Pacembellum

Spring mountain upgrades their pads on street tires, fyi. I think the MPSS tires are def good enough to justify higher temp pads.

siglite

Thanks for that video, that was great info.

Also, these pads still have plenty of life in them? I saw chevy says 2-3mm of grippy stuff left, that looks like quite a bit more than 3mm.

siglite

I run Cup2s

pkincy

Cup 2s can use a pad with a moderately higher bite and a higher temperature range. But don't be fooled a high initial bite makes the car harder to drive smoothly than a pad with a moderate bite.

And Hawk pays the various schools to use their pads. I have emailed them to ask what Hawk pads they use.

Adam@Amp'dAutosport.com

With cup2s The XP12 on front and XP10 rear have done very well.

Another highly successful XP™ series compound with an excellent initial bite, torque and fade resistance over and above the XP10™ compound. XP12™ has temperature range of 250°F to 1850°F+ (121°C to 1010°C+). The XP12™ has that excellent Carbotech™ release and modulation that has made all other Carbotech™ compounds so successful. The XP12™ is more rotor aggressive than XP10™, but compared to the competition the XP12™ is still very rotor friendly. XP12™ is NOT recommended for use as a daily driven street pad due to possible elevated levels of dust and noise.

When Carbotech™ unleashed the XP10™ to the general public it immediately gathered multiple regional, divisional, and national championships. The XP10™ has a very strong initial bite with a coefficient of friction and rotor friendliness unmatched in the industry. Fade resistance is in excess of 1475°F (801°C). XP10™ still maintains the highly praised release, excellent modulation and rotor friendliness that have made all Carbotech™ compounds so successful. Carbotech™ XP10™ is not recommended as a daily-driven street pad due to possible elevated levels of dust and noise.

pkincy

Back in the day I would occasionally drive my track car to work. It ran the XP10s and Kumho V700s. The thing I had to remember is that first stop of the day was going to take a looonnng time. Those pads simply don't work until you get a proper amount of heat in them. The noise and dust I could handle but you really need to remember that the car won't stop with the pads cold. But that near race tire and the Xp10s would flat stop that 3300 lb car when the brakes and tires had heat in them. Was a great HPDE combination. These days most DOT race tires are near slicks and are a lot harder to daily drive. I would think the XP10s would match well with the SC2s.

Poor-sha

I've tracked the DS 1.11 on everything from full slicks to MPSS without issue. One thing I like about them is that they are easy to modulate.

JRitt@essex

As others have suggested, the first step is to measure your OEM disc thickness and see if they are still within the service limit. If they are, and you don't intend to go to a complete big brake kit, then get some good race pads and fluid at a minimum.

The ideal solution is to have a set of brake pads dedicated to track use, and a set dedicated to street use. Track pads are designed to handle extraordinary temperatures, but they will chew your discs up when run cold and make a lot of noise and dust. Street pads are designed to have good cold bite and not make noise, but they will melt and fade when they reach track temps. Pads designed for street use and track use have different goals, and one of either type typically does not perform well in the other environment. That means that if you try to leave one set of pads in the calipers, you are going to have to live with a compromise. Some people leave race/track pads in their calipers all the time and live with the noise and accelerated disc wear. When they go to the track, those pads are at home. Others run a high performance street pad at all times. On the street they're great, but when they're taken on the track they have their limitations. Having a set of each type and swapping pads is the way to get optimum performance and wear on both the street and track.

Regardless of what tires you're running on the track, you need a pad with a fairly high maximum operating temperature. It doesn't matter if you run those pads on the track four times per year, or 100 times per year. If you run them even once on the track, they're going to see track temperatures, and they need to be a pad that is designed to handle those temperatures.

Most street pads do NOT have a Max Operating Temperature (MOT) that is high enough to handle track duty. When you exceed a pad's MOT, it will fade and burn up/melt quickly. Pad fade is when you stand on the brake pedal, the pedal remains hard, but the car doesn't slow down like it should. (Fluid fade is when the fluid boil, and compressible air bubbles form in your brake lines, making the brake pedal mushy). When you are seeing temps were pads are fading, they also tend to physically break down very quickly. That can mean smearing, smudging, and disintegrating. If you run a street pad to that point on the track, you also risk creating judder and vibrations, and ultimately even damaging your discs (when those pad deposits turn into cementite).

There are some pads that walk the fine line between track and street pads. The Ferodo DS2500 is one of the few that dwells in that area. It has a very high max operating temperature, yet it also has good street manners (good cold bite and doesn't chew up discs). It does dust a bit, and will make a tiny bit of squealing at the tail end of a stop. It's a great track pad for a BRZ, Miata, or S2000. We typically don't however recommend the DS2500 for track use on a heavy, powerful car like a C7. That said, we've had a number of customers run them on the track (both accidentally and intentionally ). They have not faded the pad or caused any damage to their discs. They did burn them up more quickly than they would have if they were running Ferodo DS1.11 or DSUNO, which are more durable when run at track temps.

