Cooked the 244's brakes at the track, where to from here?

VolvoHordz

Cooked my front brakes real good last weekend at the track. RDA rotor on the left, literally just a few thousand km of DD and looked fine, then 6 or so laps around sydney motorsport park aka eastern creek and that is how they look. Freshly machined rotor on the right for comparison purposes.

Put on the fresh machined rotors, new Bendix General CT brake pads and new brake fluid and my brakes are working normally again. In the longer term definitely need to upgrade rotors and pads. Whilst sticking with stock callipers, what do you guys recommend?

Provided they aren't warped completely, could the RDA rotors be machined and reused? or does the fact that they got so hot they went blue mean they are now paperweights?

Vee_Que

Angus doesn't go on here annoyingly as he is the best to answer.

I wouldn't re use them. Slotted rotors and greenstuff pads and dvs style ducting helps it

Spac

Pads were some sort of cheap crap, right? That's 95% of your problem there.

In a road-spec 240, I'd be surprised if you could ever cook a set of Ferodo DS3000s around EC.
DS2500s and even the (much cheaper) DS-Performance pads would go far better than whatever you had there...

Are the rotors grooved, or just discoloured? Eithe way, it doesn't look like the rotors have been cooked, just the pads. Unless they warped, I'd have no problem in reusing them.

VolvoHordz

The brake pads I had were... well I have no idea, pulled them from a parts car because I was being cheap :\"> performed well enough on the street so never worried about them.

One rotor is slightly grooved but could definitely be machine out. I can get them machined cheap and easily so will probably try that and see how they come out.

240Joe

How do these 'Frodo' pads compare to EBC ones? I use the blackstuff/ultimax ones

jamesinc

I second you should use Greenstuff. They're HEAPS better than OEM pads under hard use.

Spac

The original Greenstuffs were complete rubbish - a triumph of marketing of a shit product. Lots of my mates got burned by them.
The only reason I don't continue to harp on about them is because Ash says that the product is a lot better now...

That said, they are still widely ignored by the motorsport world. ;)
Meanwhile, Pagid and Ferodo supply about 80% of the "real world" motorsport market. As a general rule, the Ferodo pads seem to offer 95% of the performance of the equivilant Pagid for about 60% of the price... Hence my preference for Ferodos.

The other big thing is that they both supply info on their pads' performance - info that is reliable, accurate and free of marketing gobbledygook enough to allow you to make an informed choice. EBC does not have a history of doing the same...

The cheap Ferodo Excel/Zero pads you get from SuperCheap are actually quite a good performance pad. The pedal gets soft once they get too hot, but they keep working.

There's a Lucas road pad that is also a surprise performer. It sounds horrible, but the thing to do is go out and cook them badly. Then let them cool properly, and you've suddenly got a pad that actually works quite well and has an exceptional resistance to heat fade.

DS-Performance and DS2500s have the same (relatively high) co-efficient of friction, but the DS-P goes off 50* sooner than the 2500. Both work well from cold, although the pedal is spongy until they get some warmth into them.

DS3000s are a proper race pad, albeit one that's tolerable in a road car - no harder to live with than the old Bendix Metal Kings I had in my old silver 245 (but the 3000s have way more stopping power and a much higher fade point).

240Joe

That's good info, thanks spac.
Do you get your better frodos from supercheap too?

AshDVS

Other than the colour of the rotor, whats wrong with them? They've obviously been hot but this may be due to inadequate cooling and a pad type not suited to the application.

Bendix General CT pads are complete garbage and wont last too long on a day spent at a racetrack.
I've had some good experience with both EBC Greenstuffs and Redstuffs and more recently Project Mu pads.

It would definately be worth checking your brake lines too, I've seen both rubber ones and some of the cheaper braided stainless lines swell around the fittings.

If you're going to make a habit of it, run some ducting to the brakes or remove the backing plates to help them cool, and use decent fluid and replace it regularly.

The standard 240 calipers are actually quite good, but they're cast iron and once they're hot they stay hot for a while.

I dont think its neccessary to do a complete rethink of it all, I'd start with checking lines and fittings, check the calipers, unless rotors are cracked or warped I would reuse them.
Swap in a decent pad, bleed with good fluid and move on.

egads (she/her)

@Angus242164 makes lines that are a work of art if you go down the line replacement route. I have some he did for the 142 and they are tops.

Spac

The motorsport Ferodo pads come from Barrie Smith Motorsport in Murrumbateman.
There's a dozen different company names to confuse everyone, particularly the OS manufacturers who don't want the one company also importing their competitors' products...;) But BSM is 100% legit and very easy to deal with - that they sell similar competing products means that the give HONEST advice, rather than just trying to push the one brand that they stock...

The DS-Performance pads seem to be available from brake places that sell Ferodo pads.