Hawk blues OR ?
 

Going to run my FD at Mid Ohio in june on stock brakes and I want to upgrade the pads,is there is a better choice than Hawk blues ? and reasons why?

I hear they eat your rotors so if yellow stuff pads stop as well but do not rotors then thats informative.

Check out the CarboTech line:

http://www.ctbrakes.com/pads.asp

XP10's or XP12's would help you out as well as being kind to the rotors..

I love blues with the stock brakes. Use them front and back and they work great for me. Don't crack the rotors plenty of torque, no fade etc.......

Must use OEM rotors as well though

Also can't use them on the street even if you are driving to the track if it's over 2 hours drive I'd swap at the track. If you trailer the car then no worries.

Yeah plan on changing at the track.

Got me some Ra1,s with some Enkei NT03+M...... I,m going to look fast even if I,m not lol.

You may know this but didn't mention so I will. Whatever you choose, you'll want a dedicated set of rotors for those pads. Bed the pads to the new rotors before you take it to the track.

Hawk blues , blacks, etc are the older generation pad material that would groove up rotors and leave chunks of rusty bits everywhere. The new generation of pads , dtc60 and 70 are much better. Pagid also had these old materials in their pads in their colour and rs line, they bought out mintex and run the old f2r and f1r's as their new gen pad, called rst1 and 2 I think. PFC 01 's are also very rotor friendly and easy to modulate but not super aggressive in bite.

I have run them all in my dedicated roadrace 20b turbo and the fastest and best pad is the old f2r mintex . But you need slicks or a6/r6 , a7/r7 hoosiers to prevent instant lock up.
For less grippy tires run the dtc60 and pfc 01.

I have not tried many other brands but winning money no object teams also like the new compounds like the f2r. I also know a ton of Nascar teams run the pfc 01.

I use Blues like Fritz—typically on the rear (stock based) only. I've had good luck w/ PFC 08s up front, with the Blues or DTC 60s in the rear. The 01s don't last long. They don't make PFC pads for the stock rear, or I would likely use them.

Using Blues up front (last time I did it) is nasty.... that dust gets all over, rusts quickly, and if it gets wet, it's like cement. People who used them BITD used to coat their wheels with Pam cooking spray to be assured of getting it off. It doesn't seem to be as much of an issue w/ rear-only.

Great info thanks...I was aware that Hawk blues have been bettered but until now had not had a what that was I will look into the DT60 and 70.

I,m on slotted rotors,is that going to be a problem?

I'd recommend blues in the back and DTC70 front if you are worried about the grooving and dust. However DTC70s will crack your rotors prematurely and the blues are less likely to do that. So you have to weigh pluses and minuses of grooving and dust versus cracks. In my experience you will have longer overall rotor life with blues.

I keep a set of Blues for my front brakes just to run if I get pad deposits and need to grind them off. They're that hard on rotors (works great for deposits though!)

Time and technology have passed by the Blues, and with a car as nice as yours you don't want to deal with the nasty dust they make. Fritz is absolutely right that DTCs are also hard on rotors, and they still make a ton of dust, but it's not as caustic like the blues. The goldilocks of the Hawk lineup might be the HT-10, but be prepared for any Hawk pads to put a hurt on your stock rotors. You're going to out a lot of strain on the stock brakes at Mid Ohio with the speeds you'll pull on the back straight.

So I plan on buying a set of new oem style rotors all round and installing blues and run the crap out of them.

I plan to get the least expensive as they will be done after a few sessions.
https://www.rockauto.com/catalog/x,c...2B1994%2BMAZDA

After hearing that there are better choices than the Blues, DTC60, PFC01, Carbotechs, etc...., why are you going to use the Blues? I ran Blues for years and someone finally convinced me to try some of the newer compounds and they are far better with less dusting and far better pedal modulation. I tried the Carbotechs and they were great on my Wilwood caliper, Coleman rotor setup and would have used them on my FC, but they weren't available.

I was desperate for a race pad once and tried KFP Golds and they were better than the Blues. Better clamping, far better rotor life and easy to modulate when cold. The hot ticket right now with all of the SCCA IT and ST guys is the Raybestos ST43. Everyone loves the pad. So much love that they are buying ones that are close to what they need and grinding them to fit calipers that Raybestos doesn't make a pad for. Stoptech also makes some great pads.

Go outside of the Blues and see what's out there. You can do far better.

Eric

Sorry, I should explain that I race 2 cars. The Cougar is an ex World Challenge car and that is the one that had the Carbotechs on it. Now it has a Stoptech pad and I love it. The RX7 is presently running the KFP Golds and it works great and the pads and rotors look like new.

Eric

Will those pads accept a slotted rotors that I,m running now? (Blues will crack them so hence my choice there)

If they can and out perform blues without buying new rotors then that is good enough for me.

Its a 485 hp street car so stopping from 130-140 mph on stock brakes without ducting,is asking a lot.

15 years of driving the FD on track tells me:
Blues work great in the back. Don't prematurely crack rotors, long life etc... and best of all dirt cheap

I've tried about everything on the front on various BBK kits from cobalt, ferodo, the whole pagid line up which would be my 2nd choice, carbotech, all the hawk pads etc....and compared to PFC pads they have all been a disappointment or IOW PFC pads are the only pad I'm continuously going back to.

With 400 plus HP you need 285 minimum rubber, a brake kit and duct work.....

I happen to have a two nice BBK kits available :icon_tup:

[QUOTE=
With 400 plus HP you need 285 minimum rubber, a brake kit and duct work.....

