May at some point replace the OE pads on my modded 01 WRX with Pagid Blacks. The car already has braided SS hoses and Dot 5.1 Brake fluid.

Two related questions :

Will fitting the Pagids actually improve braking (ie stopping distance) or do they simply improve "feel" ?

Do I really need new discs for any significant improvement ? (eg Godspeeds)

Any thoughts welcome.

Andy

 

thats an easy one "NO"

 

I agree.

I race in hillclimbs and drive 3000 road miles in my 380 bhp Sti v3.
Stock brake discs, Pagid Blue in the front and DS 2500 in the rears (Pagid don't do the rear pads).
Stops well from cold , good in the High Street; an attribute even better when you arrive at the first 90 deg left at 80 mph in race form....

Take the car to a rece track and the brakes will suffer, but on the road?

Stock with pads ok for me.

Graham

 

I agree

Something I can't stress enough, even some pad manufacturers that advertise and claim "good" cold performance, are in fact the opposite when compared to stock.

In the end of the day its how you drive, if someone cooks their pads when driving on the road. They need to take a serious look on their driving style.

Track days: different kettle of fish = ££££

 

I love Scoobynet !

~ cheers Graham and Sharkie - pads alone it is then !

Andy

Will replacing the fronts and using OE rears work well ?

 

I was going to start a thread about my experiences so far with pad upgrades, but here goes.

I uprated the fronts on my MY98 with some pagid fast road pads "not called this anymore" big improvement over oem pads, i have now uprated the rears with some EBC Redstuff, and the car feels more settled under braking and appears to stop harder/better.

The next move is to upgrade to 4 pots on the front, with either EBC redstuff or DS2500.

 

Mixing and matching front and rear pad compounds can have interesting results. There are combinations that can work well, but there are situations where it has the opposite effect.

Worst case scienario I've seen has been on pre MY97 cars with ABS. Where one day you do an emergency stop where the ABS kicks in, the car refuses or takes an eternity to stop. I've seen it on several Imprezas now, which under normal braking stop fine...scary.

Two of the Imprezas involved had EBC front and OE rear and were noted to be alot worse when cold or applying brakes after a period of driving without using them (i.e cold pads). Reverting to OE all round eliminated the emergency stop/ABS problem. Nobody else seems to note this problem, so I can only assume later cars with the improved 4 channel ABS are probably not affected. But I thought I'd just mention it anyway.

 

I'll start my saying I don't know much about brakes. But when I was asking brake pad suppliers for prices for EBC redstuff pads most of them said redstuff pads aren't good enough for a impreza turbo.

But you find them ok?

 

Red stuffs are just fine but take a bit of warming up. I've had a few pads in the last four years and for street use when you want to stop the first time you push the pedal Mintex 1144s are the best.

 

How good to have some reasoning people on here!

My 'dual purpose' car has MY97 4 pots, braided hoses all round, stock rear sliding calipers rear.
It DID have abs, but I've just removed it having fully experienced the braking issues Sharkman states and I was fully committed to a very nasty bend on track (which i didn't make it round...).

To get advice on the right pads for my application I ignored all the marketing hype and went to Alyn at AS Performance - Rally Motorsport Specialists who pointed me at Pagid Blue for the front and DS 2500 for the rear.

I would strongly suggest a call to Alyn which would fix orbix's question.

A racer once said to me when i asked about 'big brakes' for my 911 (which applies to the Sti too).

Do you suffer from brake fade? Yes or no.

If yes: Fit big brakes and performance pads.
If No : Fit performance pads to good/new discs.

I did the latter.

For a bit of a lark: 90 mph into a tricky bend on stock/padded brakes:
DropShots Day
DropShots Day

Graham.

 

I decided to just upgrade pads on MY03 WRX rather than the whole big brake, new disks etc. Going for EBC Yellow Stuff all round. I remember reading night and day results when changing fronts (bad) to changing all round. All round is the way to go. Standard brakes are ok but on the occasions I do go full steam into bends/roundabouts etc its nice not to have to rely on the gears to help in the decceleration process

 

But with yellows do not do this until they are warm or you will leave the roundabout in the direction you entered it.

 

I thought these were supposed to be good from cold?

What are considered the best step up from standard pads to improve braking with standard disks etc on a New Age?

 

Pagid Blacks or Ferodo DS2500

 

I find them ok at the moment, I push hard on the road, the reason i don't go for Pagids on the 4 pot set up is that the pads ate the disc's so to speak.

 

I have tried Pagid Blues, DS2500s and EBC Yellowstuff ( The newer R compound ) and found little difference in cold performance between the 3. One thing I would say is the DS2500s (on track) tended to leave pad residue on the disks which caused a lot of vibration.
Best to get same or similar compound on both front and rear - leaving OEMs on the rear makes the back end skittish and you get a lot more dive under hard braking.

 

I'm sure I phoned AS Performance and got told they don't stock EBC, I could be wrong.