The auto's can have sport suspension. easy way to tell do you have 16 or 18 inch wheels, if you have 18 in wheels then sport suspension

 

thanks for the clairification.

 

^You have a AT?

 

No I have the 6 speed. 18" wheels. Just ordered my stoptech slotted rotors like 5 min ago, 211.00 shipped for the front two. My rotors are warpped bad and tore up my pads.

 

The stop tech slotte rotors are nice i have them on all four corners. I would also get Hawk HPS brake pads. There did you buy them from

 

If you can prove to me that aftermarket rotors have quantified performance advantages for street cars, I'll give you $1,000.

The stock rotors and calipers are perfectly fine. Anything more is overkill for the street. The only advantage I know of (and it has nothing to do with performance) is that they "look cool". As mentioned before, SPEEDSOURCE builds their Koni ST cars with STOCK MAZDA calipers and brake rotors EVEN THOUGH THE RULE SET ALLOW FOR UPGRADED BRAKES. 8 or 10 (my best guess) of these cars have been built and resold to 5 or 6 different pro race teams that now own and operate them AND NOT A ONE has upgraded their brakes. These cars run anywhere from 3 to 6 hour races that are so far and above street or HPDE driving it's hilarious. Just one lap in these cars smokes your best lap after a 30 minute track session. Put another way----in just a few of these opening laps on the track, these cars see more demand from their brakes than a weekend warrior track enthusiast. Are you getting my point yet?

HPS is a fine crossover pad for street and light track driving. S.S. lines are a great safety item (not needed on this car for street but a good safety addition). Upgraded brake fluid is in the same category---you can't get a street car to generate heat any where close to boiling the fluid but again, it's a safety thing and it's easy to do and inexpensive in the big picture.

The best thing you forum guys can do with your brakes is learn how to bleed them. Two guys and 5 minutes and 1 open ended wrench is all you need (along with a jack and some jack stands). Never get under a car that just has a jack under it. Get a cheap set of 4 jackstands from Harbor Freight or wherever.

Personal note: It benefits all forums to back up your posts with data and facts. Too many people steer new, uneducated forum users down incorrect paths. More people should read than post. No offense to several of you, but there are a lot of dumb asses that enjoy posting rather than researching. To yourself a favor and get some education by reading suspension books by Carrol Smith. This is one of the god fathers of suspension and anybody who wants a strong foundation owns at least 1 of his books. For you young inspiring HPDE drivers, buy "Going Faster" by Skip Barber. This is one of THE BEST books for track driving ever written. If you own it, you know what I mean.

Respectfully and for the benefit of everyone on the forum,

 

Like swoope said, are you sure your rotors are warped? Maybe the current brake pads were not bedded in properly.

Just stay with OEM pads. And bed them in properly by braking 60 mph to 10 mph (hard braking but just avoiding ABS intervention) TEN times. Then allow everything to cool down by cruising on the fwy for 20 to 30 minutes. The next day or at least 4 hours later, you can repeat the process if you feel necessary.

Why not try the bedding-in process with new brake pads and see if your problems are solved? If not, then you can get the rotors resurfaced LATER.

 

Apparently, after more than 4 years of ownership, despite being a mechanical newbie, I was on the right path, after reading as much as I could.

I am on my 3rd OEM pad set up front and my 2nd OEM pad set in the back, over 100,000 miles, and I have never resurfaced my rotors. My brakes are working great, no wobble, super smooth.

I even researched brake fluid and determined for myself that Valvoline Synpower is the best bang for the buck. I've bought it and am going to bleed my brakes by the end of the week.

I also remember reading the magazine article (that is also on this forum) about the Petit FI RX8 that had a big brake setup and was stopping worse than the stock car! That's the article with the data that really had me thinking initially.

 

Well i do not have to prove anything. I bought new rotors since mine where on there way out and the stock pads made too much noise for me. As fas as the brake fluild upgrade i changed out since it was dirty and it was like a dollar more big deal.

StopTech provides rotors slotted, drilled or plain. For most performance applications slotted is the preferred choice. Slotting helps wipe away debris from between the pad and rotor as well as increasing the "bite" characteristics of the pad. A drilled rotor provides the same type of benefit, but is more susceptible to cracking under severe usage. Many customers prefer the look of a drilled rotor and for street and occasional light duty track use they will work fine. For more severe applications, we recommend slotted rotors.

HPS - High Performance Street disc brake pads are world renowned for increasing stopping power on your street legal vehicle. Increasing the performance of your vehicles braking system is easy when you choose Hawk Performance’s HPS braking compound. This unique Ferro-Carbon formula was developed for street performance using the safety and quality of Aerospace and Motorsports severe-duty friction technology.

The High Performance Street compound offers a higher coefficient of friction over stock brake pads and can provide you 20-40% more stopping power and higher resistance to brake fade than most standard replacement pads. Less fade means you’ll have a highly durable brake pad with less brake dust..

HPS Ferro-Compound Features:

Increased stopping power
High friction/torque hot or cold
Gentle on rotors
Extended pad life
Low dust
Virtually noise-free

Plus everything i bought was the around the same price as the OEM products so it did not seem right to go back to OEM.

So whenever you want to give me the 1000 dollars i will take it. Having good brakes on the road is important you never know when some one is going to cut you off or when a deer will run out in front of you. You can not control the things or people around you you can only control yourself. I bet my 60-0 brake is better then OEM

 

^
Lol.


Walking the paddocks at the HPDE's I often look at other people's brakes. For the most part, you see OEM blanks (except for the high priced cars which run most anything their owners wish to run).
Walking the paddocks at Grand Am's Daytona weekend, I noticed some teams scoring slots into blanks onsite.
You'll see all sorts of setups.

