Hello chaps and ladies. I want to take my turbo mark three onto track days but have been advised that the standard brake pads will be of no or little use. Therefore I want to purchase and fit some pads which I can use for the track day, which will last and which I will be able to use on the roads thereafter. There seem to be a lot of brake pads around with different colours, yellow, green and red. I am a bit confused as to which ones to buy that will suit my requirements. Could anybody give me any help please? I’ve looked on YouTube and for every video recommending one colour or brand there is another which says that that brand is rubbish!
I use EBC Yellowstuff pads on my 'charged NC…good for both track & road…you might want to consider replacing the OEM discs to drilled & grooved at the same time…
Hi Tommy,
Standard pads meet a number of needs, including cost, but are general soft to give good, instant stopping performance. On the road, because of the nature of driving and the distance between places where you would need to brake, and the speeds you can get up to, it is unlikely that you will come close to overworking your brakes. However track driving involves far more braking and far more frequent braking. On most circuits you would expect 2 pretty heavy brake applications per minute if not more. This then translates into far more heat and load on the pads and other components. Add a turbo, which makes more power, meaning more speed, meaning more energy in the car, means there is more to take out at the other end. Cars don’t corner faster because they have a turbo, they just arrive at the corner quicker and with more speed to get rid of. Without going into what happens to the brakes to give fade, the bottom line is the standard, soft pad is likely to suffer very soon.
There are any number of different pads. The “standard, cheapest” upgrade is EBC Yellow which work absolutely fine on the road as well. They are not the world’s best brake pad, and for that matter they are not EBC’s best brake pad, but they will work OK, especially if you are not expecting to set any new lap records.
The issue why these get a bad press is often they are the only brake upgrade that cars get. So someone stuffs 50% more power into their car, or in quite a few cases 100%, but does not alter anything in the brake area to account for this, then eventually fits Yellow Stuff, as the “standard upgrade” pad. Overwhelms them and says they are a pile of brown stuff.
I will say again, that they are not the best pad out there, but are cost effective and reasonable if you don’t expect to be setting lap records hour by hour. There are many other pads, the cost, depending on what they are can be substantially higher. But as you have found out, no matter what product, you will always find an incident where the pad has come away from the backing, or that they have faded or that Bill wants to tell Fred that his pads are rubbish because Bill paid more and so on.
If it is your first track day Yellow should be absolutely fine and for front and rears for a MK3 should cost about £150. If you need new discs, then the plain, standard ones are fine. The dimpled ones look great, but don’t really add anything.
That’s really helpful - thanks. What’s the difference between them and the red ones I see advertised in hard top/soft top? I assume red is more”track” than green, but is yellow a step up? If so, is red a better overall compromise if I’m driving back home and don’t want to change my pads anytime soon as I’ve got no garage facilities? I’m not bothered about being the fastest car out there, I just want to learn how to handle my car better.
Hello buddy,
I have a BBR turbo as well and use it on track…
I would recommend you give Paul a ring a Roddison Motorsport as he does a pad the will suit your needs perfectly,
As said above OEM disc’s are absolutely fine but if you want to help a little more I would recommend a brake fluid upgrade and possibly even braided lines…
having said that the pads alone will make a massive difference
Hi Dave. Thanks for that advice I will certainly contact Roddisons. I’m not going to go down the whole route of completely renewing my braking system because I can’t afford it at this point and also I’m not going to be doing too many track days. Therefore just better breaking than standard will do for starters! Thanks again
Red Stuff pads aren’t suitable, or certainly not ideal for track use. They are hard for durability but don’t like excessive heat of frequent stops.
Thanks Nick for that information. That’s clarified the issue for me ??
I have a BBR Stage 2 Turbo Mk3.5.
I use Roddisson’s pads with standard discs, braided lines and decent brake fluid. Braking is consistently awesome.
They produce a lot more dust compared to Yellowstuff & OEM. But that’s a small sacrifice I’m happy to live with…
Thanks Tolksee. I left a message with Roddisons on Thursday but I’ve heard nothing from them. That’s helpful to hear about the characteristics of those pads. I think I’m going to try the Yellow stuff ones for starters and see where I go from there.