949 Wilwoods & Colbalt XR2 pads
 

After months of over thinking my brake options I settled on 949 Wilwood fronts with Colbalt XR2 front with XR3 rear with sport rotor.

My previous setup was stock 1.8's with XP12 pads front and XP10 rear.

With the old setup front pads would last a day or two depending on how many runs there were. I have 5 days on the new front setup and they show very little signs of wear.

Stopping power, modulation and consistency of the XR2's has been outstanding! Rotors show no signs of heat cracks and have smooth consistent pad deposits.

With results like these the BBK's pay for themselves in no time.

Today I washed 5 track days worth of dust from the wheels. No cleaners just a strong hose and a wipe. Another plus IMHO.

Try Hawk HPS, they'll only last a day on these brakes too.

I need some colbalts. What's your source and price, all 949?

Wait? Your from Oregon city and don't know about AR-Autoservice/Adrenaline Racing in Lake Oswego? You could drive over and pick some up.

Adrenaline Racing | For the enthusiast by the enthusiast
AR Auto Services

I’ve tried a lot of pads and never found anything that works as well as Cobalt if you are talking heavy track use. And they play well with street pads used on the same rotors zero bed in required. Second place for me and probably cheaper but not as long lasting is Hawk DTC 60 or 70 I think.

Yes of course I do, Eddie's shop is my main competition ;)

I suppose I hadn't thought of them, I'm not hugely serious on my pad purchase yet. Wedding first! Still worth it to compare prices elsewhere though.

+1 for the Cobalt pads. Running XR2/4 right now. Love them so far, still working through my first set.

Have your wedding at the track and put racing supplies on the wedding registry list;)

Amazon list ftw. You can puts any shiznit on them now.

Let us all drink to Curly's impending loss of autonomous decision making capabilities :)

Logged another 3 days (8 total) on the pads over the last two weeks. One of them being a test day that I hammered the car for hours on end. They still look 50%-60% of new.

I know Bob has been touting the merits of Cobalts for a while now. Everything he said was true. Right out of the gate they perform great. The stopping power does not seem to vary much at all over the temp range. The cost savings on the pads paid for my BBK.

they wear allot faster in the rain I have found. Four 20 minute sessions in the rain and they lost about the same amount of pad material they did in almost 4 compleat track days. They work but lots of braking on cold rotors kills the life of the pads. also wear out really fast if used much on the street.

FWIW this was at Portland and I was doing 6th gear down to 3rd in the braking zone in the wet running Hoosier H20's. Track dried out for the last session switched to R6 and I went over 9 seconds under the spec miata lap record.

That makes sense. I think the key to any of the pads is to operate within proper temp range. Too cold or hot kills em quick. Thanks again for leading the way. These pads are awesome!

I got sloppy with brake bias on my second set of pads and managed to kill them in 4 days. I also took out the 949 rotors after 2 sets of pads. Two of those were test days were you get to hammer on the car for hours. I think that little extra front bias pushed me outside the temp zone for rotors and pads. Overall still VERY please with the life of both.

Instead of buying new 11" rotors I upgraded to 11.75's. I inherited some V8R hats/rotors from a friend so I just had to buy the brackets. With the extra thermal capacity of the bigger rotors I hope to get even better pad life.

Will the cheap rotors last on a 2,200lb (fuel & driver), 300whp car running 13 seconds under spec miata lap record?

Hustler got his to last forever somehow iirc. My first 11.75 rotors lasted all of last season, about 1000 miles. End of life was due to stress cracks in the rotor "spokes", not wear.