It was time to replace my 7 year old drilled / slotted rotors as they were showing stress cracks and general wear. So while my Monte was on jack stands figured might as well get it done.

While my Wagner Thermo-Quiet brake pads still had a lot of life left in them, I was generally unhappy with them because of how I occasionally used the car at a road course track here. Experienced extreme brake fade after a half dozen or so high speed last second hard braking corners. That of course left me unable to complete the course without really significantly slowing well before I wanted to going into the corners.

Now I wanted to find what I felt were close to the best possible pads available. While searching numerous manufactures of pads, 2 particular brands were the finalists. HAWK HP Plus brake pads and EBC "Yellow Stuff" pads.

Ultimately based on the review from Car and Driver magazine I chose to use the EBC pads. They were the only ones where "NO" brake fade was experienced. So I guess I will be another guinea pig and give these a shot
and see how I like them. People complain about brake dust from the high performance pads, but I would rather clean for a couple hours than loose my car off the track. Here is a snippet from the C/D review.

Note all the wheel studs have been replaced with the ARP brand, wanted to feel safer using spacers and I get that peace of mind knowing the 15 year old OEM wheel studs have done their duty but are gone. They took a lot of punishment.

What pads do you all favor or another?


Car and Driver Magazine rates EBC Yellowstuff

The USA largest consumer magazine reviewed a range of brake pads including Stock, Hawk and EBC Yellowstuff brake pads and the results were very interesting and gave the win to EBC Yellowstuff. Read here the full independent review with pictures of worn pads and drivers comments. This article gives EBC Brakes Yellowstuff brake pads the overall win.


Car and Driver Review – Performance brake pads compared Hawk hps Hawk hp plus EBC-Yellowstuff Brake Pad

EBC Yellowstuff brake pads are ultra high friction brake pads for race, trackday and street use. Not only do they benefit from zero brake fade but they are also capable of heavy repeated use without suffering the effect of “fade-off”. Another great factor is the very minimal rotor damage this brake pad compound produces. Race drivers in particular love it because they are made from aramid fibre giving them superb stopping power. They are ideal for street and track driving as they don’t require a warm up but get even stronger under hard driving

 

The setup is looking good. Definitely super clean!

Any reason you went with drilled rotors again after having the last ones stress crack on you? I'd think some quality blanks would give me a lot more piece of mind, especially if you're going to track it again.

I run Carbotech AX6 pads all around in the vette. I absolutely love them. I'm definitely going to look to see if they make them for the monte when my current pads are gone (it currently has red stuff all around).

The thing I like about the Carbotech pads is they've got a lot of heat range options from simple street pads up to heavy use track pads. I picked up the ax6 since they work well on the street and for the light track stuff I do (mostly 1/2 mile racing). I don't do any road racing, so I didn't want to sacrifice street manners or cold stopping for the off chance that I'll take it to a track in the future (especially not running drag radials, lol).

If you're serious about road racing on occasion, have you thought about swapping pads for the track? If you get a pad made to really meant for track use, it's going to be garbage on the street, and vice versa. Since pads are so cheap and easy to change, you could have the best of both worlds.

 

See my replies above...

 

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YES, I did get about 7 years out of them, and I was pretty hard on them too. So why not do it again, they are not crazy expensive like some can be. They should help keep the temps down a tad and do all the things the manufacturers claim.

I guess my concern would be more if you were to start really using them at the track. Obviously your old brakes faded pretty quick before so they never really pushed the rotors, but with a high performance track pad, you'll put the rotors through a lot more thermal stress.

​​I just don't think the tiny benefits over slotted or a blank outweigh the risk of a catastrophic failure if those cracks reappeared and spread while on the track. Additional cooling could easily be made up with some good ventilation ducting. Plenty of people track their cars on regular blank rotors with no issues.

Nothing real crazy, 162.3. There were certainly cars out there going much faster, but it was in the 90s out so it certainly wasn't good boost weather. It was more fun getting to line up against comparable powered cars and getting to run as much as you wanted without the worries that you'd have on the street. Plus, being an airport in the desert, there was plenty of runoff on all sides unlike a drag strip.

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CarboTech? Never heard of them, they never came up in any of my searches. You a pretty savvy car enthusiast for sure, so I have to respect your opinion. Will look into them, heck and with the type of cars your rolling around in, I know you would want the best option. These EBC are supposed to also be for Street and Track, with minimal rotor wear. Will definitely look at the CarboTech's and if available and your not B.S'ing me then I may make my next set those if available. They may have them for the F-body's which I have those calipers on my front.

Theyre super popular with the vette crowd. The nice thing on the vette forums is they have a lot of people that really race and push their cars at all types of events from drag, to auto x, to road racing, etc and from beginner up to pro level. So there is a lot of feedback on what works well.

I think the biggest benefit is getting a heat range dialed in for what you do as they've probably got 7 or 8 different options. So depending on how heavy the car is, what kind of racing you're doing, and what kind of tires you run (obviously you can't brake as hard with street tires vs an R compound), you can dial it in and even run different combos front/back.

Like you mentioned, I wanted something for the street and light track use (in my case, single stop straight line). I give up some street manners (they're a bit noisy and a little dusty) and couldn't road race them, but they're great for what I use them for.

I just know some guys that road race quite a bit (obviously not with w body cars) and if you really get into it heavy, you're probably going to want to change pads between the street and the track since a pad optimized for street or for the middle ground in between won't work well as a full on race pad.