My rear brakes appear to be doing very little as the discs have no lip and they have done about 4k miles.

The calipers are the standard sliding one's with vented discs and standard pads.
I have just fitted Prodrive Alcons so I would imagine the rears will do even less now.

I can't justify spending too much on the car at the moment so would Ferodo pads do the trick?

 

do u service/check their working ok ?
Make sure they move freely.

 

Rears don't work anything like as hard as the fronts so 4k miles mightn't show much wear. The only time I've really felt the difference rears make was when my worn out rear pads and disks were replaced and the car braked with much more strength.

 

Does the car brake in a stable straight line (ie the **** end doesn't feel too light) when really braking hard from around 60mph? I mean hard as in just about to lock up the fronts. If so, then the rears are doing fine.

I put a big brake kit on the front of my old 205gti, the **** end felt awful under braking. I removed the rear compensators effectively creating more braking force at the rear and the car felt much more stable when stamping on the pedals.

True the rears do little, but they really should be uprated the same as the fronts to keep the balance. Remember, weight transfer will remain the same, it just depends on how quicky the maximum can be acheived. After all, there is only so much weight that can be transferred. I'm no theorist, more a practical person, my personal findings are what I'll be believing.

 

When you uprate the front brakes then for the same pedal pressure the rears work exactly the same as before, however when you have more effective stopping power at the front you do not press the pedal as hard so the force transmitted to the rear is even less under normal braking. When you push the car really hard using the brakes then the rears take a lot more punishment which can overcome the pad material on the rear. That said the rear brake bias on a scooby is crap as standard not quite enough IMHO.

 

I currently have Pagid blacks on front and terox or textar on rears (My99 UK). Car is a tad nose heavy and rear brakes look rather rusty whilst fronts are all shiny. I had Mintex 1155 all round before and these were a better balance but I couldn't put up with the squealing. I shall be upgrading the rears too with something more aggressive than the current setup but haven't decided which yet. I believe the Ferodos can be noisy too but would certainly be a better balance IMO.

Pat