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Hawk Pads - will they last


Chris Shay

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Lets say I can get Hawk pads for free...

Will any of their compounds last a weekend at Road America?  That track is one of the hardest tracks on brakes.

 

I did a forum search and mostly saw people switching away from Hawk Blue's to ST43.  We currently run ST43.

 

Which Hawk pad would last the longest?

 

Thanks,

Chris 

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we ran Hawk pads for quite a few races. They held up well even on our heavy F-body with stock discs (4 wheel) they did however show signs of cracking. We have since upgraded to a C5/6 set-up from bigbrakeupgrade.com. At that time we went with a Wilwood pad upfront (same compound as ST43). Still using hawks out back I believe.

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I would say you might get 8 hours but not likely out of Hawks. We got about 8 the last time we ran them but also on metal at the end and had to change rotors, pads and a caliper which got damaged by burning thru the backing plate. Maybe if you don't use the brake pedal it will help as there is lots of run off to slow you down :-)

 

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As expected, this is very much a YMMV topic.

 

Depending on which rotors/calipers we were running at the time we went from needing to change pads overnight to one set lasting all weekend (at RA). Once you get them over a certain operating temp the wear increases dramatically.

 

I haven't run the ST43 on my car, but rent in another car that uses them. I believe you will see less pad life (and more rotor life) if you switch to blues. 

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I don’t know about pad life at Road America, but in the Hawk brake pad line the Blues are way down in performance compared to their more modern compounds. We run DTC60 front and DTC30 rear and get really good brake life with much better feel and modulation.

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1 hour ago, mhr650 said:

I don’t know about pad life at Road America, but in the Hawk brake pad line the Blues are way down in performance compared to their more modern compounds. We run DTC60 front and DTC30 rear and get really good brake life with much better feel and modulation.

 

Agree that is a great package for the Miata as well...........but not up to the task at Road America when running our car to full speed. Something about those long straights down to a 90

stuff just burns up. With the DTC60/DTC30 combo we got almost eight hours if metal to metal counts.

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Our pad shape is a bit bigger than yours but the rest is the same except race weight is a bit higher.  At Road Atl we used about 1/2 pad thickness with roughly 13 hours on track.  Caveat that we were all new at the track so probably not super hard on the brakes.  These were hawk Blues on a 12.7" rotor. 

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10 hours ago, Hurljohn said:

Our pad shape is a bit bigger than yours but the rest is the same except race weight is a bit higher.  At Road Atl we used about 1/2 pad thickness with roughly 13 hours on track.  Caveat that we were all new at the track so probably not super hard on the brakes.  These were hawk Blues on a 12.7" rotor. 

Good to know, thanks!

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While blues remain Hawk's go to pad, I can tell you that with several hundred sets of sales of pads to track and race customers that the DTC60 pad is much more user friendly and durable than the blues.

 

That being said, our Neon- with a large diameter disc, gets away with HP+ pads and gets 2 weekends out of set- makes no sense but its true.

 

The majority of my Chump customers that race Hondas use the DTc60 and get a whole weekend out of them. My BMW customers use PFC 08s and get 2 weekends out of them- but PFC doesn't offer many shapes for Hondas.

 

For a Miata, I can't see why you couldn't get the same wear levels as a Honda with DTC60s.

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23 hours ago, Jab31169 said:

We got about 10 hours at Road Atl and a little more than 8 at Barber's out of DTC-60's.  Needless to say, we will be moving to a longer lasting compound.

Interesting as we get more than double that out of our DT60's.  They ARE a little grabby on initial bite for my liking and we may move to another pad.   Not due to pad life though.   We also don't have ABS

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29 minutes ago, Snake said:

Interesting as we get more than double that out of our DT60's.  They ARE a little grabby on initial bite for my liking and we may move to another pad.   Not due to pad life though.   We also don't have ABS

 

ABS? Whats that? Ours don't work...yet.

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