v interesting read - cheers Jon F

Kev

 

I am surprised there isnt more feedback from other people testing these?

 

I've only tried the v3 Reds so far, and exclusively on the road (about 500 miles since fitting). I'm very impressed - much more bite than the Pagid 4.2.1's I had on before. They feel generally stronger and have never shown any sign of fade.

I've no idea about whether my pads are experiencing the crumbling that John's mentioned. How do/did you recognise that this was happening (other than removing the pads)?

Dust levels are better than the Pagids. At least, it appears to be - since the dust would be red/brown rather than black.

 

i can feel the brakes through the pedal when i drive with my racing boots on, it's easy to spot. Having braided brake lines helps too.

 

I have braided lines on my car, too. Since I've not noticed any such symptoms, I'm assuming they haven't fragmented. Clearly this road use is well below the wear/demands of the 'Ring!

So far so good. I'll leave the Reds on for a thousand miles or two, then switch to the Greens.

 

MY03 WRX will try if I can

 

i have a sensitive right foot too. I would like to try the reds on the road, i asked for another set to try but havnt had any response yet.

 

Jon after watching you at the weekend I'm surprised you havnt had a call from Ferrari as Pit Manager. Between the pads,mapping and generally helping all and sundry you must av been knackered.

I was the chap who came down with Mellow. You offered to take me out for a lap but were so busy I didnt have the heart to ask again

 

sod the Pit manager, i want Barrichelo's job, someone has to give shuey a hard time.

Doing the pad swaps and making notes took a bit of time, but it was part of the deal to give good feedback. The ECU stuff was for me to monitor how the engine was performing as its very new and hadnt been driven in anger so far.

I found some very interesting traits on how the Engine works under sustained load, i wish i had the datalogging equipment a long time ago. This is going OT, so we best get back to the brakes. Good to meet you this weekend. And yes, i was knackered and have come down with flu, i think quite a few out there picked it up.

 

Sorry for the flu that maybe my fault I had it when I left!
But you know share and share alike and all that.

 

Had an email from EBC today saying they will send me a full set of Reds to try F/R for road use.

 

Just came across this thread for the first time. Noticed that Andy is CEO of EBC US. Although not a plus member, could i get a pair to test over the winter in Michigan? Get really cold here, about -25deg C. I do lots of highway driving, 810 miles just to and from work a week, and i find the standard pads are crap when cold out.

WRX 02 wagon. Thanks.

 

Hi all,
Received this feedback from Andy Freeman (Managing Director Freeman Automotive / EBC Brakes UK Ltd). Huge thanks again to Andy and of yourselves the "community testers"

****************

Many thanks to John Felstead for all his hard work and very professional feedback.Here are the comments of our tech people at the Bristol Factory.

AF44/78 Green
=============

You have confirmed what we had hoped that the new Green is a very good fast road pad even on a Subaru for normal A road driving.We are selling this material as our standard Green offering now and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future based on this and other positive comments.

E388 Ceramic Red
================

Again this pad has proved it is a superb B road or twisty fast road pad for the Impreza and even entry level trackday use.

Regarding Johns comments on "grumble" or "Breaking down" we would like to comment

1) We have always known this material can be slightly noisy under load and have therefore elected to add noise reduction shims when we launch this material next month.This will keep them quieter.

2)There is however no "Breaking down" from these pictures,the very small amount of edge crumbling around the edges of the pads is normal and occupies only a tiny percentage of the pad surface.Absolutely nothing to worry about here.

What WAS REALLY good about these Ceramic Reds was that from Johns photos there was absolutely NO EDGE LIFTING which we would regard as a serious issue and almost NO WEAR had taken place,meaning these pads are great value for money in life terms.

DM 1626 Yellow pads
==================
This is a HARD material and from Johns Photos had still not fully bedded in.We can still see grinding marks from manufacture along one edge.We have a second version of this Yellow called DM 1605 which is slightly softer than this 1626 and may be more appropriate for certain conditions,it certainly beds in faster,so we have a choice here,hard or very hard for race use but the message is any race pad needs to be allowed time to fully bed in and toasting the pad too early on can ruin it.

Having said that,Johns reports and comments are all very much appreciated and very useful.We will send him some more pads in the 1605 Yellow mentioned above and a case of beer for all his hard work and honest feedback.....thats what its all about at EBC these days now that we own our own manufacturing plant , if we xxxx up....we admit it and we fix it.

Regards to all

Andy Freeman

****************

Regards,
Shaun.

 

I wasn’t referring to noise when I mentioned grumble, it was to do with the feel through the brake pedal, I could feel the pad starting to crumble. The pads I tried have the noise reduction shims on them, as regards noise they were perfectly quiet, certainly acceptable as a fast road or trackday pad I would say.

I will have to disagree with this Andy, the pad material is breaking down across its entire surface area, not just the edges. They worked very well for over 100 miles of hard track use, but after that the material has started to chunk and crack.

