Brake Pads for 24 Hour Lamest Day Event, Dodge a Pad Change (Page 1 of 2)

Call Porterfield they sell the Raybestos Racing pads that we use and have barley used half the pad in two days of racing. They have tons of initial bite and don't fade but if used to aggressively you can put a hurt on your stock calipers and literally melt out the seals like we did at ThunderHill because one of our drivers is a huge fan of trail braking but even with only front brakes we had tons of stopping power to haul down 4800 Lbs of metal.

Pen-deje-ho ho ho

The guys at Porterfield are very helpful and they carry a variety of pads.

Race pads work at higher temperatures than stock with less fading.  That extra heat goes right into the components and fluid though.  Stock or race pads, the extra heat increases pressure and puts a hurting on old rubber.

I see and hear about plenty of failures, your pads could last the race but you could lose a caliper or something.  Neither is good but it's quicker to change pads than calipers and a system flush.

We run Porterfield pads on our car and the R4's in the front have help up great for the first 3 races with lots of life left to go.

I've done 15 Longest Day's at Nelson Ledges. The only car that I remember NOT doing a brake pad change on a VW GTI. And we used premimum racing pads on it!

You WILL be changing pads on a car as large and heavy as your Bimmer.  Buy the hardest, best, most expensive race pad you can find. Use new rotors. Have spares. Or .... you can do it in true Lemons style and just run them till you grind metal on metal. An dthen just move your braking point back a bit and keep on going until you spit the pucks clear out of the calipers.

You really haven't lived until you get your brake so flippin hot that when you stop they burst into flames.  Been there, done that (at Road Atlanta, Mosport & MidOhio, but not at Nelsons)

Spud

We ran the Reno race without changing pads and that was on the very twisty and hilly Reno-Fernley raceway. However the Peugeot did stick in 3rd gear Sunday morning so for the last 4 1/2 hours of the race we were limited to a top speed of 75 mph or so. We simply called Porterfield and asked what they had and not only did they have some Peugeot-specific pads in stock they cut us a deal as no one else was likely ever to buy them :-).

Pretty colorful writer there Spud!

Thanks for the input everyone

I would just suggest to be careful if anyone is considering cross-drilled rotors. Sure they sound great and the venting is awesome but most cross-drilled rotors are just that. They are drilled... and anyone who has a bit of engineering background knows that when you drill something you start micro-fractures at the edge of the hole.

Think of something like a rock hitting your windshield. Sure it is just a small crack but with the right pressure that crack will go all the way through and split your entire windshield.

Imagine that happening to your rotors during hard braking.

Porsche and other higher end performance brake systems come with "cast-in" cross-drilled rotors. They won't split.

But if you can go from solid to vented rotors, do it.

We ran Advance Auto Parts ceramic fronts on the heavy Mark VIII at CMP in April. They were down to the backing plates in 5 hours. In Stafford, we ran the pricier Napa adaptive ceramic/metallic pads, and they not only lasted the whole race, they hardly look used, and stopped far better! Considering the pricier Hawks and other race brands often have a similar ceramic/metallic composition, Napa's pads might be worth a shot.

We had Brembos at Toledo and they're still on the car after a few test hours at Nelson Ledges. Get the best pads you can. With small cars, you'll go 24 hours. But anything with weight will need pads. Thats just the way it is. The biggest piece of advice I can give is make sure you have at least new wheel bearings and the possibility of replacing the left side bearings mid-race with a heavy car. Nelson is pretty hard on bearings with the very high speed right handers and bumpy corners. And like spud, that's more than 20 years endurance experience at Nelson. Hi Jeff!! I know that's you!!!

this was actually a sore point for NL for my team.

In the past, we have shown up to Flat Rock, and Even CMP with new, stock pads and good rotors, even in our P71. we NEVER had issues, Flat rock the whole race solid and fine, CMP we had to change them at the end of day1 because they were wafer thin.

Nelson Ledges? we had brand new pads, freshly flushed brakes, good vented rotors and our first guy out cooks the oem pads to a fine glaze in under 40minutes. I had planned a pad change since day1 on this project and had Hawk Blues on hand, but this is Lemons, this is budget racing! Anyway, we had the blues in and went the rest of the race no problems and could probably do another race on them. My fault for making the call not to change them but Nelson has a history of only 2 hard braking zones, so there was no reason up-front to believe they'd die so quick, especially considering we had a heavier car go 15x longer at CMP which had several hard zones.

We ran the napa adaptive ceramics front and rear on new rotors with motul fluid.  We started to overheat early, so we ran the rest of the event at about 80%.  If the pads wore more than 20 %, I will be shocked.  They were fantastic, pad feel was great, and never had an issue.  I really thought that place would be a hell of a lot harder on brakes, but out car is also pretty light.