san2000

On that note, and this may be a daft question.....how comes the front ones seem to get SOOOOO much more dust on than the back ones?
Are they not the same pads?
Do the front ones wear more because of extra weight transferred during braking? (This sounds more likely)

San.

BigTed

San, pretty sure they're the same pads front and rear, and due to the weight transfer during braking biasing the front brakes more than the rears makes sense, which in turn would help explain how the front brakes give off so much more dust than the rears.

Turtle

Not really weight related. The front pads are simply a lot bigger, so more area is wearing off which is what's producing the dust. At least twice the area at a guess.

As to wear, there seems to be little between the R4S and stock pads, unless you're going on track. On track the Honda pads wear pretty quickly and can gisintegrate if you get them hot enough.

-Brian.

BigTed

Brian, as an aside do you have any idea how the brake force is distributed between front and rear brakes on a standard S?

san2000

Brian,
with the hugely increased amount of dust on my front wheels compared to the back, I'm surprised it's only the size of the brake pads that is the cause of this.
Could there be any other reason (if it's not the weighting on braking)?

BenHampton

I had to speak to my local dealership after my last Ring trip. The pads were only two weeks old before the trip, but 1,200 road miles and 32 Ring laps later, the rears were totally gone, right down to the wear indicators. ooops.

The dealers said that they suspected that the solid rear disks had heated up and simply eaten through the pads. This is pretty likely IMHO as i did a few back to back laps without the usual cool-down period between each one. Reckoning on 45 miles of very hard use with no time to cool - repeated several times - probably did for them.

My mate is trying to convince me to use Mintex 1155 (do they do them for our car?) as they worked very well on his former Scooby.
He also reckons I should fit fast road pads just before my AUgust trip to the Ring and replace them with my stock pads on my return. Dunno about that...

I dunno whether simply doing the cooling down runs would be a better bet, as I don't think there's much wrong with the standard pads. I'm a little against fast road pads as my old EBCs took a while to warm up but were pretty good on the track, but the problem is the car will spend 95% of its life on the road and I'd prefer decent brakes for the majority of the time. Especially with all the bloody tourists over here that slam on the anchors for no reason whatsover.

I'd be interested to hear other people's view on track pads.

Cheers

Ben

Turtle

Ben:

When you overheat the front brakes so they start fading the rears start taking up the slack. Then they can really overheat and either wear very quickly, or disintegrate - just like you've had.

Not run them on the S, but Mintex 1155 are pretty hard on discs - assuming they do the fitment for the S.

Also, think about cutting the dust shields off. This improves cooling quite a bit on its own.

san2000:

Dust comes from the pad surface wearing off in contact with the disc as you brake. The speed the discs are going under the pads is the same front and rear assuming you're not triggering the abs. The area of the pads is swept by all the disc remember - so the extra pad area on the front has more effect than you think. The only way you get any extra dusting that isn't from the pad/disc contact/sweep is if the pads are disintegrating. (Which does happen... but I doubt you've got that on the road.)

BigTed:

I've the kit to find out, but my S doesn't run standard suspension so it wouldn't help. There's a thread something like "DavePk's Open Source Brake Design" on a sticky at the top of the "Racing and Competition" forum that I think has what you're after in.

-Brian.