sleeperstyle

the car is a stock c5, stock brakes with cooling ducts in the front.

so last year i switched brake pads/ compounds a few times to try and get everything right, for the street tires (140 treadwear) rs3's. i have 25 or so days on track as far as experience, and i don't plan on going to a sticky tire this year. i want to go as fast as i can on street tires, learn as much as i can on them.

anyway- the setup i ended up with is Raybestos st43's in the front and a custom made st42 in the rear- i just called porterfield and they made them for me. this setup works great EXCEPT i kill rear brake pads as fast as the fronts, and i crack rear rotors at the same rate as the fronts.

i like the st43's for the front, i just need a long lasting- not to grabby- good at handling heat- rear pad. if they have too much bite i get into abs too much and my overall driving suffers.

i have tried the st43's on the rear and they have too much bite for my liking, also tried carbotech 8's and they are corrosive and wear too fast.

for guys who are really using their brakes, on street tires, what do you run?

i do have cooling on the front, the rear could benefit from cooling ducts but i still need a new pad

considering cobalt, hawk, pagid... if they really last and i like the feel cost isn't too much of an issue. i can't replace 400$ pads every other weekend though, and all the st42's were lasting was 2 weekends max (but 200$ a set)

i plan on going 8-10 weekends this season, which usually turns into a few more as they come up. it would be nice to buy 2 sets of brake pads for the rear for the season.. although this may be asking a lot i do hear of people not changing rear pads for quite a few track days.

RDnomorecobra

Carbotech are corrosive? Really? I would say try their 10's or 12's. If you're running st43's up front the 8's aren't up to it. You have AH turned off? I use wilwood H. They last and don't seem too hard on rotors.

fcarga

Agree with RD--Carbotech 12's front and 10's rear as a start. Never had a corrosive issue with Carbotechs though I did with Hawks.

sleeperstyle

i had a set of carbotechs damn near ruin a set of z06 wheels. it was a rain weekend , off and on, and i didn't get the dust off till the following tuesday (got home late sunday- crazy work schedule). i had to hit them with a grillo pad and all types of cleaners, i am lucky i got the dust off without taking the paint off. it nearly ruined the wheels. the calipers are still stained, and the insides of the wheels a little bit but i am going to try and remove the remainder in the spring. these were carbotech 8's- early last season..

so thanks for the suggestions, but after nearly losing a set of z06 wheels no carbotechs for me. maybe i can find a comparable compound though, to the carbo-10's.

AH off, but i am told that can kill rear pads.

spdislife

That's odd to hear your experience with Carbotechs. I've run them in the rain on OEM C5 Z wheels and never had an issue with corrosion on the wheels. XP 12/10 combo on R compound tires is what I ran last year and will probably move up to the XP 20s for the front this coming season.

wtb-z

I am using DTC30s in the rear now. They crack rotors much faster than HP+ but seem to be wearing quite well. Can't notice a braking change. Street tires.

UstaB-GS549

Are you running with all the electrical nannies on? That is usually the cause of high wear on rear pads.

I have never had a corrosion problem with Carbotech pads (XP10 & XP12). They are by far the easiest clean-up.

Adam@Amp'dAutosport.com

I understand if you don't like our brake pads but to say they are corrosive is not true at all. Carbotech compounds are a 100% non corrosive. Are you sure you where using XP8 sounds to me more like a Hawk compound...

RDnomorecobra

just to be clear, you will use up rear pads if you leave AH ON.

Hi Volts Z06

I had a similar experience to yours when I started getting faster in HPDE. I was running Carbotech XP-16 on the fronts and 12's on the rear. I was getting horrible pad life and brakes would fade after about 10 laps in severe conditions (like trying to slow from 150MPH running Pocono double-infield. I then went to Stoptech ST-60's on the front. At that point I started going through rears even faster. I changed the rear rotors to the Z51's and still had horrible wear. I was going through rear pads at the Glen at a rate of one set per DAY. Everyone had theories- the TC isn't really off when its switched off, blah blah blah. The solution? ST-40's in the rear. The wear issue is completely gone and I was able to move down to an XP-10 in the back since we were running much cooler. (and I am racing W2W at this point for the last 4 years). Bottom line- you are getting to the point where you are exceeding the limit of stock brakes. It's time to make the investment but you will save it in pads over time and enjoy a much much better setup.

