In street driving pads make more of a difference than the rotors. Get blanks, slotted, drilled, whatever, as long as from a quality source and not ebay. Pads - spend some time thinking about pads. I've liked Hawk pads since being introduced to blue and black compounds on race cars. HPS are decent street pads, but dust. I think they have a ceramic pad too, although not sure if for our cars. Have EBC greens on the wife's CX5 and they are also good - nice bite, no extra rotor wear that I've seen, and low dust. The Akebono APS pads are supposed to be good too, but I haven't tried those.

Make SURE you clean the hubs - they accumulate corrosion there and it will make the disk and the wheel sit slightly crooked, which will feel like a warped rotor. Antiseize is your friend here.

 

Ebay is just a marketplace, it's not a source. There is nothing wrong with getting rotors on Ebay. I got the same rotors and pads on ebay I was going to get on RockAuto.

 

True. I'm sure rotarymike is saying stay away from the 'price too good to be true' rotors et al on eBay, he's a true enthusiast. buy good name brand parts from reputable sellers. Ebay does have a long history of battling fakes etc, more so than most places.

skyG37, what car do you have? I"m not unhappy with the stock setup on my X, but it does have dual piston front calipers. I saw reference to period tests that said the Akebonos didn't have a stopping distance any shorter than the stockers, that may have been vs a dual piston car perhaps?

Akebonos and my 17's don't mix, sadly, and I plan to keep those as my winters.

 

@stealthee my point really is that on ebay, you don't know exactly what you're getting, and since the proliferation of Chinese loss-leader sellers pushing out many legit sellers, and the new payment policies pushing out small sellers (like myself), it has really become a crapshoot. With Amazon, there are plenty of counterfeit sellers too but you can return stuff - the problem there is the 'does it fit my car' algorithm isn't necessarily good when dealing with submodels (like my 6MT sedan, for instance) - do your own part# research and you should be OK. RockAuto seems to be a solid choice for OEM level parts and what aftermarket parts they carry.

TL;DR:
Street car - stick with OEM or quality replacement rotors, name brand street/autocross pads, and make sure you have relatively grippy tires. Flush fluid with DOT4/DOT4+, change brake lines to braided stainless if your pedal feel is still mushy, and call it a day.

Dress up - Z1. They're really the best game in town.

Racing - What class are you racing in LOL? Otherwise, 20" wheels, carbon rotors if you can find them, and GT-R 6-piston calipers with Z1 adapters and aggressive pads like Hawk Blue. You'll get seat-belt bruises and your wallet will be thousands lighter, but you'll be approaching the Brakes of God.

No, I wanna read the long version:
To quote a cheesy T-shirt: If speed kills, do brakes give life? (YES).

Ultimately brake performance (as does most other handling performance) comes down to tires. If one friction surface fails then the rest are moot - if your tires start to skid then that is your braking G limit, full stop. ABS can only do so much. So on commonly found M&S rated street tires I doubt there's huge differences between the giant akebonos and 2 pistons or even the sliding calipers at normal driving situations. After tires, the next most effective change is pads - grippier pads will change initial brake bite and pedal feel, and perhaps delay overheating. If you're cooking semi-race pads and already have sticky tires, then the next step is bigger calipers and rotors (changing the torque arm of where the braking friction is applied).

Heck, the RX7 community had nifty 4-piston aluminum calipers on all the turbo cars - but when they went to the RX8, they used parts-bin single piston cast iron behemoths from a Ford Excursion and huge (for such a light car) rotors for the front brakes, and they were excellent in braking performance. :shrug:

To me, what changing up the brakes gets you is a wider window between gentle drag that slows you to a stop and panic brake tire squeal. With the right combo of caliper, rotor, pad, etc. you can have more modulation of the brakes (or better pedal feel, if you like) between barely-there and ABS intervening.

What do I run? Currently I've got the Akebonos that were stock with the 6MT model and what look to be stock Akebono/Nissan pads. I've got z1 2-piece rotors for the front, and Hawk HPS5.0 pads front and rear, along with stainless lines and ATE DOT4+ fluid to go in when I change them all this summer.

I've not 'run out' of brake with the stock setup, but I've only done hard stops from high speeds a few times on a private road (100-zero) and you get about 2 of those, then your brakes are overheated and the fluid is toast. What I'd LIKE to have is the ultimate brakes, what I refer to as the Brakes of God, where when you stomp the pedal you change the rotational inertia of the planet a little. Problem is, material science can only do so much so those super LeMans F1 GrandAm brakes don't work at all at normal driving...

Yes, I have run Hawk blues on the street, and yes they wore the rotors so thin in 2 weeks that at one stop when I released the pedal the pads fell out of their bracket. 2 weeks took about 1/8" off both sides of the rotors and you could see the shadow of the inner vanes in the steel that was left. And pedal force required when cold was painful. 1/10, would not recommend.

 

I can't believe this thread got this much attention.

Great post, Mike.

 

Thanks!

/Forum been a bit slow lately...
//Not really interested in working too much today
///Third slashie is for luck.

 

I registered just to compliment rotarymike on that detailed breakdown. You sir have written the end all be all for brake information required for this forums "I want Brakes Flowchart"

 

thanks!

When I started with track driving my available cars (1st gen RX7s) had pitiful (even for the time they were made) brakes, so I learned through observation of what the other racers were doing and experimenting myself.

Edited to remove autocorrect-added apostrophe.

 

I can backup the statement about going with blank rotors. Have drilled and slotted now and it doesn't stop as well unless you put your foot into it. Powerstop Z23 or Z26 pads are the best I've ever used for the G. Good bite and low dust. I hear NAPA Ultra Premium are pretty good rotors.

 

True, the idea on cross drilled was that, beside a bit lower weight, that they'd let the pads 'off gas' under track use which I recall with modern materials is not an issue. They can help clear water from the rotors in the wet, for that though, if anything, I'd just go with slotted rotors.
I too have had good luck with centric rotors.

Their pads seem to get solid reviews. FYI, the Z23 and Z26 pad material is the SAME, Z26 has stainless backing plate vs rubberized for the Z23. Stainless would throw a little more heat off, in track use. Rubberized would probably be quieter for daily use.

 

I believe the napa rotors are manufactured by the same company that manufactures raybestos, so they should be decent quality. Most of Napa's house brand stuff is.