Those T5 brakes yet again!

[Simon J]

I am contemplating fitting EBC discs and red stuff pads to the front of my T5 - anyone any recent experience of these? And what should I put on the rear - it hardly seems necessary to go for grooved discs and redstuff pads there as well.

Thanks

I thought the red stuff pads were for fast road & track use as their optimal performance was at higher temperatures. I think that they differ from the green stuff ones as they are a harder compound and will eat the disks even faster too. I may be wrong (I'm no mechanic) but I would imagine the green stuff pads would be and cheaper in the longer term (due to the reduced disk wear) and also a lot safer as the operating temperatures are better suited to normal road use.

I'd probably stick green stuff in the back as well (on standard disks) but even this may seem a touch extravagant to some!

Cheers,

Adam
'94 850 T5

Red Stuff are too hard and won't warm up if you use the car for a short trip..... so you'll end up reversing out of the drive and carry on into the house opposite !

Green stuff are great BUT you will have to upgrade the disks to suit, as I once murdered a set of BMW M series disks using Greens.... they handle the heat better than the disk could and 'cos the stopping power was soooooo much better I used them to the extreme and burned the disk (yes there was discoloured burn marks on the disk faces and they warped real badly)

Don't know if its really worth upgrading the back end - as there is very little weight or stress at that end of the car.

I'm considering grooved, crossdrilled & vented fronts with greestuff pads and just a new set of ATE pads on the back.

Jim,
'96 855-R (The Flying Wardrobe)

[Simon J]

Thanks guys. I rather doubted that Red Stuff were necessary.

Jim, what disks do you have in mind - EBC ones? And presumably just stick to standard disks and pads at the rear?

Thanks again,
Simon J

[don kalmar union]

It is my opinion and the experience of many of my customers that the drilled and grooved discs that I stock in 290 & 302mm dia are best with the Redstuff pads which seem to work well with these standard sized discs which are really quite small for the power & weight of these cars.

Grrenstuff is OK with the larger discs in the AP big brake kit, however there are better results still from Ferodo DS2500 and even DS3000.

There is no problem at all with Redstuff pads in road use.

Also you have to be carefull with some aftermarket drilled & grooved discs which are machined to look very attractive but from inferior castings sourced from the Indian subcontinent. Some look great, but really are not good at all. Their shortcomings show up particularly with these heavy, powerfull and originally underspecified cars.

The discs that I supply are machined in UK from UK castings and are autoclaved after machining to show up any potential warping.