reducing wheel lock up with cheap pads at autox??
 

i know this sounds absurd, but does anyone believe in using crappy pads with less bite for autox? at low surface grip and small lots we use, brake lock up had been a huge problem for me all year. the lockup seems to be worse at the extreme slow and tight hairpins or 90 degree sharp turns. i know sometimes it is partially me as i have the tendency to smash the brakes. abs is nice, but i feel like it gives you such huge inconsistency that i cant trust it completely lap after lap. does this sound stupid or do i have a point? i currently have the stockers, xp8 and xp10. the xp8 and 10 just flips the car out and get into ice mode. while i dont hit that with the oem ones, i do engage the abs quite a bit.

typing on phone sry

I use crap pads on the front of my STS miata for that very reason, it seems to work pretty well. It also has the added benefit of more pedal modulation before lock-up.

I might give it a shot. Plus I really want to steal the backing plate from the cheap pepboys pads and use them on my race pads since Nissan doesn't sell it separately.

The whole ABS issue is weird. On XP8/10, I get ice mode at autox. On the stock pads, I seem to have tons of problems once the speed gets low. I can go in the same spot, but one run I would lock and the next one I wouldn't. It's hard to trust the car 100% if you don't know the car will stop on time or not.

On another note, I got some pad deposit from my XP8. The car is vibrating and making noise, can a set of race pads clean it off?

We put less good pads on front of the FP Boxster. It was fastest FP car on west course.

I m still running with no abs on my Z to see where my bias is with different setups. I have slight rear bias with street tires and slight front with Hoosiers. Argh!

I am going to play with the pads now that I am in the mood to work on the car. I am going to see what works and what doesn't. I think the cheap pads are only about $40 each.

Ice mode was banished at auto-x for me once I went to the CL RC6E compound front and Mintex Extreme rear. The initial bite isn't as aggressive as the Carbotech which I think is key. But I'm not on a stock setup so YMMV.

I am not having issues with ice mode on stock pads, just a lot more lockup than I want at low speeds

Use stickier tires :)

Wife already wants me to get rid of the car, hard to get her to say yes on another $1200. I do have a hitch now, so I can carry tires next year to autox/track. Since my RE11 is good for another half year, maybe my budget for 12 will be a new set of R6

Damn, cheap pads are $40 compare to the base model pads at $25.

Any updates? I've been having tons of issues and it is SUPER expensive to constantly flat spot tires.

I initially had the oem akebono pads. As you said, very hard to trust the car as the lock is completely unpredictable.

Switched to stoptech street pads as I was told they have less initial bite. Still, brakes locked up and I ruined a pair of new rivals.... Last run too... And I hit a cone.

My theory is that the rear brakes are locking initially... Then all bias shifts to front and the front brakes lock completely. The rear abs seems to always function.

I've messed with the brake bias now. Rear pads are autozone gold crap pads. Fronts are still the stop techs. I did some spirited driving on the rivals yesterday... Couldn't get the rear abs to engage now and front seemed to be locking but unlocking. Who knows?! I'll report if I flat spot again at the next event.

I use the stoptech pads. Not a lot of initial bite and I have never locked a wheel up with them....Brian Peters uses the same on his STR 350.

Well I hear what you are saying and here's my input:

Cheap anything never works how you want it, there will always be an obvious flaw in something that is of inferior design. That being said ,nothing is designed perfectly.

Brakes and rotors need to be matched. Brakes are easy to replace, rotors are not. Find a budget and buy the best you can afford. With brakes and rotors you get what you pay for.

You might get lucky and find that X brake and Y rotor for 50 bucks each works amazingly. Chances are next time you buy that same setup it won't. Quality control has a price. It's just the limits of manufacturing anything. Keep buying cheap stuff and it will never be as good as you want, and it will always be unpredictable.

In the long run, consistently bad and predictable is better than fantastic every once in a while.

^ what the hell are you talking about?

i have a solution, stop parking lot racing :X ;) :P (flame suit ENGAGED!!!!!!) :D

There's no wisdom in intentionally exceeding the limits of inadequate product with the expectation of predictable decreases in performance.

What you should be doing is getting pads that are such overkill for the intended use that you can't heat up to full operating temp with a parking lot run and they won't get "all grippy" on you. OR learn how to brake with your left foot.

God that sounds so unlikely... anyway - let me know when you have GCU XP20's for sale. :tup:

How the hell are GCU XP20's going to help me? They are supposed to have loads of initial bite... Why would I want that if my brakes are locking up?

That was a joke, I was talking about overkill and how I'd buy your pads later on.

What the f are you talking about? Do you even know what ice mode is? Good luck trying to continue to threshold braking without engaging it at random times.

And mike, no I didn't bother trying as I gave up on autox. I just know ice mode is and will continue to be a problem. The common theory of rear brakes locking up, I just don't buy it as the only reason as I am getting it despite playing around with my pad combos.

Yeah guys, I get ice mode when I leave crap / street pads on when I track and they can't distribute the heat. They f*ing glaze. Especially the back ones, then the whole system freaks out. Problem with underpadding is that you will get fluid boil and pad fade and it will not be predictable whatsoever. I really think a driver mod is the solution, and I mean that unoffensively.

