Pads
This is the best post I've seen about what pads there are available
Hi
I've just posted on "bedding in procedure" on different brake pads... A slightly different version here to include 1155's and mixing pads front and rear..
We tend to ask customers to rate themselves from 0-10 where 0 is: "I only use my car to go to the supermarket" to 10: "I only use my car on the track"
We tend to recommend (remembering that one person's "4" is another person's "7"):
0 - 3 - use the OE Pad, and benefit from the thousands of hours of development the manufacturer has put into getting it right
1 - 3 EBC Greenstuff (as a cheap replacement for the OE pad - the benefits being low dust)
2 - 4 Mintex 1144 (an improvement over EBC, OK for road/ track days but do suffer from high-temperature fall off of performance). My personal prefernce is that 1155 are too hard for a VX as these are designed for much heavier cars.
3 - 5 Pagid RS42 (known as ‘Pagid Blue’), RS4-2 gives a good low temperature response. It is very stable, with superior modulation and feel. RS4-2 has a medium co-efficient of friction with good pad and disc life. Suitable for many applications especially where feel and control is needed. A good road and track pad, which loses little of the road low temp
5 - 10 Pagid RS14 (known as "Black") RS14 is a ceramic pad (that's why they are twice the price of the Mintex pad) with excellent fade resistance and good at all temperatures you are likely to generate in a VX. A high friction, high temperature material with good pad life at this level of friction. They do squeal if not beded in properly (See below), and tend to be "knocky" on EBC turbogrooved discs or the equivalent - they work best on a plain or lightly grooved disc.
We have tried RS15 but remain unconvinced that they are better than RS14. RS14 is the recommended "Sport and Performance" pad from Lotus. RS15 have good initial bite but have less feel than RS14.
We would not recommend mixing pad compounds front and rear. Lotus/ Vauxhal spent a lot of R&D budget in getting the balnce right - mixing compounds cannot improve this.
We will try to price-match any UK supplier. If you would like us to fit, we are the only company in the country that can supply, fit and safely bed-in Pagid pads before you leave our premises!
I've just seen on another thread that Vauxhall charge fortunes to change pads! We'll fit a car set for £39.50 plus VAT.
www.plansmotorsport.com
However while Plans doesn't recommend mixing componds some of the members have found the following:(from when I asked about it on Type116)
I have the 14/15 setup on my NA, have done since I bought it 3 years ago. I have tried it with 14's all round and the front used to dive heavily under hard braking, which made the rears light and do bugger all. Switched to the 15's and it made the car squat on all 4's when under heavy braking, so despite the technical school of thought being that it *shouldn't* work, in reality it does.
Performance Braking, 01600 713117, ask for John and tell him Mike & Andy sent you(y)
Disks
The general concensus is that you should just use the std cheap disks with a good set of pads. However you can fit disks with grooves and/or drilled, however the drilled disks should really have cast in holes rather than machined and should be checked regually. They are easy to get hold of as they are the same as fitted to the Vectra and other GM models.
The Factory upgrade drilled disks are different to all the other as they have a far larger ventilation gap and are lighter than std, but they're very expensive. clicky
One Issue that has been seen is that on track std disks can overheat and go blue, prob due to the small cooling channel, the cheapest solution to this is to remove foglights and fit cooling ducts.
A few companies, including plans, do disks with seperate ali bells in the center that have larger cooling channels and are lighter.
Due to the hub pattern being a std GM one you can get bigger, 308mm, disk from the SAAB aero and fit a spacer below the caliper, SAAB Aero disk thread a dis advantage of these are they are quite heavy
Upgrades
There is the TMS 4 pot that is well documented
As for the ultimate brakes I'll leave that to cyberman.
Cyberman's ultimate brake thread
How's that, any thing I've missed?
However I do subscribe to the theory of using a higher friction pad on the rear. ie pagid RS14 front and RS15 rear for track or RS42 front and RS14 rear for the road (which is what I run, partly as I got some rear RS14's free)
for 14/15 combo. Works a treat, never had rear lock up which tells me the balance is good with them (I run 4 pot kit up front).
I will stick my neck out and say its not worth getting the cheapest discs as their grade of steel may not be as good. When I went for cheapo discs I found I heated my fluid quicker on track leading to soggy pedal. This happened less when on their Vauxhall discs, it could have been a coincidence thought. It sounds like Mintex discs are faily cheap about £10 each more than the cheapo ones, so you probably cant go wrong with them.
