pkmoose

Thought I would share my experience with the ST43 brake pads on a stock '13 GS. I posted in the C6 tech area and it seems to have died, enjoy

Cliffs Notes: Breaks are Noisy! Breaks stop car hard! Brakes do not fade! Brakes are good for the track, not so good for the street!

In June I did my first HPDE event at NJMP Lightning and had a blast. I was running stock suspension and brakes and never had any brake fade and the brakes felt very solid. Approaching turn 1 at 130 or so and hard on the brakes with ABS kicking in was predictable and the brake system did a great job. I never had any fade and the car settled in nicely, even when ABS was on.

In July I signed up for a two day NASA event at the same track and figured I would be on the safe side and install new pads and Motul brake fluid. After researching pads on this site and others I went with the ST43 padlets for the front and rear. I was aware of the possible noise issues, but was willing to deal with it for a good pad, and piece of mind.

So... this past Friday I changed the padlets and bled the brakes for the HPDE on Sat. and Sun. I get everything done around 6pm and decide to go find a place to bed the pads. I pull out of my driveway and it sounded like metal on metal every time I even thought about applying the brakes. The metallic squeal was insane! I turned around figuring I screwed something up, but an inspection of the breaks revealed nothing wrong. I decided to wait until dark (so nobody could see me) to try and bed the pads and hopefully quiet this thing down.

Around 9 I go out to the deserted roads in a non-populated area (along the way every dog within 1 mile of my car woke up and howled) and followed some instructions from the Stop Tech website. After the tenth hard stop the massive squeal actually turned into a very little squeal for about five minutes. The second the brakes cooled it sounded horrible. At this point I decide to stick with the ST43's and go to the track with them.

Event day... I woke everyone up from Central NJ to Southern NJ anytime I applied my brakes. I scared the crap out of dozens of people in cars and walking by if I had to get on the brakes a little hard, or if I was approaching a full stop. This things are obnoxious! I get to the gate to sign in and the guy comments that I have the noisiest brakes he has ever heard (yay, I'm special ). I pull into the pit area and everyone looks to see what the hell is making that horrible noise. All I'm thinking, and hoping, is that after a session or two these things will quiet down a bit.

First session of the day with an instructor behind the wheel was interesting. I told him all about the noise and warned him how loud it was. He had no idea. After two laps with him in the drivers seat we pitted and swapped seats. The guy in the pit road commented "those are the worst sounding breaks I have ever heard". First session I was taking it a bit easy on the breaks and trying to get accustomed to them, but they really felt good.

The rest of Sat. and all day Sun. gave me a real good feel for these breaks...

Noise - These are obnoxious! Anything other than hot is insane. I have a new nickname... Mr. Squeaky Brakes. Everywhere I went in the racetrack area people came up to me and asked me if I was the one with the noisy brakes. The good thing is... once these brakes get hot, they get really quiet. I would think a track with a lot of braking points, hard braking, heating up the pads due to the design of the track or long / extended periods would be ideal for these ST43's. Also, once hot even when not on the track they would stay quiet for a decent amount of time, but once cooled they are screamers. Even now, after abusing these pads all weekend, they are insanely loud.

Performance - This is an interesting point as these, in my opinion, are too much brake for the car. I have stock tires and these will pull down the car something fierce, as long as the ABS is not activated. I can easily stop quicker without ABS on these pads than stock pads with ABS activated. With the ST43 pads if I went into ABS the rear would almost try to spin around. From the drivers seat; without the ABS on the car goes in a straight line and is predictable, activate ABS with these pads and the front end gets very squirmy, and it wasn't the best confidence booster. I tried to stay out of ABS as much as possible, but when I did get into the ABS it was pretty much hanging on. What's also nice about these pads is the instant grip. Just touching the brake pedal you can feel the grip of these pads, it comes on right away and fairly strong. Heat is another area where these excel. Once hot they grip better than cold, and when they grip they grip. I thought it was funny because some guys in Mustangs were complaining about brake fade, I was almost complaining because the opposite was happening to me. As I put laps on the brakes, they actually stopped the car better... the anti-brake fade pads.

Wear - These things look new. 9 sessions this weekend and they look great, would never know they were stopping a car consistently from high speeds all weekend.

Price - Mediocre in my opinion. I bought these from LPI Racing (they were awesome to deal with) and they were around $500 with shipping. I think if these were quieter on the street, or when cold, these would actually be cheap. For a track only pad that I really don't want to drive on the street (and I mean that I just want to drive from my house to the track and back), these are a bit on the expensive side.

Dust - These dust like crazy . After this weekend my shiny new black Corvette is matte black on the sides. My gloss black rims are brown. In all honesty, the dust doesn't bother me as I knew this was going to happen when I bought a track pad.

All in all these are really great pads for the track, but the noise issue will have me looking for another pad. Performance is excellent on the track, but it took a lot to heat these puppies up, but once hot they really stopped the car. Hope this helps

JRL

I have been using these for TT and track days for 4 years, very little noise and great wear. I drive to and from the track. YMMV

RX-Ben

Hmm. These were dead silent on my C5 (which I drove on the street) and I thought cold braking was fine (though of course, world's different when they get up to temp).
I didn't have ducts and had no fade, but only had 340-350hp.

You are not going to find a cheap set of padlets.

froggy47

The squirmy part is probably lack of grippy tires, not so much the brakes.