Who says it was for track? The way the 370 is, you will chunk the pads within two hot laps. I am just tossing a possible workaround for autox on ice mode, not sure what the driver has to do with it when the abs flips out. Chances are that most non experience drivers aren't even getting it anyway as they are not hitting the brakes hard enough.

Based on cossie's lap time @ Laguna Seca, I think he has decent driving skills

http://www.the370z.com/track-autocro...d-courses.html

Wow a second faster than Martin in a stock Z with plugged intakes, first time there.

I read the part where you said it wasn't for tracking. It's in the title as well as your easy-to-answer question. The car may not know if you're faking it but we do. Driver Stomping on the brakes ANYWHERE is a key contributor to ice mode. If you don't get that, pull the fuse.

You aren't contributing. You know nothing. The ice mode isn't instantaneous upon "stomping"... It activates mid braking sometimes.

Maybe the car can't be used effectively for autocross. If I had 10 seconds to plan every braking point like a real racer like you I probably wouldn't have this problem...

I am not seeing how your theory holds up given I stomp on the brakes hard at every track and parking lot that I have been to. East coast, west coast, track, autox, concrete, asphalt, summer, winter, slicks, snows, summer tires. I am sure the events I attended in the Z is no less than you. Given you are so fast, perhaps you can figure out why ice mode is still there.

I don't have plugged intakes, does the stock one count? My car is so modded that I don't have a working 2nd gear on track anymore.

You're not listening, comprehending, or learning- it's not my problem, and not your thread.

Sorry maybe I wasn't clear. MARTIN had the plugged intakes, first time out, stock Z (back in the day) with your experience you should be in the LOW 40's if not 30's with all your mods, if done correctly. Is that an old time?

Only time we get ice mode down here in SoCal is when we knowingly run old fluid, beat pads, and go in too hot. You're likely overheating whatever pads you're using or the "surface" you're on has inherent traction challenges- what is the ambient temp? Do you have vented brakes? How thick are the pads? If these are sanctioned events I understand why you can't just disable the ABS but otherwise.. crappy pads are, in fact, an absurd solution as you stated.

What pads, rotors, tires and size are u running, disconnected the yaw sensor out?

Lol and yes my time was first time ever at Mrls and sadly I didn't have time to do any setup prior to just getting on track blind.

Ice mode has nothing to do with glazing/fading the pads...it has to do with brake activation and what the yaw sensor sees. Turn the wheel and threshold brake...you are probably going to get the abs to freak out regardless of pad/tire selection. You can diminish its impact with pad, brake and tire selection, but not likely rid yourself of it TOTALLY without going to a motorsports caliber ABS set-up, which cost $texas. Having said that, I have not had an ice mode issue on my car in years. For whatever reason, the front stoptech 332 and rear brembo set-up seems to work well with the factory equipment. I run bigger, stickier tires than anyone on this forum FWIW and use junk/crap stoptech street pads.

If we're talking about Ice mode;
I run Hawk HP plus with slotter rotors on all 4 corners, with stainless lines, and the only time I've had ice mode issues is when I'm running my Kumho V710's, and only happens to me on hard braking. It doesn't happen when I'm on street tires.

A random guy came up that saw I was suffering from ice mode at my last autoX, told me to double tap the breaks, as to let them out completely and then go back in hard, and it seems to have solved the issue on my last two runs, which were my quickest times of the day. (Thanks again random guy)

Unless you know more about my car than myself, I seem to recall my car went out with stock everything except pads and R-S3 tires my first time too. Even now I have what, a set of sway bar and coilover? That adds 7 points in NASA scale maybe? I guess that should be enough to make my car as fast as a GTR.

Overheating what. I can hit ice mode on my first outlap with the XP10. My XP8 wouldn't hit it until the later laps. There seems to be no consistence around it, making it so scary.

Serious non troll question here, so is your ice mode issue more prevalent Auto crossing then on road courses? Or is it about the same in ice mode intervention with both genres?

I get them in both. The big driver seems to be the pad compound. The more aggressive they are, the easier it is to get it. I have tried to swap different rear ones, but the problem still seems to lie somewhere around the front pads as that's what made the biggest difference.

The second driver seems to be the pavement. It doesn't matter what road course or autox course I am at, most of the ice mode seems to kick on around the same spot. If I get ice mode in turn 2 as an example, it would seem to come back around the same spot. I think it might have something to do with the bumps in the pavement.

I have also tried to soften how I hit the pedal, but it can still be a hit or miss. At this point, I just brake 25/50m sooner to compensate for it.

I know you've said in in separate posts, but what front to rear pad compounds have you tried, and have you pulled your YAW sensor plug?

xp10/xp10, xp10/xp8, xp8/xp8, xp8/xp10, stock/stock, stock/xp8, stock/xp10, xp10/stock, xp8/stock, cobalt friction/cobalt friction, cobalt friction/stock

What about yaw sensor? I never tried those pads before so can't comment

No, never disable the sensor. Car was almost always stock, but i got it with the coilovers anyway.