A copy / paste of my pad report I wrote on another forum, but thought I`d share
I have been using a variety of pads over the last 6 years, but tend to use EBC Yellows as they perform well and are economical but I`ve always felt they feel a little `wooden`, they brake well enough, but especially in the wet, its hard to feel when they have locked up through the pedals. The Carbone Lorraine RC6 were the best I`d ever tried, but the price was an issue.
I was obviously very interested when I heard EBC were developing a new track pad and I offered to give some feedback on the new compound.
The initial pads were tested late last year and I found them to perform VERY well, the bite and feel were much better than the Yellowstuff, I could really modulate the pedal just to the point of locking. I hadn`t realised at the time, but my brakes were running pretty hot.
So hot the dust caps were melting.
I noticed the disks were showing score marks on the surface, which appeared very quickly and only with the Orangestuff.
The friction material didn`t last particularly long, I`d probably get just over a trackday on a set of pads. This was fed back to EBC, along with photos and they used it to tweak the compound over the winter.
First time with the latest compound was Rockingham and the disk scoring was much reduced. It was probably the same as the Yellowstuff and nothing to worry about. The latest compound felt just the same as the previous one, great pedal feel and retardation.
Unfortunately, the pads wore pretty quickly, quite quickly in fact. They were wearing at a rate of 26Miles/mm. That would give a life of approx 260 Track Miles before the friction material was worn out. In comparison, the Yellowstuff I fitted wear at 57Miles/mm, half the wear rate.
I knew my brakes were getting hot, so I doubled up on the Brake cooling by adding a second duct from the front bumper
AND adding the wing vents.
EBC Sent me a set of disks and pads to trial, so these were fitted before Bedford.
We were running on the GT circuit which has a couple of hard braking zones. The car did 200 Miles on track. The new pads / disks were bedded in on the sighting laps until the pedal went soft and the front brakes were smoking... Went for a drive around the complex using NO brakes and then left them to cool for 30 minutes. The pad was then rock solid all day.
Following the trackday at Bedford at which the car did a little over 200 Miles, it was time for another check of the brakes.
After 200 Miles, the pads had 11mm of Friction Material remaining
New, they have 13mm
Thats a wear rate of 1mm/100 Miles (in my car at Bedford)
This is a vast improvement on the previous test and by increasing the brake cooling, I have reduced the wear rate from 1mm/25 Mile to 1mm/100 Miles. The Brakes were very hot before. I was melting plastic dust caps after a hard session, now they run
much cooler.
Whilst the Orangestuff performed fantastic at the higher temps with ZERO fade, they do seem to have accelerated wear rates when running particularly hot. The Yellowstuff with the same configuration lasted twice as long, but when the Yellowstuff run cooler, they wear at a slightly slower rate. The Orangestuff difference is quite pronounced.
There was no disk scoring this time, the disks looked like new with no visible wear.
The rear of the pad still had the paint.
The paint on the friction material had only burned away near the face
The pad `smearing` which seemed to affect the early compound appears to have been eliminated, there is hardly any visible on this set.
The outer pad, with less direct cooling has obviously run hotter, the paint discolouration & bubbling seems to show this well.
I ran Orangestuff on the rear for the first time and to be honest, I the rear is now overbraked. I run an AP Bias valve and has to have it set to full rear braking reduction but when running low fuel, the rears have a tendency to lock. With the Yellowstuff this isn`t as much of an issue, I still have to reduce rear bias as the fuel load decreases, but even on fumes, they don`t lock like the Orangestuff did. A RWD car with better weight distribution won`t have this issue, but on a stripped FWD car, its something to consider. Pedal feel when running Orange front / Yellow rear was identical to Orange all round.
The rears have a slight heat discolouration where the disk meets the hub and is slightly blue, but nothing to cause concern.
Overall, I`m VERY impressed with the new Orangestuff compound. They still have the improved modulation and overall retardation increase over the Yellowstuff, with increased cooling, the life appears to have been significantly extended. They are certainly my EBC pad of choice, the Yellowstuff feel much more wooden in comparison.