I agree with this, the integrity of the pad to backing plate is very good with no lifting issues. Also wear is certainly acceptable for a track pad. I would like to try these as a fast road pad and hopefully I’ll receive them soon, as I feel on the road, they will perform extremely well and last a lot longer than on track. Wear wise, they were 12.5mm thick (braking material) when new. The inner pad which receives less cooling air and runs hotter is now 10mm thick with negligible taper wear, the outer pad is now 11.5mm with 0.5mm taper wear (pad is thinner by 0.5mm on the leading edge compared to trailing edge) which is acceptable for a track pad. So overall wear is very good, but after 115 miles on track the material is becoming unstable.

I must stress this isn’t a major failure as such, but it is degrading performance and feel, the pad has given its best (I am a sensitive driver to feel changes.) It would be interesting to see how they performed after this degredation has started to take effect, but I didn’t have the time or money on fuel, tyres etc. to run them much longer and still test the other pads, I also didn’t like the idea of testing an unknown any further once I could feel they were beginning to crumble.

I’ll be happy to send these down to you Andy, so you can analyse them, photos aren’t the best way to see this.

These pads were bedded for 20 miles, which I would have expected to be sufficient for a race pad. Maybe the bedding procedure I used wasn’t what these pads require, so if you send me some bedding routine instructions I will follow those and see how that helps. I did manage to take 0.5mm – 1mm off these pads so they did wear and therefore bed in to a cartain extent, but they never felt any real positive bite. They certainly look glazed after being removed. One of the issues with doing this testing in this way, is I am using the same set of disks, which isn’t ideal as they have already been used with 3 other pad materials and have some wear. I would imagine with a very hard race pad, you need a perfectly flat disk with a very fine grain structure. Unfortunately I don’t have the funds for new disks to start afresh, but I would expect that would be helpful on the hard, full race pads. For trackday use I didn’t find any benefits in the yellows over the Reds, the softer yellows may work better so I would like to try those as suggested.

Thanks Andy, that will be much appreciated. If you can send the second set of reds so I can do some road testing with those that would allow me to give then a test I wasn’t able to complete. Christine should have all my info.

Cheers
John

 

New Ceramic Reds just arived for both front and rear so i can do some on the road testing of those now.

 

So after all this, has anyone bought the EBC stuff?

 

?

 

with two sets of free pads? - no need!

testing ongoing...

 

Owning a business in the preparation of track day warriors, i hope you dont mind if i add a few comments.
We test and have used many different pads and discs on Scoobies and have found EBC to work the best in all conditions.
Aggreed, we dont use Greens, but use Yellow Stuff for applications. These are used with our own Cross/Drilled discs and although they do take a little longer warming up, once they have, we have experained no problems what so ever. Infact, we havent come accross anything better.
All pads fitted to old discs take a little longer to bed in, and extereme care must be taken that they do before extreme application is explored.
I havent read all this thread, but rest assured, we will carry on using and supplying EBCs for a few more years yet!
Pitty some dealers are not as good as the make though!

 

Keep me posted jonmyers - cheers

 

Will the ceramic reds be available fro brembo calliper fitments soon and if so what would a ballpark price for them be?

With thanks,

Cal

 

e-mail for prices

 

just received the feedback from EBC after having my pads back for analysis.

On the yellows the Glaze was .25mm deep, below that the original material was intact over the majority of the surface area.



On the Red Ceramics they took off 1mm to get through the glaze and surface burning to get to a good material which was stable. So it seems the pads could have gone on longer without any safety issue and would probably recover with road use to a normal surface. Alternatively you could flat them down to start using for your next trackday.



These results give me enough confidence to take these pads through the grumble i started to feel around 110 miles on track and see if they just stabalise like that from then on, or get better/worse.

It will be interesting to see how the softer yellows perform too.

[Edited by johnfelstead - 10/11/2003 4:37:32 PM]

 

I've just had a reply from Bob at EBC technical. On a couple of questions about their pads - here's the reply.

..........and apparently the Redstuff ceramic are for "extreme" driving" + trackday.
I wouldn't describe myself as an extreme driver and i don't do trackdays. So am i suited to EBC - it seems not

 

Edited to correct, see my later post.

I am doing some more testing for EBC this weekend with their latest Yellow compound, they are sending an engineer along to help with the tests and data gathering.

I have just finished testing the Ceramic Reds, covering over 5000 miles of various types of road, including all the special stages on Rally Catalunya. A full report will follow shortly.

[Edited by johnfelstead - 12/17/2003 8:42:30 AM]

 

Talking bollox about which bit? Greens are no good or the reds are for extreme driving?

 

both. read my comments earlier in the thread on the greens about where they work and where they dont.

I'll do a full report with decent analysis on how the ceramic reds have performed as a road pad in all types of conditions (i set fire to them on one stage and they still hadnt faded ), i have put more miles on these than anyone, so can comment with facts to back them up.

 

"including all the special stages on Rally Catalunya"
Cool! How did you do?
-Also, how do you measure .25mm on a pad?

 

...use a micrometer.

 

Sorry, I should have said how do you measure the glaze?