In their BP pad lineup, the notches are not evenly spreaded. It must be logarithm . I have been paying more attention to the finer points of brakes, and the verbiages describing each brake pad's attributes. BP40 is full race and is the end of the road for BP series.

 

I just looked those pads up on the ‘Bay and that is a heck of a score! I’m going to get a set to try. They should be good for me at Lime Rock.

Ya, I was reading the Wilwood descriptions of the pads, too. But I like seeing the charts they have, too. What I am interested in seeing is the shape of the curves, friction and temp ranges for the pads compared. But they don’t show the high temp end of the pad range like Hawk does and they don’t show the BP40.

With respect to the BP30, the verbiage says they are a full race pad too, but at a slightly lower level than the BP40. I’ll be interested in hearing what you think of them.

 

BP30 and BP40 are red, while BP10 and BP20 are blue.




here is from another PDF with their series:

 

Red reds seem to be in an order that roughly represents aggressiveness; most aggressive at top. The blues, not so much. There is more discussion on the Wilwood page that has that listing. The blue pads are notes to be suitable for the street.

 

Red - not intended for street use, as you can be sued if it is your fault hence the colour warning for your pocket. Blue - feeling really blue if you found yourself with them at the track.

My Wilwood has the no-frill non-directional vane rotors. There is so much hype with brakes and you can pay thru the nose with directional vanes. I am going to stick with the no-frill straight vanes as they are around $40 apiece to replace. And that is if you choose to go with the cheap skate less precision runout/flatness finish or else the price doubles. Me no Lewis Hamilton and he has the KERS (now called ERS-K) advantage. I am not sold on the curved vanes making perceptible difference with my driving. I looked at the vanes and they are quite airy so me no worry.

 

I had a chance to talk to the guy that own/runs this car:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nathanbittinger/4206644627
He says he can tell the difference in having cross-drill rotors and just slotted rotors. Me, not so much...

For what we do, $40 rotors are fine.

 

You remark piqued my interest and I did a bit of internet detective. It belongs to Bill Hawe at your side of sticks.


more fotos here.

 

April so far has been soggy and blustery. I count our blessing for lucking out on our HPDE afternoon last week. I made small progress with the very limited edition JCW (Just Copy Werk) console gauge pod. I used the left over scrap of the small piece of sheet alu-mini-um to make a support brace.

the red arrow is an existing screw hole for use to fasten this brace


using a piece of more dispensable scrap to save a less dispensable piece ofd scrap


the piece on the right is all I have left to make this brace with; a bit of filing followed with sanding to rough it out



next is to save a CAD database in case some Miniacs also want the design


I next made a shallow lengthwise crease to stiffen it, and followed with the bends



the two bends are made; I would not know if the distance is optimum until I put the two down tubes back onto the console


As I made the gauge pod out of thin sheet alu-mini-um I plan to put a layer or two of fiberglass cloth on top to stiffen it. I am not going to bother with the poser carbon fiber appearance. I prefer form follows function.

derailleur cables arrives all the way from Shanghai; it is for use with the CoolerWorx joystick as consumable each time the console is removed

 

Not too pleased with my lack of planning on the brake department. I didn't expect the street pads that came with the Wilwood kit smelling so bad and sparks like crazy with not so aggressive driving. I have seen someone's brake pads caught fire at the track so no track driving for Mini until the BP-30 arrives. Alas it is in transit from Quebec (let's hope the instruction is not in French ), and I will miss one track day that I could sign up. So tempted to put the stock calipers and rotors back on as I get pretty good in swapping brakes.

these can't get here soon enough


I really should just hunker down and start working on the long list of things I planned for Mini.

 

Just found another set on fleaBay for even cheaper without box this time. Buying them up as throwaway pads. Can't argue with the price. Now just need to stock up the disposable rotors.

 

Glad I got one set before you found them.

 

For some strange reason, there are so many there all of a sudden. May be people decided these are not the latest greatest like the Polymatrix series.

I started thinking that I will also need a set of shims, and I am not going to keep paying Wilwood for $20 set for every pad change, so I paid TCE a virtual visit. Big mistake.

My wallet is now hundreds lighter. Keeping the Mini is getting more costly than raising a kid.

 

Yup, that be him! He is an interesting guy and willing to talk cars. The car is an engineering marvel and a work of art at the same time.

I have been out on the track in my MINI when he was out there. That is an amazing car. I followed him during his warmup lap; I was almost flat out. If interested I have that in a YouTube post I could link to.

