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| OEM sized bling! |
Brakes pads are an extremely important part of the braking system and a choice that you must put some serious thought into. Brake pads have different windows of acceptable operating temperatures for peak performance depending on their application. A race pad needs to have a higher coefficient of friction as well as a much higher operating temperature than your regular street pad. Street pads are meant to stop well on the first stop in the morning in addition to stopping well at noon on a hot summer day. Since most people aren’t using their brakes at full potential for any length of time, and street rubber doesn’t offer much grip, street pads are designed more for favorable rotor wear and life, reduced noise, dust, and cold stops. Race pads, on the other hand, are nearly useless on that first stop and will not work well at all until they have some heat in them. This is why you see racers accelerating and stopping or dragging the brakes on the straights on the warm up lap. Nothing is scarier than going to stop for turn one, four wide, and not having any brakes. Race pads are also extremely harsh on rotors – another reason for our decision to use inexpensive OEM sized rotors.
After careful consideration of the environment our G20 was going to be in and talking to fellow racers, we decided to use Hawk Blue brake pads up front and Axxis Ultimates in the rear. Hawk does not have a listing for the P10, but we found the P10 shares its front brake pad shape with the 89-93 240SX’s that came with ABS, which Hawk does have a listing for.
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| Our Hawk Blues have more than half of their life left after a year’s worth of track events and have performed flawlessly. |
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| We haven’t been able to find another set of Axxis Ultimates for the rear, but as you can see we won’t be needing another set for a loooong time. |
We cannot stress enough how important it is to bed your pads in correctly the first time. New pads generally have a layer of adhesive and mold release on the top of the pad’s friction material. Your goal, when bedding the pads in, is to burn this off without warping your new rotors, glazing the rotor and pad surface, as well as match those surfaces together. If you don’t burn these off in a safe and controlled environment, you may find out the hard way that new pads do not work very well when you really need them, a phenomenon known as “green fade.” Green fade is not something you want to experience, especially since going hot into turn one with no brakes will likely result in one of those famous Wile E. Coyote moments. To properly bed a pad in, you have to drag the brakes for increasingly long periods of time. After finding a safe, clear area, bring the vehicle up to about 30 mph and drag the brakes, maintaining speed with the throttle – assuming the corporate nannies haven’t disabled this feature from your vehicle – for about 15-20 seconds and come to a near stop – about 5mph. Accelerate back up to 40 mph and repeat this process until you begin to make the pads stink, then let them cool off with minimal brake usage at about 30mph. If you are unable to do this – you just installed the pads before the morning warm up session – simply drag the brakes on the track and take it easy for a few laps. Make sure to watch your mirrors for other racecars that may be coming up on you quickly and try to stay off line while bedding your pads. We also recommend checking your pads before you load your racecar up for the weekend so you can use the practice session instead of the race session to bed your pads.
Now that we have sufficiently prepared our braking system for the rigors of racing within the rules, we will turn our focus towards the safety equipment and restraint systems we will be using to keep ourselves safe.
Check out the rest of our Project Infiniti G20 Racecar build here!
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