Front brake pads replacement

black_ninja23

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Mazdaspeed 3
Just got back from the dealership for an oil change and they recommended changing my front brake pads. Supposedly, I only have 3 mm left. Is this a good time to change the pads?

If so, the options I've been looking at are Rotora, Hawk HPS, and EBC red, yellow, or green.

Does anyone have any recommendations? I'd like to have as good or better than stock, but be able to get good mileage on them.
 
I run the HPS on my own car and love them. I also (shameless plug!) sell tons of them.

They have great bite for a street pad and not much dust in combination with my EBC rotors.

I would be running the HPS even if I didn't sell them, though.
 
Hmm - I've used HPS's on my race car (BMW) for the rain - they don't eat the rotors when cold like the Hawk Blues I used. So when I was headed up to Lime Rock for a track day in my new MS3, I decided they'd be a good compromise for street/track.

So, maybe I've got my head up my butt, but the HPS's I got didn't have the right hardware to retain the pads in the calipers properly. Hence, the dragged and squeled like crazy. THey also upset the braking balance of the car. I changed back to the stock pads the next day, and all was great - no fade, good balance, decent times. I will say that the HPS's showed absolutely NO wear after one day, although I was also getting a bit easy on them as they seemed to grab and disrupt the car's balance under heavy braking.

I could be wrong about this -many others seem to be happy with HPS's.
Joe
 
Hmm - I've used HPS's on my race car (BMW) for the rain - they don't eat the rotors when cold like the Hawk Blues I used. So when I was headed up to Lime Rock for a track day in my new MS3, I decided they'd be a good compromise for street/track.

So, maybe I've got my head up my butt, but the HPS's I got didn't have the right hardware to retain the pads in the calipers properly. Hence, the dragged and squeled like crazy. THey also upset the braking balance of the car. I changed back to the stock pads the next day, and all was great - no fade, good balance, decent times. I will say that the HPS's showed absolutely NO wear after one day, although I was also getting a bit easy on them as they seemed to grab and disrupt the car's balance under heavy braking.

I could be wrong about this -many others seem to be happy with HPS's.
Joe


Are you sure you had the right part number pads for the front??

There are a TON of vendors out there stocking incorrect pads because of a catalogging error at Hawk (supposedly)... A lot of people have ended up with the wrong pads... (dunno)
 
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Are you sure you had the right part number pads for the front??

There are a TON of vendors out there stocking incorrect pads because of a catalogging error at Hawk (supposedly)... A lot of people have ended up with the wrong pads... :dunno:

Yes, that is correct. Hawk has since fixed their error.
 
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