Just bought new EBC discs and pads (green) all round for my November 2002 1.8i Sport, and have had to send the rear pads back.
All the web sites I found for suppliers of EBC stuff quote two different rear pads: DP1453 for the 1.8 Sport 2001-2005 and DP1685 for the 1.8 Sport 2003-2005. Front pads, and both discs (the larger diameter ones) don’t have any differences. So I ordered the 2002 rear pads DP1453 (actually the Green version DP21453) but they are the wrong ones for this car - the 2003-5 versions are apparently the correct ones. I’m now waiting for replacements after forking out an extra £20 or so for the pads and extra postage both ways (the supplier EBC Brakes Direct said I should have stripped them down before ordering replacements). Well, I would have if I’d known there was a potential problem.
So, if you have a 2002 1.8i Sport make sure that you check the pad shape before you order. Apologies if this has been posted before.
Having just changed the discs and pads I was horrified by the state of the ones that came off. The outer (visible) faces of all the discs looked OK - just looked as it the pads were getting a bit low. The hidden inner faces were awful, with the clean swept area on all four of them down to little more than 50% of the full area. In all the years I’ve been servicing my own brakes I’ve never seen anything this bad, particularly on a well-maintained car - my wife bought it new 6 years ago and uses it daily for work; it has 43,000 miles on the clock and has been maintained by a dealer up to now (although the brakes haven’t needed work).
Is this something specific to MX-5s, or perhaps just the Mk.2? Maybe it has something to do with the shielding around the back of the discs? There’s no way that new pads could have been fitted without skimming the discs - even if that was possible. This pic shows the old front discs & pads (outer face on the left, inner on the right):
I too have encountered this problem with the front brake discs. Outer surface perfect, inner an 8mm. rust rim on the outer edge as if the pads had not been making contact with the disc. I resurfaced the inner face and fitted new pads, the old ones only down to 6mm. the car is four years old but has only done 14,000 miles, I put it down to the fact I do a very low mileage but I have done low mileages with other cars without discs being in this condition. The rears seem to be OK. Like you I have been servicing cars for a long time and have never seen discs in this state at such a low mileage. I just wonder why, does anyone know? Robbie says it is not uncommon. There must be a reason!
I had EBC Turbogroove discs & Greenstuff pads on my old Mk1. I hated them. Rubbish. The pads in particular are truely bad with poor pedal feel when cold and too grabby when hot. The discs are too noisey both on braking and just on drive-by. Greenstuff are also very hit & miss - sometimes you get a good set, another time you get a set that are too soft or too hard. I had a set of rears that ate my discs while hardly showing any signs of wear on the pads themselves.
The best solution is standard plain discs from Mazda or MX5Parts with stock pads or upgrade to Axiss Ultimate (better braking but more dust). They will brake better, feel better and while the discs won’t last as long they cost a fifth the price of EBC discs!
I guess it’s a bit late to tell you that now though…
I’ve had Greenstuff pads and disks for 20,000 miles on my AWD 3.0 Jaguar X-Type, which had fairly dead and unresponsive brakes originally. The Greenstuff pads added extra initial bite (no difference between hot and cold) and gave better performance, so I’ve been very pleased with them. I find it hard to believe that their quality is as variable as you suggest!
I agree that the Greenstuff pads seem a bit “grabby” on the MX-5, although it’s a bit early to say if they will remain like that when bedded in properly; there’s no difference in feel or performance between cold and hot. My EBC discs are plain, not grooved (I’d never bother with grooved or dimpled discs for road use) and cost the same as the Mazda ones - and I’m quite sure that the quality is at least equal to Mazda’s. I suspect that (as you suggest) it would have been fine to fit normal pads rather than the uprated green ones. The main reason I decided to use EBC rather than Mazda was my concern about the awful corrosion on the inner face of the original discs, and good experience on the Jaguar. I knew that EBC quality was OK - unlike some of Mazda’s stuff (e.g. I’m on my second set of alloys and they’re corroding as badly as the first set did!).
