I'm going to be doing a driving school at Thunderhill on June 14th with an in car instructor. I'm a relative newbie when it comes to tracking with only 4 previous track days at Buttonwillow and Streets of Willow in the past 3 years. I'm not a very fast driver and am still trying to learn proper driving techniques and how to be smooth. Anyways my question is, will I be okay with Axxis Ultimates front and rear per my skill level? I have a 13" Stoptech slotted kit up front and stock brakes in the rear. I don't mind if the pads start fading slightly towards the end of each session as it will make me back off. But if the pads are going to hinder my learning experience then I will probably get a set of more track oriented pads for the front. BTW I have a '04 G35 sedan.

 

Make sure you tell your instructor what brake setup you have and have fun!

There is a lot to be learned with "regular" brakes. Listen to what your car is telling you.

 

Whether your brakes are good enough or not depends on your driving style. I don't think Thill is really demanding on brakes, especially compared to LS, but I still managed to smear the axxis ultimates on my 355mm rotors when I was a beginner at THill. I think I use the brakes a little less now, but how much, I don't know.

But, since you sound like you're doing this often enough, I don't see why you should wait to buy your first set of race pads. You'll do yourself a great service by increasing braking confidence, not destroying your street pads (they are not that cheap), and decreasing the chance of leaving deposits on your rotors that could ultimately cause brake judder. It's not really a cost issue because you'll eventually need to buy race pads. I figure if you plunked down the money to get the stoptech BBK, you're in for the long haul.

 

Yeah, sounds like pretty good advice to me. I might just step up to Porterfield R4 pads front and rear per teh advice of daveh since they are in between a street pad and true race pad and fairly inexpensive.

 

I would actaully go a little more agressive than the R4's since you've got the stock rears. I think you will eventually out grow the R4's in the rear. Check out the track pad database for some ideas.

 

So I went to Thill yesterday using the Axxis Ulitmates in the front 13" Stoptechs and Hawk HPS in the stock rears. I was running in the intermediate group all day. We had 5 20 min sessions. Worked fine in the earlier sessions since the temps were not as high. By the latter part of my 4th session with the outside temps at 103 deg my brakes faded badly going into turn 14. Almost lost it but with the help of my coach was able to recover nicely without incident. Now my brakes are a little soft. I'm guessing I boiled the fluid a little bit and need to bleed some out. I'll also pull the Ultimates out and check the condition. Now I'm definntely going to get some upgraded pads for sure for the future. Going back to Thill again in Nov. At least the temps will be much more comfortable.

 

Bled the brakes a little bit and got about 4 or 5 air bubbles out. Other than that the brake fluid looked good. Pedal is good now. Here's how the ulitmates looked like after I pulled them out. A little bit of glazing? Or is that exactly how they are supposed to be?