Did you clean the rotors off? The transfer film from previous pads?

deepcj7

I had the same noise with ST43's, but it sounded like most of the noise came from the rear. Replacing the rear St's with stock pads confirmed it. The best way to describe the noise coming from the rear is like rubbing your finger around the rim of a crystal wine glass and the harmonics that come of it...
My front brakes squeak a little but normal for track pads. The rear St's howled on my car...I got black flagged to inspect my pads. lol
I'll try the rears again when I replace the rear rotors to see if that makes a difference.

X25

I had similar experience with all other who have also posted.

Very good initial bite, no fade, very long life.

Noise characteristics:
C6 Z51 --> Not much noise, good for daily driving as well.
C6 Z06 --> Very noisy at the street and when cold at the track.
StopTech BBK 380mm/355mm --> Not much noise, good for daily driving as well.

I am using these pads on my Z06 with StopTech BBK. Being able to just 'drive' to the track without having to install anything is priceless

sleeperstyle

i run st43 in the front, and st42 in the rear. st43's in the rear made me get into abs before i could take full advantage of my brakes, too much bite on the rear for street tires in my opinion.

i called porterfield direct, the company that makes raybestos pads. they made me the st42's for the rear... if anybody is wondering how i got them.

noise- the 42's in the rear are very loud, the 43's on the front make a little noise but it doesn't bother me. i drive the car to the track and back, when i drive it on the street otherwise i use street pads.

froggy47

have one more idea if pkmoose comes back on this.

:_)

pkmoose

I am listening...

Actually my thoughts on the noise is the stock rotors wearing away and not the pads. I'm thinking of trying a different set of rotors with these pads, maybe the DBA Club Spec 4000 T3. And has been pointed out, maybe a softer compound on the rear. I really would like to keep running street tires as it's really nice to just hop in the car, go to the track and have fun.

rfn026

Interesting. A few years back I was working with one of the major brake firms. The running joke was how much they liked making race pads because they only had to worry about stopping the car. As they said at the time "If you're worried about brake squeal and pad dust on your wheels you ain't a racer."

Here's one of my more recent articles on brake pads.

btw - When I'm doing anything with companies like Pagid and PFC they want to know the temps on the rotor vanes, the rotor top hat and the caliper. It's all about data.

Richard Newton
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froggy47

I have done many brake jobs & many compounds and many pads.

Two things I do to prevent noise

1) If I reuse the rotor I clean the old pad transfer film off

2) I always use the orange anti brake squeal compound I think it's permatex, there are several, they are either a grease or a glue type compound.

I have videos on how to cure the squeal on my channel, see below.

It's under BMW but the process is the same.

rfn026

Pad material transfer is a huge issue. Too often it's diagnosed as a warped brake disc. People then buy an new rotor and the problem goes away. They they believe it really was a warped brake disc when it was actually the previous pad compound on the old disc that caused the problem.

Richard Newton

jbondfl

I've heard that different pad transfer material can cause squeal but wouldn't nine sessions pretty much eliminate that? If that were the sole cause I'd think they'd be quieter by the end of the weekend.??

ErnieN85

froggy47

Actually the opposite, once a contamination starts, it can often tend to grow/get worse. It doesn't fix itself.

Supercharged111

This is why I run dedicated pads and rotors on track, then switch back. Irrelevant because I bought a CMC Camaro to race, so no more track duty for the vette. My experience with the ST43 was that they're a little noisy, not so much so on my C5Z. They're dusty as hell for a street pad and a little embarrasing when rolling through the gate to get on base, but fudge 'em they'll never know what it feels like to haul a car down from 130 so quickly. If you get them warm, they shut right up, unless you have padlets, then you're screwed.

pkmoose

I did clean the rotors, and also drove 80 miles on the highway before the track, so I don't think it's previous pad material. I looked yesterday (I work a lot so couldn't do it last week) and the rotors definitely have wear. I can actually see some grooves in the rotor. My best guess would be the rotors are made too soft of a material for the pad. Also, I did use Permatex on all pad, and trust me, I sprayed the crap out of those puppies. This is not a normal brake squeal, but a metal on metal, wake the dogs up, scare the crap out of people squeal.

I would love to try these on a different rotor that doesn't have holes and is a better class of steel to see what happens. I can deal with break squeal, but when you can hear me on the race track, and you are five cars behind... that's another story.

Supercharged111

Dude factory rotors are the poop. A little carb cleaner will not remove previous pad material either.

pkmoose

I have padlets... I'm screwed I really like how these break, but I just can't stand the obnoxious noise they make, not a squeal, but metal on metal, shake your fillings, dogs bark, old people curse at me, young cute girls look at me and think "a new corvette... why the heck is it making so much noise?", I would rather listen to Lindsey Lohan talk than these brakes stopping, nails on a chalkboard sound refreshing, rap sounds good.... shall I go on?

On the positive, they stop like crazy, work well on the track, heat makes them work better and they are a direct replacement.

pkmoose

I know the factory rotors are poop, I will get some better ones and try that.

I cleaned the rotors with some scotch bright due to the fact that I read sandpaper usually contains some amount of iron oxide as an abrasive, and if used could impart its particles on the rotors, and if heat is applied it could become part of the rotor, causing a hot spot which would eventually lead to a driver thinking he has a warped rotor.

I need to stop over thinking these things....