recurring brake rotor problem...

[s1ngletracker]

yep, thats what i was referring to. Now to figure out which pads i'm gonna run, as well. Where do you go to figure out which kind of pads you will run? Any good sites with reviews and such?

[Kracka]

I think a good place to start would be talking to the shops and guys that actually race and have tried numerous different setups. RRE and Archer both highly recommend the Porterfield R4-S (carbon/Kevlar) for street, autocross, and light-duty track DSM's. You can also check out the EBC Green and Red compounds, the recently revised Red pads with Kevlar are supposed to be very good but historically EBC's offerings haven't been all that spectacular. If you're looking to keep things cheaper though you can just get some Metal Master Semi-Metallic pads. My advice though is to stay away from anything Hawk.

[s1ngletracker]

why no hawk? Seems like a lot of chumpcar guys like hawk stuff.

[Kracka]

None of the Hawk pads are anything special. Overall, they're louder and dustier than their competitors while having no clear advantages or benefits. They may have been something special 10 years ago but they stood still while the industry progressed.

[s1ngletracker]

Gotcha. I can't say i'm totally impressed with the hawk street pads on my jeep. They refuse to work when its wet (kinda scary actually) and they do require you heat them up a bit before they become effective at all. They don't make too much noise or dust though.

[Kracka]

Are they the Hawk ceramics? Ceramic is good at being quiet and low-dust, but its performance isn't much better than typical OEM replacements.

[s1ngletracker]

yeah, ceramic

[sleepydsm]

Did you ever figure out your pulsation?

With my OEM 2G wheels, the backsides corrode so much that if I remove the wheel, and it goes on a different way, there is a vibration/pulsation from the front.

Are you sure the surface where the rotor sits was clean, free of rust, etc? (they pretty much always need to be cleaned)

I forgot what kind of rotor you used, but once and awhile a defective part makes it way on to a car. Bad machining/cheap casting/bad runout/etc.

[s1ngletracker]

Its been manageable, I haven't yet changed my rotors again. I just don't have the skrill for it right now, and I want to do new pads at the same time, maybe even rebuild calipers to make sure everything is kosher. I'll do it come spring before rallyx/autox season.

But yeah, I wire brush both rotor hats and wheels before installing... so i think its good.

[s1ngletracker]

Just to bring this back up from the dead...

I just overhauled my rear brakes. They were completely ineffective, so I think that more stress was being placed on my fronts. Probably not the only cause, but I'm sure it didn't help anything. One rear caliper was completely frozen (both piston and slider) while the other one just had a frozen slider. I got rear loaded calipers, installed new rotors, and bled out the entire system pretty well.

Unfortunately, the pulsating in the fronts is getting worse. At this point i'm pretty convinced it is in part the crappy unknown pads that are on there. I'm gonna order some new pads and rotors and see if that fixes it. If that doesn't help, my last course of action is new front calipers. Then there would literally be nothing else it could be.