 

The cost of Mini's consumables begins to sink in on me. I try to recall the rapid wear of the brake components and soon I take notice.

I got these lightly used Hawk HT-14 racing pads at the end of last season for the stock front brakes. It saw only 1 (long) track days at the end of season plus very little driving during the winter. Today I took a photo of the front pads and it has only a track day of friction material left.

here is a photo I took today; only saw one track day



here are few photos when I installed them in late September:


the two on the top are the Hawk HT-14 pads




The Hawk HT-14 throws off the nastiest brake dust particles onto the wheel. They cling tenaciously to the paint finish of the wheels and have to be mechanically removed. I think it is the binder for the friction material they use.

 

pnwR53S -

Out of curiosity, have you measured the OEM (R56 caliper) pad square inchs vs. the Wilwood (4 piston) pad square inches ?
I know there are other pluses to having the Wilwood (or other brand aluminum brake parts), but...friction is friction.

Mike

Oh yea, great thread..!

 

BP-40 lasted me one weekend and they are shot, not enough pad to run another weekend. I might get a day out of them but that's it. AND it was a rain event and I have ducting from the bumper! LOL they suck

 

Wilwood has 3 sq. in. of total piston area. Each pad has 6.36 sq. in area. I have no access to a R56 OE brake to compare. I think R56 rotor is smaller than Wilwood's 12.18" dia. I think R56 is 11.60". One big reason I opted for Wilwood over later Mini brakes for easy pad change and lighter weight, in addition to the biggest rotor that fits my 16" wheels.

I am shocked to hear that. How many tanks of fuel did it lasted as how much a weekend driving can vary significantly for different events.

What pads are you using now? I am just in the early part of the journey to see and experience these things for myself.

 

OK, lets just wipe the slate clean and start over, please.

 

I just read the installation manual for the Innovate MTX-L. Most interesting is it warns the max temp at the sensor bung should not exceed 500C. This is half of the max temp on Bosch's data sheet. Than I saw a note on Bosch's data sheet that states the temperature at the hexagon is 600C max. It seems to me to meet this you have to invest $68 on the fancy Innovate heatsink bung 3729. It will also add an inch to the already very long wideband sensor.

Innovate heatsink bung 3729; the two holes are interesting - must be to promote gas swirling

 

There are a few cheaper alternatives on fleaBay:

90-degree; too far plus the bend for my liking that might skew the reading too much


this one seems very close to Innovate's without the fancy heatsink for $5.6; the distance should not affect the reading given what the manual says


The tread needs to be M18x1.5

I need to check if there is room for this. The WB sensor alone need 4" of space from the header pipe.



Googling O2 sensor extender and found countless offerings. This must be the smoking gun why the WB sensors die from over-temp (OD from heat ) .

 

I tried to run a similar 90 degree extender on my secondary post cat that is installed pre cat to avoid a check engine, it worked for a few months but it seems to have fouled the sensor, the tip is black with soot and now it won't reset. I'm going to try a shorter extender next. My wideband is still working fine it's not terribly far away from the collector but the 4:1 is a really long header

 

Will an o2 extender pass a visual emission test? The "bung" appears to function differently than the extender.

 

I just ordered some bp30 pads, I had no idea they could be found that cheap on ebay, I'm going to try a set on track and keep a set as emergency spare. My understanding is willwood contracts out pads and the bp30 may not be the same vendor as the bp40. or polymatrix pads. On the track I've ran carbotech xp12, hawk hp+ (rear only) and dtc60 and my current favorite for price/life/performance on 200 tw, raybestos ST43. I'm moving to hoosiers for the track, so my pad choice will probably have to change, dtc60 were too much for lower grip tires and I cracked rotors, I may have to go back to them for R7s.

I ran the bp40 for one track weekend last year, it was a rain event at Carolina motorsports park, so I was braking early and longer braking zones, but speeds were down quite a bit. This was the result, these had no street miles on them. Pad life depends on tires/driver/track so ymmv

 

I doubt it, in pittsboro it wouldn't fly they put the cars on a lift but the shop I use in sanford now does not even do a visual.

 

ohhh I just found out today that stoptech has a newer caliper for miata, the pad size is DR22 it's the same as a wilwood 7816 and they have newer padd offerings. I'm glad I switched to wilwood there are a LOT more choices and the price is much better than mini pads

the stoptek pads are 123 $ and the model number is SRxx, ie SR33, SR34. A little more than hawk or porterfield but more choices is always good.