Bilstein sport shocks - what springs?

Steve Brookes · May 7, 2013

ORIGINAL: RLambert

With bigger brakes and track focused tyres the car would definitely go quicker but you really need to be driving your current set up to the max before you splash the cash. People tend to blame the brakes a lot but often its poor technique where the driver is riding the brakes or slowing down too much in the corners....

I totally agree. Your old sparring partner Mark Sumpter is showing just how good standard size brakes can be by being up there with all the more modern machinery that is now running in the club champs. When I spoke to him at Oulton last year he said he was using Pagid blue on his 964 and was very happy how they hold up over race distance. Although, I suspect that he uses at least a new set on the front for every race!

For what it's worth, here are my experiences of brake pads on my C2 for track work. And pretty much in chronological order:

Standard OEM Textar pads - these were my starting point. They worked extremely well but wore out quite fast. Initial bite is not the best and pedal feel was medium. Some fade at the end of a long session.

Pagid Sport (RS 4-2-2) - slightly better initial bite and firmer pedal than textar. About 50% more to buy at the time and still wore out fast. No fade to speak about.

Pagid grey (RS15) - good initial bite and much better stopping power. Firm pedal and no fade at all. Very good pad wear rate but at the expense of higher disc wear. Noisy when cold so I only ever put them in prior to a track day and then took them out afterwards. Too expensive for my liking (well over £200 per axle).

Standard OEM Pagid pads - an absolute disaster. Noisy all the time. Left big deposits on the discs causing judder. Cheap but bloody awful!

Hawk Blues - easily the best track pad I have used. Fantastic initial bite and superb pedal feel. Tremendous stopping power. Zero fade. Not even a hint of it. Quiet, even when cold! Very low wear rate but they eat discs. Only just over half the price of Pagid yellows too! However.......the dust is very, very corrosive. It is now baked on to my track wheels and was staining the body work on the car. Needed to use resin polish and lots of elbow grease to remove it. I've stopped using them because I am sure they were trying to eat my car!

At the moment I'm back to OEM textars. However, since using them the first time, I've added brake cooling and am working on improving my braking technique to make them last longer (and so that I go quicker!).

A friend of mine tried running EBC yellows and had the same thoughts as you.....he couldn't trust that they were going to there just when he needed them.

mcgc0 · May 8, 2013

Interesting findings Steve. In the Historic Rally championship that I've part of from time to time (MG, 911 and now Talbot Lotus) the regs give little to no room to do much with braking. But have to be honest though, that using spec brakes (as we have to - for that rally car of that period) we're still all good with little problem on gravel or tarmac. Mind you we're tossing away pads/shoes after every event anyway.

Clear to see from your own experiments and findings where or what makes the difference, -ve and +ve. Never been sure what to do with my standard set up (of Textars). The Hawks get mentioned frequently on Rennlist, as you know and I gave them a thought. Surprised then to hear that their compound/content is turning your car in to a '70's Lancia Beta front end...