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Originally Posted by Dean
Go down to the Ford dealer and get 3 bottles of Ford/Motorcraft heavy duty brake fluid for about $4 per 12oz. It is hands down the budget racer fluid of choice. Extremely high dry boiling point. Flush & bleed your system with 1-2 bottles and leave the third unopened for bleeding at the track if needed.
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Been there already. In fact I have 3 unopened bottles in my garage right now. However, I've found that with the low *wet* boiling point, my brakes tend to fade quickly unless I flush (not just bleed) the system before every autocross. The Motul just seems to hold up better over several events.
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Originally Posted by Dean
Before you spend a lot of money on brakes, please try a decent set of pads, the stockers suck, and no, you cannot get decent pads at Kragen.
The national champion in STX last year switched from STI 4 pots in '02 back to WRX stockers with good pads in 03! Hmmmm...
First hand experience:
The stock WRX pads will fade in approximately 2 laps at Thunderhill, a fairly nice track for brakes! A set of EBC greens in the same calipers will run 40 minutes straight without fading their, and at Laguna Seca, one of the hardest tracks in the region on brakes. Oh, and the greens will practically stand the car on it's nose in comparison to stock as well. Significantly higher cf. The greens do appear to wear fairly fast, and will fade a bit if you abuse them a lot! I have a set of EBC reds I will throw in before the next track event to try. Greens should be a great autocross pad IMHO.
Other good pad choices I have used for performance street, autocross and some track are Porterfield R4S, Hawk HP plus, and Wilwood Q. I have heard good things about AXXIS Ultimates but have no first hand experience with them like I do the others.
So instead of spending thousands on brakes, wheels, etc. go spend about $100 on pads and fluid first. If you like what that does, maybe another hundred+ on stainless lines, and some rear pads. Maybe some Stoptech directional vented rotors.
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I've already gone to Axxis Ultimates (I heard horror stories about the EBCs requiring new rotors with every other set of pads) and StopTech slotted rotors (since I wore the bejesus out of the stock rotors) as well as SS braided lines. On the AutoX course *the car friggen stops*. And I have virtually no fade over most courses (Atwater's the big exception). However brake feel is terrible. My pedal is mushy and I can get it to travel all the way to the floor during hard braking, which means my foot is too far past the gas to easily heel-toe.
Then there's the fade issue on track. I wasn't really pushing at all at Fernely, and just trying to haul the car down from 80 to 20 mph a few times was fading the brakes. Now I know it's possible to get the stock brakes to have zero fade (Gary Sheehan ran a USTCC race on stock brakes!). It requires very agressive/high temp pads, crazy hi-temp fluid, and active cooling ducts. The problem is that the heat sink is so small all that heat gets into the seals, bearings, etc. Gary was replacing his wheel bearings after *every* race and his tierods after every two, since he was boiling the grease in there! Not to mention the brakes themselves were baked clean of all rubber and seals.
My primary goal however, is to come up with a better brake feel. You're right about not needing to brake as much as you might think (though I'd suggest most people learning to AutoX don't brake enough). I'm not necessarily looking for more stopping power out there, I just want some confidence in my braking system. I want a stiff pedal that gives me an easier position for heel-toe. And I figure, if I'm spending money to achieve that, I might as well get something that's going to fade less, and stop faster, right?
Cliff Notes: I've already tried all the affordable ways to upgrade the brakes and the feel still isn't what I want, so I'm looking to upgrade primarily for feel, but since I'm paying I might as well get less fade and more stopping power.