Hawk HP+ vs Hawk HPS vs EBC Greenstuff vs Bonez stage I
 

Should be helpful to anyone replacing brake pads. Anyone use these types? Opinions?

If you can live with the dusting and occasional squealing under light braking, the Hawk HP+ are extremely grippy and durable pads. They hold up well under track use (they do fade but they don't FAIL, unlike the HPS). The HPS are OK for street driving but I have come to love the high friction coefficient of the HP+. I have heard both bad and good regarding the EBCs....mostly bad. I've heard decent things about the Bonez Type I pads, but they will fail under track driving conditions like the Hawk HPS (which they might be rebadged HPS anyway!).

i lived by ebc's on my older datsuns. then i put a set on my fd and they sucked! they basically fell apart with about half the pad left. the hawk hp+ i replaced them with seem to be much better imo.

I agree with Rynberg ;), I currently Hawk HPS on my FD, but since I don't track my car (yet) they're fine. Very little dusting and much better than stock pads IMO.

street? track? EBC-green are supposed to be great STREET pads, which is why i have them here ready to go on.

I usually run HP+, they are an excellent pad. The Blacks are what I use for th etrack, they eat rotors VERY quickly, so they are not a good street pad. I recently put the EBC reds on my FD, so far they are a good street pad. I have not tried the Reds in a semi-race setting yet. Haven't had them on long enough to determine pad life either.

I would avoid HPS and Greens as I am sure that they would not hold up to my driving.

BTW - the lighter the car, the less abrasive of a pad you need.

Hawk hp vs hps is that the same as blue and black? I see that they are different part numbers...but i wonder :D Radkins used blue for a long time and felt they were good for the road but tended to fade a bit after several track laps. He switched to blacks which were great for the track but squeak like a mofo on the street...Im mean like really really bad. In the end he switches from blues to black at the track.

I use ebc green stuff. They are fine for the street. Low dust no noise. On the track they are vastly superior to stockers in life span (length of time to heat up) but once they heat up I dont like the way they feel. They are not really track pads and feel vague as they get hotter. The stock pads were actually had a better "feel." At least you knew when they were giving out. It was an all or nothing sort of thing. The green stuff just sort of gets to the point where you cant tell what they are doing. In the end I like them better than than the stockers as I get more laps. it would be a tough call to choose between these and hawk blues as I dont track very much (3 times a year) If I was tracking more I would not use the greens. Since Im mostly on the street, greens are fine.

Tire rack told me that the greens are suitable for light track and the reds are not suitable for the street. I called ebc to get the answer as the descriptions are not so good.("Greens for light track use" I think it says) They weren't much help. I will probably go with the reds when these give out. Many people complain that the greens burn away really fast on the track. I have not noticed that but then again I am not an aggressive braker on the track. Im still very newb on track driving. I have also heard that they fall apart at 1/2 pd thickness but have not seen that yet. Then again, like I said I dont hammer my brakes.

Um....no. The blue and black pads are true racing pads and are just simply DANGEROUS to drive on the street -- with much less braking force than any typical street or street/track pad at street temps. Either of those pads would also eat through a rotor in short order in street-type driving.

And unless Radkins was running full out for many laps on a very brake-abusive track, I seriously doubt he got a set of blues to fade.....:)

I've been through a few sets of HP+ and like them other than the dust and squeaking. They're fine except for real track running; forget about it if you have R compound tires. I could only run 2 hard laps before fading them on R tires. They don't give up completely even then but the pedal pressure goes way up and you start eating them at that point.

I have a set of Porterfield R4-S waiting to go on right now, we'll see what I think of those. They're much more expensive so I had better like them :p:

Just an observation that many companies tend to use the top consumer brand as the bottom commercial brand. I really had no idea.


You must know him ;) He usually goes through a set of rotors every few events depending on the track. He uses blacks in the back and blue in front, changing brake fluid after every event. It was the blacks that faded not the blues..had that wrong ways around

the hp+'s destroyed my stock fd rotors...meh it was itme to upgrade anyways

I'm not sure if you have a FC or FD, but I had the HP+ on my vert and though I loved the grip , I really hated the mess they made of my rims. I had actually ordered the HPS pads as replacements for the stock pads from a dealer in SC, but they sent me the HP+ instead. The guy told me I'd like them better, so having not used the forum here at the time I went ahead and put them on. Since my vert is just a daily driver (rightfully so) , I never probably saw the full benefit of these pads. I got sick of constantly cleaning the wheels and switched to Bendix pads. I can tell they don't bite as much as the Hawks, but I can live with that considering it still stops well. I guess the real question is the type of driving you'll do.

So you Vert guys would recommend the EBC Greens as a nice step-up from the stock pads (for a 90 Vert)? I'm not looking for race-track performance, but just something better than the stock pads. I want NO noise and LOW to NO dust.

I have ebc greens, they dust like a bitch but are silent.

I have the Hawk HP+ pads on my vert, they put out a shit load of dust and make a little noise from time to time. Over all the dust is the only think I don't like but it is worth dealing with because I never knew that my brakes could work this good, I like them.
~George

Go to Mazda and order stock pads if you want no noise and low dust.

Geen EBC's suck ass covered donkey dong! They chewed up my rotors and I turned them three times before I threw the poop in the trash where they belong. The Hawk street work great. I have no reason for the + untill I can hit the track. I don't use any pads that have metalic crap in them.

i use the HP+ on my car and they are great! they do squeal and it irks me every once in a while, but for the performance they give, it's a very small price. dusting has never bothered me, so that's not an issue. i can't wait until i can get the HP+ for the rears. :)

My MR2 buddy just ordered a set of those and I'm very curious to see how they do...

EBC Greens will dust less and have less initial bite..... HP+ will bite harder and create more dust. If you drive hard.... get the HP+ pads... If you are fairly aggressive the EBC Greens will work great.

Rinse your wheels every morning and they should be fine with HP+'s.... but be prepared to spend some time on them when washing the car if you are running a "mesh" style wheel. Toothbrush time and Eagle One wheel cleaner (with acid, wear gloves and watch out for your eyes).

-Mark