1st track day boosted, 3 issues...
 

1st HPDE today since boosting the car. 3 issues.

1. After driving for 5K miles you need to tighten all the bolts. How do I know? Tractor like sounds when the DP was being held on by 1 nut. Jeez I'm an idiot. Corky must have told me 5 or 6 times to check that stuff when I got home. Did I? No. I'm lucky crap didn't fall on the ground. NOT Begi's fault. Stuff needs to be retightened after a new install is driven. Duh.

2. Brake pads don't hold up the way they did before FI. Instead of 90-95 mph on the straights I'm hitting 120. My EBC red stuff worked great pre-FI. Had about 1/2 left on the pads when I started today. I'm guessing that bare metal at the end of the day isn't a good thing. Good thing for me our rotors are cheap.

3. (and this is actually a question) Is it a bad thing that my cruise control line melted to a heat sheild? Is the twisted wire visible under the black plastic sheath something that needs to move inside the plastic or is it surrounding the actuator wire?

Any recommendations on brake pads?

Oh, and Hustler, you are going to love track days FI. I was afraid the extra power would be hard to control. I'm used to just mashing the throttle since there was no hp to get me in trouble. Quick easy transition. 1st track day was great, no problems with throttle control. These cars really work well with double the stock hp (or more).

no overheating issues at all? Stock hood? The tires held up on the track?

Regarding Brake pads: I ran the EBC Yellows (for track use and non road legal) on a couple of HPDE events, but when they where worn out, I swapped to Hawk Blue pads. Muuuch better. Strongly recommend. They wear a bit faster, but the grip is better and they can take a beating aaaall day long.

exact same experience with them. brand new out of the package, heat cycled then tracked....at only 160rwhp, I was braking on the bare metal backing plate by the end of the weekend. Suffice to say I ruined brand new rotors too....and not the cheap NAPA ones.

Go Hawk blue/black or equivalent.

So true with the turbo hardware. Curious what BEGI uses for locking fasteners? I went with the nord lock (stepped locking washers) on all the turbo parts and they've held fine.

I'm with Scott on the brakes- just buy some race pads and swap them out (like your track tires?) when the weekend rolls around. It takes nothing to do the job and odds are you're going to swap out pads if you run anything less anyway. I did that with my IS when I tracked it and had no regrets - definitely the advantage I need to overcome my hp deficit when chasing porsches and bmws. :D

Interesting. I am running the 94+ front brake rotors with EBC Yellows, plus stock 1.6 rear brakes with EBC Greens. Did a full track day, 6 20min sessions, with zero brake fade, and didn't eat the pads up too much either. The only issue I had was overheating....the GT3s wouldn't get out of the way, so they were blocking my airflow. :P

Sorry, but the REDs are track only, the Yellows fit inbetween the red and green. They are a track/street pad. Reds DO NOT WORK when cold, I used to have them on my other street/autoX car...SCARY when cold.

well actually the Redstuff are their aggressive street pad. and the Yellow stuff their race pad (that you can use on the street! :jerkit:).

however, it's hard to trust that as they change the compounds daily. I'm pretty sure when i bought them, they were labeled as race pads, the yellows as endurance pads.

either way, the greenstuffs at same level of boost did better than the redstuffs....go figure.


EBC is simply a joke imho...

Red, green, Purple... Whatever. I do not recommend EBC pads on the track, that is the point.

the turbo to manifold nuts and turbo to downpipe nuts are all those oval shaped ones.

Your cruise control wire is fine... the metal spiral is the outer tube, the wire is inside. Melting away the plastic just makes it easier to lube the cable without taking it off the car.

http://www.ebcbrakes.com/automotive.html

Green is street, Yellow is street and track, Red is race, Blue is endurance race.

Hawk HP+ and Hawk Blues are the pads I have heard the "stay the hell away" statements about the most from people in the SM community. The top runners I have talked with are using EBC Yellows or Carbotechs, not Hawks.

My current brake setup:
Front - 1.8 Caliper brackets w/ 1.6 calipers
1.8 NAPA rotors
EBC Yellows

Rear - stock 1.6 brakes
EBC Greens

Motul fluid.

This setup proved WAY BETTER than the Wilwood 15" setup (front and rear). The Wilwoods lastest half a session, mine lastest 6 sessions and never faded.

I like the Hawk blues or blacks if it's a race only car. Blacks only lasted me about 6 months on the street. I would never run blues on the street, but they are great track pads.


I'm loving the Carbotech xp10/xp8 mix on my car now for dual purpose.

come on, you cant read that bad....

Redstuff Superstreet Brakes
Superstreet formula for cars above 200bhp and fastest street driving
http://www.ebcbrakes.com/Assets/redstuffpad.jpg


Yellowstuff Ultra High Friction Track & Street Brakes
Ultra high friction pads for race use but perfectly safe for street use.
http://www.ebcbrakes.com/Assets/yellowstuffpad2.jpg


like I said, i've run both green stuff and redstuff on the track, both at 6-7psi (160-170rwhp). The greenstuff performed BETTER than the redstuff. EBC IS A JOKE!


I've had greenstuff on both my miata and altima for street driving. they are great for initial bite but wore down faster than anything I've ever experienced.

Better than 15" rotors?!.....:rofl: Please strap a turbo on a spec miata and lets see all the praise Redstuff pads get....my bet is none.

We have two people here, me and cue, that have used redstuff on the track with a turbo miata and both had the exact same experience.

Redstuff pads are enhanced with ceramic particles. The use of ceramic based brake pad friction material normally increases the thermal heat cracking of brake rotors. This is due to the lack of heat dissipation characteristics of ceramic based brake pad material. Great race pad! Let see how my brand new, less than 3K rotors looked like after (6) 15min sessions redstuffs pads:

I need some NA 1.8 brakes, so hopefully I don't need to run the sport brakes I have in the garage. Cheap = good

you or keith verges...lol

Never had brake fade on my heavyweight 90 with 94 brakes. But I did glaze the pads real good at the last event, rotors need a good cleaning now, ceramic pads FTL!

Carbotech xp9/8 is the next set-up, was thinking blues but they kill rotors to fast.

I just bought a trailer too, so I'm "semi" right now.

Ok. I didn't even notice that. I just saw "race" on the bottom and that's it. I was in a rush, I am also trying to work.

I had the same issue on my other car with Reds. They were KVR X-drilled rotors, and they started getting cracks from the holes. Nothing longer than 1/4", but still cracks.

I never said anyone uses EBC Reds in SM. I said they used Yellows or Carbotechs. You want a video of a 278whp SM-T that is running EBC Yellows?

No problem:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nMMUAuWvqYk