I happen to have a two nice BBK kits available :icon_tup:[/QUOTE]


Funny you should say that :) been reading a few threads and I,m sure I could fab something that would work.

https://www.rx7club.com/suspension-w...ck-use-939198/

and

Triple-R: Dedicated brake ducting

mp5, what kind of track experience do you have?

The reason I ask is that some of the suggestions in this thread are for a more experienced track junkie. I suggested the Carbotechs thinking you haven't had a ton of track experience up to this point and were just starting out. IMO, they are a great starting pad but most people eventually want more. If we are suggesting the uber pads, my new favorite is Cobalt Friction:

Cobalt Friction Racing Brake Pads

They are pricey, but they are well worth it when your experience gets beyond the normal pads..

I have run my Seven a couple of times a year over the last 10 years so no rookie,no pro either.

I will run her hard no question,I,m running in the advanced group so want to put up a good showing.

If Hawk pads haven't annoyed you up to this point, keep running them. :) When you are ready to try something different, there are many good suggestions in this thread.

we have run PFC's for about the last decade, and we wore a set out and went back to carbotechs, and the drivers don't like them. i cannot even imagine running hawk blues

You're going to be lifting early and still hitting those speeds. I regularly hit 138-140 on stock twins lifting before the 500 marker.

See I,m not bothered about tearing up rotors? a new set are only $100.track wheels no care either.

What would you run instead,that would be better?

lol, let me clarify. we put PFC's on the car, and everyone was happy. then when they wore out, we put the old carbotechs on, and the drivers do not like them, they made faces like they were sucking on lemons.

that is the other thing about the PFC's, they are magic. they do everything, they modulate well (this is what the drivers like). they are really easy on rotors too, we can run the 25 hours of thunderhill, and there is no noticeable wear on the rotors at all, in fact we can run two 25's on a rotor, its amazing. they don't even seem to dust much, or squeak.

pad wear is ok, the honda can run a 25 on a set of pads, but the miata only made it 2.5 track days, and i'm not sure if its a different compound, or outside temp or what.

the carbotechs are ok, they dust more, and we've had a couple pads break/crumble, but they do ok

Good info about the pfc,s thanks.

I have seen this type of thing before. Its not so much of a "this is the magic pad" but more along the lines of, on this application and under these conditions, this pad is the best. As a real world example and going back a few years, I ran Hawk Blues all the time on my RX7. They worked great at Mosport, some dusting, really good wear, strong braking effect and really really good modulation. Then I boosted the power of the car by about 80 hp and dropped about 150 lbs off the weight. My lap times dropped by about 4 seconds. All of a sudden I was getting backing plate bending, pad material cracking off on the leading edges and my rotors looked like they were being dragged along concrete. Even had a rotor crack on me during a race. Everything pointed to the pads getting too hot, so I added really good brake ducts to the front of the car to see if I could bring the temps under control. With ducting, things were worse. I was totally confused. I tried a number of different pads, all harder than Blues and nothing was really better. I was thinking of converting to a huge Wilwood setup.

The answers were given to me by an engineer at PFC during a PRI Show. He listened, griped a bit that they didn't make a pad any more for my car and then told me that the heavy wear and crumbling and dusting can be brought on by making the pads work at temperatures outside of their designed operating range. If the pads are too hot they wear quickly, crumble and ruin rotors, but the greater concern is not getting them up to temp or keeping them at operating temps. He told me to go back, run the track again and measure rotor temps with temperature paints on the rotors to determine what my max temps are. I did this and found out that my rotors weren't even getting up to 500 degrees. It seems that counter intuitively, the additional hp actually made me fast enough that the increased airflow and the lack of braking zones at Mosport, meant that my rotors never came to temp and stayed there. So every time I used the brakes hard in Turn 5, it was almost like a cold application and the pads were well out of their operating range. I took off the ducts off entirely, went back to Blues on the front and non vented rear rotors with stock pads on the rear. Made an effort to drag the brakes harder on the warm up laps and slightly dragged the brakes during the race laps to keep them up to temp. Again only at Mosport. It worked great. I could then get a whole season out of one set of pads and rotors. At other tracks, like Shannonville, it was full ducts, carbon ceramic KFP pads, vented rear rotors with Blues on them and even considered water misters in the ducts.

So long story to get to the point, you have to measure rotor and caliper temps every time you go out to race if you want to make sure your pads are working correctly. Check with the manufacturer of your pads to get the expected operating range of the compound. Run a hard session on track and pull in as hard as possible and have someone use an infra red gun to quickly measure rotor and caliper temps on all 4 wheels to see if you are above or below the operating range. Only when you are in the sweet spot of temps can you actually determine if the pads are working well for you and make judgements on the other aspects of the pad choice. Nowadays this is the first thing I do every year to make sure that with all the changes I make to the cars, that everything still is working within design ranges. I also make sure that on the Warm Up Lap, that I get the pads and rotors up to temps as well as the motor and gearbox. You very rarely see me wiggling the car from side to side (I may do that to clean off some pit area trash). Most of the time its hard accelerating and braking and sometimes both at the same time, to get the brakes up to temp as quickly as possible.

Here is an example of what I do on the pace lap in my Cougar; . This was during the Canadian Touring car Championship Race during the NASCAR Truck Weekend at Mosport. Forgive the lack of speed in the corners, but my tire deal fell through at the last minute and I was forced to start the race on 12 year old Toyo RA1 tires I use as rollers. The rest of the cars were on Conti Slicks. Even so I ended up finishing first in the Super Touring Class just by keeping my nose clean and finishing the race and passing a couple of cars.

Eric