Last C5

Even with a 10/10 set up there's never been a problem.

sleeperstyle

corrosive may have been wrong, the wet/hot dust bonded to the rim and i had to basically scrub/ scrape it off without removing the paint from my perfect wheels. i somehow didn't damage the wheels removing the dust but i didn't imagine what happened, i have no reason to make anything up and yes i was using xp8. it was an experience that threatened to cost me the $$ to replace a set of alcoah z06 rims.

i have no like/ dislike for carbotech, i just know the bad experience i had with them. people can run whatever they want to, it seems i am the only one who had the bad experience anyway.

sleeperstyle

my wallet hopes you are wrong i will poke around and look at some used setups i guess.. see what the damage might be..

i have a few sets of st43's (fronts) to use up first however, maybe i'll give carbotech a chance again- since i seem to be the only guy that had an issue with dust bonding to the rim. maybe it was a fluke/ a one time thing..

so with a st43 in the front, a carbotech 10 in the rear has less bite than the st43?

again- all nannies are off, i couldn't run them if i wanted to since the AH/ brake pedal goes nuts when i trail brake.

sleeperstyle

and for people that have put in the rear zo6 ducts- did it really lower the rear brake temps at all?

Hi Volts Z06

I will admit I had some similar experience when I ran XP-16 / 12 combo on my street ride after a track day and left them in for a few weeks. I can't complain because I shouldn't have left them in so long. I found it just about impossible to remove the dust with any product after it "baked in".

JDIllon

Try a set of Cobalt's!!! I have had very good luck with them. The XR1s are the more aggressive but the XR2's work very well also. Just call them for some advise on your needs! Just my .02 JD

63Corvette

I concur

rfn026

I don't think the brand of the brake pad is really the problem here. I had a similar situation with a different brand. I couldn't figure out why I had rust streaks on my aluminum wheels. Ok. Think about this. There's probably some steel in the pad compound. At 1000 to 1500 degrees it's molten. Molten steel will melt it's way right into aluminum. That's what was happening to my wheels.

The solution was to clean my wheels between sessions. If you notice the pro teams do this all the time. At Daytona last week every team appeared to have a dedicated wheel cleaner. Changing brake pad brands might help. Getting the brakes cooler will help even more. Buy some of the temp stickers and put them on both your rotor and caliper.

Here's an article I wrote last year about race pads.

Richard Newton
Racing Images

sleeperstyle

i just got off the phone with cobalt, the guy i talked to was very helpful and brought up a few important points which can affect the rears, all of which i didn't think about

- i do sometimes drive this car to work, with the race pads on it. they never get up to temp and can cause some additional wear. maybe not a huge issue but could affect the life of the pad a little bit.

- a possible rear caliper issue, i was planning on just swapping the rear calipers out for new ones this year anyhow, to my knowledge they work but the boots are burnt off and i am sure they spread a bit. for 130$ each it is cheap insurance. possibly one is sticking although i don't remember any one side wearing much more than the other.

i also learned that cobalt has a higher bite at lower temperatures than the raybestos that i am running, so it was not recommended that i run cobalts in the rear only.. but if i was going to run st43's in the front the xr3 cobalts would be the choice in the rear although like i said not recommended.

i figured i'd update this for future people's searches. i was told that the cobalt xr3 had less bite than the raybestos st43, hence making the xr3 comparable to the st42.

so new rear calipers and a set of xr3's is the plan, when i burn all of my pads up i may try xr2's all around or carbotechs again.. i will update this thread as to how everything works/ matches up.

thanks for the help

RedLS1GTO

It might not be "corrosive" per se but I have also found it WAY more difficult to get the Carbotech dust off than most of the other brands regardless of how long it sits. It seems to, as you say, "bake in" a lot more than the others, especially on the polished CCWs on my old C4.