We also don't typically recommend running the Ferodo DS1.11 on the street, but we've had customers do that as well...quite a few Corvettes, and a lot of 991 GT3's currently (including the one on our lift right now). Many of our customers feel that the DS1.11 is suitable for road use in their opinion. They can live with the noise, dust, and disc wear they produce (generally speaking, these Ferodo pads tend to be easier on the discs than many of the competing brands).

We try to be very conservative in our recommendations, and prefer to under-promise and over-deliver. That keeps our customers happy, our families fed, and our doors open.

Also note that 'track use' runs an incredibly wide range of activity and stress on the brakes. If you took two identical cars with the same driver...equip one with all-season tires and run a few laps of Roebling Road....take the other and put slicks on it and tackle Watkins Glen. The difference in the amount of brake stress is going to be drastic between those two scenarios.

So how do you choose? Well, relying on a manufacturer's claimed max operating temp isn't going to get you very far. Most inflate their numbers, and all brake dynos (just like engine dynos) read differently. That means you can't compare mu or temperature numbers from Brand X with the published numbers for Brand Y. We have our own brake dyno at our facility, which allows us to directly compare and contrast brake pad compounds using the same equipment and procedures. Short of having that luxury, you're going to have to take recommendations and likely do some trial and error to see what works on your car, in your situation.

Any pad labeled as low dust, low noise, ceramic, quiet, etc. probably isn't going to handle track use well at all, and you're going to potentially have a mess on your hands if you do run them on the track. Your best bet is finding someone you can trust and getting their recommendation. In this case, you have guys like Bill Dearborn and Poor-sha who have laid down a lot of fast laps on heavy braking tracks, have run a bunch of different cars over the years, etc. You also have us (Essex) who have been in this business (me personally for 15 years), and we're happy to make suggestions.

JRitt@essex

That does look like considerably more than 2mm! The backing plate tends to be about 6mm thick on many of these pads. I use that as a reference if I want to quickly eyeball how much friction material is left. It looks like you're more in the 5-6mm range if I had to guess.

Keep in mind however, that pads burn more quickly as they get closer to the backing plate. As the pad wears thinner, the overall volume of the pad gets lower. That means the pad gradually loses its ability to store heat. As such, it burns up more quickly. In other words, if you burn 1mm of friction material in a 20 minute session on a brand new set of pads, that number may be 1.5-2mm of material burned in a 20 minute session as you get closer to the end of a pad's life. Letting the pads burn all the way down to the steel backing plate can get ugly. The iron of the brake discs is relatively soft compared to the steel backing plates. When those two come together and smooch, the steel backing plate wins every time, and your discs get trashed.

If you want to learn more about brake upgrades (like the video you already watched), please check our YouTube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-n...IT3tzOQ/videos

If your OEM discs aren't worn too thin, they look great. I'd use them up. As the other guys here stated, a big brake kit is ultimately a money and time saver. That is particularly the case on the front of the car.

Also, Brembo actually does own AP Racing, but allows the two companies to compete freely in the market. Brembo is most widely known for producing OEM brake systems, and they are very successful in racing. The brakes on the C7 are indeed manufactured by Brembo. AP Racing is widely considered the most technologically advanced brake supplier on the planet, winning championships in everything from F1 to NASCAR Cup, WRC, etc. AP Racing is also a supplier to some prestigious car manufacturers such as Bugatti, McLaren, Lotus, The AP Racing kits to which others are referring our the ones designed by us (Essex Parts Services). A host of upgrades for the C7 can be seen on our website in the link below, and we're happy to walk you through the ones that best match your needs at any time. Thanks!

https://www.essexparts.com/my-vehicl.../Grand%20Sport

pkincy

Lots of really good information here on your choices, but another line of questioning is how hard are you on brakes? Were you running hard enough to experience fade with the oem pads and the Cup 2s? Do you expect to be running harder/faster in the future. The C7Z is heavy and fast enough to be much harder on brakes than your Evo, but if you are out having a great time at 8/10s effort and not running out of brake or tire at the end of your session, you likely can stay with a more conservative street/track capable pad.

OTOH, if you are running in an open passing group and running times within a couple of seconds of the fastest Corvette/Porsche drivers around you than definitely you should be looking at some of the higher temperature pads that have been suggested. And besides effort what is your budget? Having really good pads and running really hard means you are bleeding between each session or every other session and using a high temperature brake fluid also. Probably running or will be running a second set of wheels/tires with scrubs or saving your SC2s for the track only. Once you get there, you get to think about a truck and trailer so you can get home in case of breakage. HPDEs are fun but there are several levels of commitment and it is a slippery slope to the bottom, although it is a heck of a lot of fun all the way to W2W in a spec class. Enjoy the journey, whichever path you choose.