Hi,

Since my last track day I have brake troubles. Lost brakes when breaking into turn 5 in Laguna Seca. Flushed fluid, put a new brake master in, still spongy and bad.

Then I thought let's put new front discs in and found this when removing pads:


Those pads were new. They still have proper thickness, just chunks of material missing.

Setup:
R56 JCW
running R98 rims on 15mm spacers.
Those pads are EBC yellow stuff
Break in happened on the track (maybe the issue?)
Old front rotors (they were still in spec; solid OEM rotors); did not machine them.

The anti squeal looked pretty much cooked at the back.
​​​​​​
I got 4 sessions (each 20min) out of them. Was driving the Mini hard.

Brakes overheated?

Cheers,
Philip.

 

EBC Yellow's are crap as track pads (from personal experience) no matter what they say. Same experience...didn't last a full day...way too soft a pad.
EBC Blue is a different story...great track pad!! Much the same as HAWK Blue.

 

Just a quick note: EBC support is awesome. I checked in with them to see if they had an idea what happened, and now I ended up with EBC Blue pads to test them out. Great customer service!

 

Good to hear. You will like the Blue pads.
Not sure how you do break in but here is what I use/used with Blues and had no issues. You can do it on the street or track.
-5-10 partial stops from 40-45MPH to 10-15MPH..light brake pressure on these
-drive for a bit (1 lap or so) using as little brake as possible or about 5min on the street.
-3-5 hard stops for 50-60MPH to nearly a complete stop (say 5MPH)
-drive around to let them cool completely and let the car sit for a track session.
They should be good to go from then on. Always worked for me.

Good luck

 

Just to close this out: today I had some time and put new pads on. EBC blue in front, and some Jurid OEM pads in the back.

Here are pictures on what I removed:

It's been maybe 6 weeks the car was standing outside. Quite some corrosion on the back.

Driver side below the heat shield. Cooked real well.

Driver side front. Some chunks missing.

Rear pads. They were matched with new rotors. Looks pretty uneven.

Rear pads also missing material. Something starts to smell fishy.

Front pads close up. All 4 pads look pretty much similar.

I don't know what happened. I guess I was braking too hard. Next time I'll try to get better at minimizing brakes.

This was a result of a single track day. Probably never will buy EBC yellows again.

Though still, that I killed the rear pads is surprising.

​​​​​

 

Overheated pads. Had this happen to me once with EBC reds. I've been using EBC yellows for a couple of years now on a 2006 JCW that is mostly used for autocross and lapping and love them. No brake fade when hot and never have had them break apart like on the images above.

As a side note, and I'm no expert here, but I've been told not to mix and match different pads from front to back for performance driving. In other words, always use the same brand and model pads on all four wheels.

Anybody have on this? Thanks

 

Yeah - I didn't have anything else around. It will work for now

 

For the rear brakes it's ok to use one step down. It's the fronts that do most of the work. Using brakes hard is what it's all about but using brakes hard over too long a distance will cause the system to overheat. Ducting will help as will using the proper compound.

 

Do you guys take off the brake protection plates? I could imagine those also keeping some airflow off.

 

I had good results with EBC yellows on the original R56S brakes, but after I swapped in the JCW/Brembo 4 piston calipers I had the same issue with the EBC yellow pads as the OP. At Laguna Seca as well.

Since then I have tried Carbotech 1521, disappointing on the street but held up well for a track day at Thunderhill where my son and I were driving back to back sessions. Currently using EBC Reds for daily driver duty, I have a set of Carbotech XP10 / XP8 for front/rear waiting for my next track day.

 

Yes! Take 'em off.