Swap Front AND rear brake pads for the track?

[skyline23]

Hi guys,

I have a track day ad Laguna Seca on wednesday, and was planning on installing brand new Carbotech Panther pluses on the front and rear tomorrow.

However, I have been hearing from a few people that it isn't really necessary to swap out the rear pads, and the new Hawk HPS pads I currently have on the car should be fine. So now I'm not sure if I should return the rear Carbotech pads, or stick with the original plan of having a full set of track pads and a full set of street pads. I am pretty lazy so if I could avoid having to swap out the rears, that would be nice. For reference, I am fairly novice, in the low/intermediate solo run groups.


thanks in advance.

 

[Pruhnke]

I run Carbotech XP8 up front and bought a set for the rears. Like you I am lazy and have never installed the rears and have been very happy with that setup so far. I always say I run at 7/10's. I do not go to deep into the straight before lifting and applying some light braking early to be sure the brakes are there.:smile:

I was about to put them in my last event and then stopped because I was uncertain why the left the locater pins off the backing plates.

 

[Coz]

I use Carbotech X10's all the way around, have a ABS delete and run Tilton proportioning valves.

I started with X8 on the front and X10 on the rear and ended up 10/10 and after playing with the bias feel and so the fronts lock up just before the rear.

I like these pads, you can brake late and they are not brutal on your rotors. I have Brembo GP calipers and rotors.

 

[rsevo6]

I would say that when you are a novice, just changing the fronts would be OK.
However, when advancing a bit, you may need/want the extra braking from the back too, so will have to change those too at that moment.

Important is that when changing to more agressive pads, you will need to have grippy tyres too. The most dangerous situation would be that because of agressive pads in the back combined with not so grippy tyres, on a turn-in brake the rear wheels might lock up earlier than the fronts and you DO NOT want this to happen, especially when being a relatively novice driver.

Do remember to follow the brake-in procedure that track oriented pads will need to function correctly.
Also, depending how old your brakefluid is, it may be well advisable to change to a heavy duty fluid like Motul or ATE super blue racing

I have the Carbotech PantherPlus pads on my CTSC NSX and noticed that even though in general the braking is quite nice, for me on track these are not up to the task as they start fading after a few full blast rounds. Besides this, when driving in normal traffic, their squeeling drives me mad. As I have used EBC yellowstuff on track with both my MR2 Turbo and my full track MaX5 cup Miata with very good results, I have ordered EBC yellowstuff to put on the NSX and will have to see if these work on track with the (relatively high) weight of the NSX.