Porsche 996 pads

[pastures16]

Check what pads you have, and check what state your fluid is in. These calipers are fantastic if everything has been done correctly. Also check the state of your rears.

you tell me they have the black dampers on top
the brakes were ok b4 with the g60 apart from brake fade flushed the whole system out when i did the upgrade got mot next week so will find out if rears are doing the job

[Corey]

If you need a second opinion and you fancy popping across to sunny Lincolnshire, I'll have a look at them if you want?

[pastures16]

no worries mate just cant find the time at the min

still think the w/b idea is spot on

[Alistair C]

Textar is the original manufacturer for Porsche's 996 standard pad. Just don't buy it from Porsche.

of course, don't forget, that just because Textar are the OEM for porsche, that doesn't mean that the ones they sell as aftermarket use the same friction material.

The factory will no doubt be set up for making pads with umpteen different compounds - and if the buyer isn't specifying the compound, there is no guarantee an aftermarket pad will have the same performance as the same as a genuine Porsche branded item.

....... could always e-mail them and ask I suppose...... ?

[Corey]

Check the numbers on the back of genuine and aftermarket Textars

[dan_b]

Thats all well, but the textars are fine at £60 but a little dusty. They brake well either hot of cold and I can have nearly 3 sets for the price of the DS's. I tested some Hawk fast road pads, what a pile of crap. Hard braking into a second roundabout caused them to light up. Not for me.

Yes you could have 3 sets of textars, but the honest truth is that they simply don't stop as well. That's the same logic as saying " I can get 12 Crunto Nogrip tyres for the same price as the Toyo/ GoodYear (insert performance tyre of choice), all tyres are all the same so I'll get the budget option"...

My personal opininon is that tyres and brakes are the two of the most important systems keeping you alive on the road and that you should invest in them correctly- everybody here spends a fortune on the S2, many spend a further fortune on making it go faster, and alot of people also spend a lot of money on making it stop better - to not spend an extra £80 on a set of brake pads that could make all the difference in a situation is false economy... As you've just proved above with a set of Hawk pads which you know from experience are a POC...

Just my tuppence-worth - and no I don't have shares in Ferodo

[s2avant95M]

@Dan What proof do you have that they stop better? I mean facts and figures. Is it just gut feeling or just perception?

I keep thinking that if Porsche supply these pads for their cars, why would they not supply the Ferrodo's, it cant be to cut costs, surely? I know this has been discussed before on this forum so i wont drone on but i'm sure there are people with far greater power outputs than me that run on textars.

/dons flame proof suit.

[dan_b]

@Dan What proof do you have that they stop better? I mean facts and figures. Is it just gut feeling or just perception?

I keep thinking that if Porsche supply these pads for their cars, why would they not supply the Ferrodo's, it cant be to cut costs, surely? I know this has been discussed before on this forum so i wont drone on but i'm sure there are people with far greater power outputs than me that run on textars.

/dons flame proof suit.

Flame suit not required, it's a fair point, I don't have "before and after" exact brake test figures based on repeatable stopping measurements. It is only my opinion, and of course may be completely due to the placebo effect; however, I have run my car with the following pads in the front calipers:
Textars
EBC Reds
Ferodos

and I've tracked it with both the Reds and the Ferodos, so I have had experience with driving these pads on my car...

My perception of that lot is that the EBC Reds work well once up to temperature but lacked bite and feel (and produce hardly any dust!, and one of them cracked off the metal backing plate ), the the Textars worked well from cold but I didn't feel that they offered such strong maximum braking as the EBCs, and that the Ferodos toasted both of them for cold pedal bite and maximum braking performance. Ferodos are also the dustiest pad in the world as far as I can tell.

I would love to see some real empirical data on all these things - pads, tyres, engine oils, I want to see stopping distances from stock S2 brakes vs. Big Red fior example, but it's very difficult to do and very expensive to organize.

Proof by repeatable experiment is the thing we should all only take as fact, but then that would make for a pretty quiet forum!

Porsche, like any car manufacturer, tries to make a profit by keep costs down - if they had to pay twice as much per axle for pads, they'd make significantly less profit over the course of a production cycle - they would have gone through a big cost-benefit analysis of pads they could bulk buy for a certain price and which gave reasonable performance at that price point... To take it to the extreme, why don't car manufactuers fit 8-pot calipers with ceramic discs on all cars...

[s2avant]

I have to admit I have DS2500 in mine at the minute and I'm not overly impressed with the performance of them. Previously I had Porterfield R4 compound race pads whose maximum braking force was leagues ahead of the DS. They had very poor cold pedal bite and I totalled a set of pads and discs in 8 months though.

I will try a different pad next time although I will be upgrading the brakes again so a comparison will be difficult. I may use OE pads initially and work from there.

Ben

[Jamo]

Hey Ben what are your brake upgrade plans?

[s2avant]

That'll be my secret for now I've got two setups in mind (Would be three but they haven't released the part numbers for the Audi Ceramic calipers yet )

Need to get some 18's on first.

Ben

[dan_b]

Ferodo do make a 3500 which has a higher CoF so you'd get more ultimate stopping power but they definitely are more track oriented and need heat in them. This is the thing with brake pads, its a compromise between cold performance for normal road use and being able to withstand high temperatures for spirited driving.

It's the same with tyres - winter tyres grip well in cold weather. ZR rated summer high performance tyres are like bars of soap in cold conditions. Winter tyres are like bars of soap in hot summer.

You take your pick and make your choice. There is no perfect pad, just a set of engineered compromises that may suit a particular driving envelope more or less.

[Corey]

The Textars (as I have said before) are not a track pad, they are a road pad only, the work well from cold and give very good performance, track pads are a different thing altogether.

[coolhand]

I'm with Dan on this, Corey supplied me with 996 calipers + Textars and although braking performance was better than stock, the brakes just didn't feel as good as I thought they should be (and this was just road driving)....about a month later I put the DS2500's on after speaking to several here and a well respected specialist brake company to the motorsport industry here in OZ.
I was certaiinly not expecting what I felt after fitting them, the braking was totally transformed with regards to confidence inspiring initial bite and constant retardation of forward progress ! They certainly produce prolific amounts of dust, but the reduction in braking distance and pressure required to achieve it was quite apparent, and not only to myself. !! A higher friction compound no doubt...

[HPmuirt]

Ferodos are also the dustiest pad in the world as far as I can tell

They seem to last very well as well though, the wear rate on the pad and the disc is better than either the stock, or either of the EBC reds and greens that I've dabbled with.

Dan, these 2 comments from you would seem to be a contradiction.

Whilst I understand and agree with your comments regarding not scrimping on the critical areas such as tyres and brakes, the general consensus amongst the experts is that a 'fast road' pad (i.e. the Textar with it's wide temp range) is better than a 'racing' pad (i.e. the Ferodo with its poorer cold bite) for the following simple reason....

Unless you change pads for track days, we all drive our cars for over 99% of the time one the road, where are brakes are often required to work well when cold and rarely ever get to track temperatures for long periods. On the rare track occasions, if you start to experience 'fade' (which will happen in a controlled way, corner by corner) you can slow down and cool them down, with nothing lost but 1 fast lap.

So I ask you this, is it better to run Textars and be able to perform an emergency stop with cold brakes when a child runs out into the road, or run Ferodos and be able to do an extra lap 3 times a year on track days?

Just my opinion...but wearing the nomex in readiness

Cheers n

Si