It's all personal preference. Stopping power is phenomenal with the OEM rotors and calipers. Brake fade is a non factor with OEM rotors and calipers with race compound pads.

 

Everyone is intitled to an opinion. There are some cons with using race compound pads. Due to the dramatic friction levels produced by race compound pads to achieve "race-level" braking, rotor wear, noise, dust, and pad life may be affected.

 

Obviously you are trying to do the right thing by your car. Brakes are argueably the most important in any car. You want the best brakes possible which is good.

Couple points for your consideration though. First, whereas MOST street cars can be improved by upgrading brake components, a few really can't be improved in their ability to stop quickly. I'm not talking race conditions, HPDE conditions or anything like that, just the STOPPING performance of the brakes when you step on them 1st time, like if a kid or deer runs out in front of your car. The RX-8 happens to be one of those great stopping cars, believe it. Our RX-8's brakes were designed to be the equal of RX-7 race spec brakes, which is another way of saying pretty damn good. Thats' the pads, the rotors, the calipers, the master cyl, everything. Their performance has been proven over and over, there is no doubt.

End point here is that any brake changes you do won't have much, if any at all, (and perhaps even negative) effect on the ULTIMATE braking CAPABILITY under ALL street conditions.

Second, (>>>>>and this is the biggest missing link in this discussion<<<<<) brakes DON't stop the car, TIRES DO! Yea it sounds silly maybe to some, but it is true. So given a bunch of RX-8s with all OEM or mix of OEM and 'upgraded' brakes, the difference in actual stopping difference is going to have MUCH MORE to do with the tires abilities than anything else.

End point here, is given good OEM condition brakes or 'better" (meaning aftermarket anything), the BEST brake mod you can do is get TIRES that allow good braking to be effective. As the braking a tire can do is different depending on a host of factors, condition of tire including tread, inflation pressure, carcass strength/construction so you'd be way better off to look at tire tests and pick a winner there (and spend your money) than worry about 'upgrading' your brake components.

 

I am talking about race compound for track use. Obviously, would not be good for street use as the pad would not be in its operating range of temperature.

Hawk HPS and Performance Ceramic, Carbotech Bobcat, Porterfield R4S, etc. are all good street performance options.

I wouldn't use any of them for track days.

 

Sure you have good points there but I am with Invasion on this one it breaks down to personal preference. I got them cause I like the way they look and I've had it with the squeaky oem ones.

I know they are warpped Mazda told me they were, I wish it were somthing simple like a resurfacing or somthing. I ordered my brake stuff from Summit racing. Cheap and I should get them Friday as they are in CO. and I am in UT.

 

Last time I read the rules, no ST cars were allowed a caliper upgrade, and any rotor upgrade had to stay within 5 percent of the stock diameter. Increasing rotor diameter with an OE caliper just a little bit would require a new bracket, which I guess could always be machined from billet steel, but then you'd need a rotor. You can't increase thickness with the stock caliper without taking away from pad volume, which is counterproductive in an endurance race. Stock RX-8 front rotors are pretty thin at 24mm. Racing Brake makes direct replacements, but most off the shelf race rotors in that diameter range are 28mm and up. Any increase in diameter would have to be made at both front and rear to avoid screwing up the RX-8's great stock balance, so you'd have to have four (f,r,l,r) new castings made just to supply a dozen cars. It's just not practical, even with a pro race budget. Plus, the RX-8 has a really efficient chassis and doesn't need as much brake resource as some of the other cars out there, at the same time as it has generously sized brakes out of the box. Still, any ST RX-8 is going to have stainless lines and race pads, and as much air going to the rotor as can practically be delivered. Those are "upgrades".

GS class is a battleground for brake upgrade allowances in the rules. Porsches are the only cars in the class running stock front calipers, which is basically forced upon them because they have such good four-piston opposed calipers from the factory.

As for street cars, drilled rotors may reduce the delay of torque reaction when brakes are applied in wet conditions. The test can be set up, but would cost more than $1000.

 

There you go. It's inarguable. Mazda told you.

 

Whoops---thanks. I meant THE ROTORS when I said brakes. My apologies. Thanks for the clarification. Great post. Lots of backup. Agree 100%

Getting back to the original post by Mr. RacerBizz. You don't NEED new brakes or to upgrade your brakes. You COULD but I hope you see that it's not needed and some people offer it as a personal preference. The street kids like the look but there is no data to backup any measurable improvement. I trust several of these posts have helped you hear this message. Take your new brake money and buy some good rubber (as mentioned above) and help those brakes work even better!

Happy motoring guys. I think we've helped racerbizz.

 

I just don't really want to pay some ******* to maybe fix my **** I'd rather start fresh on my own, I've had rotors resurfaced and they didn't do it, or it was ineffective, so beyond what you or anyone says I want to change them cause I want to.

 

Thanks for all the input. I have decided to resurface the stock rotors and use Mazda OEM pads. I will be changing the brake lines to Goodridge stainless steel and synthetic fluid.
I replaced the tires as soon as we got the car. I hated the Bridgestone runflats. They were rough riding, loud and slick. I put a set of Yokahama ES100's on and we really like them.
Can someone send me a good thread on intake and exhaust systems or PM with ideas?
Thanks again for all the help.

 

well,

I just ordered a set (front and rear )
of HAWK HPS pads for my '04
I paid $131 for all of them deliverd to my door.

is that a good price or not ??

thanks

 

Sure. Maybe next time you should check pricing before just ordering, just a thought.

But that seems pretty decent.