much more heat than the fluid in the reservoir. I choose to replace the fluid in my car every 4-6 months and do a bleed after every other track day. I'm currently using ATE 200 (Gold) in my Miata and used the same schedule when running Valvoline Synpower in the S2000.

Brake Pads
After having a scary experience with stock pads on my second track day ever, I'll never recommend OEM pads on the track. I was able to wear OEM front pads from 85% pad thickness to the backing plates in about 3 hours. You do not want to run out of brake at 90 mph going into a hairpin turn!

Unlike others, I do recommend Cobalt GT Sports on the S2000 for new and intermediate track drivers. They can be driven to the event and though they dust more than OEM, the dust is not corrosive. When you need more pad than that, you move to a pad that can only be used on the track. I used the Cobalt Spec VRs and loved their aggressive bite and durability.

TubeDriver

I think Coraldocs got a good point about pads and novice drivers. The learning curve is real steep during your first 2-3 HPDE events. So someone who is going to the track for the second time is going to be SIGNIFICANTLY faster than they were the first time. In contrast, someone with 10-25 HPDE events has settled in and will run pretty consistently (and almost always will have a decent set of track pads on their car by this point). True story:

A friend of mine (with more than a decade of competitive autoX experience) started to attend HPDE events. He ran at Summit point on Carbotech Bobcats (basically an aggressive street/autoX pad) and experienced some moderate fade but nothing that scared him. He next ran at VIR with Carbotech Panther + and the brakes felt great. He actually went through the front Panther + in two days. He was signed up for his third event which was at Summit and had ordered a pair of replacement Panther +s. They did not come in time. He decided that he would just use the Hawk HPS (roughly equivalent to the Bobcats he had previously used at Summit) that he was running for autoX/street. He told me that he had experienced moderate fade after 3 laps with the Bobcats, so he would probably get the same results with the roughly equivalent Hawk HPS. I told him that he was going to be significantly faster at his third event and would probably experience significant fade in 2 laps this time. I also told him that I had an extra old set of Panther + with 90+% pad left that I would sell him for $50 (retail for $139). He declined and said he would be alright. As luck would have it, I ended up riding with him as an instructor. We did a single moderate warm-up lap. One hard lap and than during the second lap he went deep into Summit T1. I was thinking to myself