SPF Wilwood brake pads.

Richard · 10-12-07, 11:21 AM

It has come to my attention that the brake pads in the SPF GT40's make great racing pads but leave something to be desired for the street. Can anyone tell me the model numbers of Wilwood calipers that come on the car? I should be picking up P2197 next week!!!! Thanks.

Sandy · 10-12-07, 06:36 PM

Richard-

If you have some pics of the car you might be able to see which calipers they have. The Wilwood site has pic of them all and you can likely match them up. BUT some similar series calipers use slightly different pads. Your best bet would be to ask them

Also you can see all the different type of pads and the compounds (Race to Street) that they make. They are also very helpful when ever I have called about pad questions, nice folks.

Sandy

Foowowee · 10-12-07, 07:04 PM

What in partiular is the complaint about the stock pads? Mine work great on the track and good on the street. Also no brake squeal which was a problem on a Viper that I
had.

Mike

Jeff · 10-13-07, 12:29 AM

I have no complaints on street or track. No fade on the track and no squeal on the street.

Lynn Miner · 10-14-07, 09:10 PM

It has been my experience that unless the brakes are worked very hard (serious track work), the pads glaze over. This of course makes the brakes much less effective than they need to be for street use. Don't believe me? Ask Dennis Olthoff, he's felt the factory brakes were crap from the first day he drove one of them. He has a project in the works to replace the original pads with reworked units that are much more street friendly. I spoke to him Friday last about this very topic. He hopes to be able to take orders by years end. The problem is getting good pads machined to fit because the good ones are asbestos. It's hard to find someone to machine that stuff. BTW, when I complained to Dynamic about the crappy brakes, they said, yeah, we know. You have to Scotch Bright the pads every few hundred miles if you don't use them on the track !!! Call Dennis and get on the waiting list.

Ron Earp · 10-14-07, 09:20 PM

Wilwood has many pad compounds. Have you guys tried calling them and getting a set of their street compounds?

The wrong compound is being used on the pads. I'm bet some of the Wilwood street compounds would take care of the problem. Track pads on the street stink, and visa versa.

R

Sandy · 10-15-07, 12:51 AM

If they are Wilwood pads, no problem in getting good street pads for most any of the calipers. They have the cold stopper (tan pads) that usually come with some of that as soft street pads, and I think 3 or 4 other compounds that are suitable. Call them up, they have been very helpful in getting a good pad for my road race car when I had some fade issues due to heat on the street compounds. It has just a little squeel when you come to a stop, but work good on the street and track. I'm running the J compounds as I recall on the calipers I have, but go to the wilwood site you can see temp and friction curves for the street and racing pads. Check out the EB-10/20's I think he mention they are good for the street.

Sandy

DaveM · 10-15-07, 12:31 PM

I converted my Lotus Europa to 4 pot Wilwood forged Dynalites all around. I use D pads for street use and B pads for track days. These work well for both, but I clean the rotors at changeover. Lynn is right about glazing-hard pads in street use will do that. If Wilwood's pad range isn't satisfactory Performance Friction and Hawk make a wide range to fit Dynalites too.

Lynn Miner · 10-15-07, 03:52 PM

A little clarification is in order here. For what ever reason (thicker rotors - whatever), the solution is not as simple (according to Olthoff) as just selecting a different compound spec from Wilwood and install them. Standard thickness pads don't fit SPF cars. This is why Olthoff is having to get pads "cut" down to fit properly. I must confess that I have not taken the time to disassemble my brakes and verify Olthoff's claim. I see absolutely no reason not to believe Dennis because he is a straight shooter and if standard off the shelf pads were available, he'd pass the info on as to how to get them. To my personal knowledge, he has been working this issue since early spring when I called him about it. If this were an easy fix, it would have been posted by now. If someone has hard evidence to the contrary then post it so we can get our brakes fixed.

Sandy · 10-15-07, 06:09 PM

I don't know if the caliper type was established, I'm going to guess something from the SL6 series. My inital SL6 setup came with some thin pads that were the TAN street cold stoppers. I called them and they mentioned that you would likely be fine with any of the other thicker pads but it does depend on the rotor thickness. I believe my car has 13" rotors that are 1.25 thick, which worked find with the thicker pad. Again, not sure about the rotor and caliper thickness (or caliper width). But these were the full sized SL6's

http://www.wilwood.com/Products/001-...-SL6/pads2.gif

These are the 2 pad width, I think the narrow body calipers show 16mm pads required. The .65" versions are what seems like what can be used. A,B, E, Q compounds. A and B are RACE compounds, E and Q are your only stock choices and may be fine.

This page does show some other compounds for this caliper but not sure if all are available. Worth a call.

Wilwood High Performance Brake Pads

Compound descriptions

Wilwood High Performance Brake Pads

One other thing you might see is that the OLDER Fordged SL calipers uses a different type of pin that holds the pad in, and they can also be used if you just grind a small slot like the SL6's use. Sorta' make an outie into an innie. Not sure if the selection of compounds or if they have any different selection of thin pads available but might be worth a try

Hope they are SL's after all that

HTH

Sandy

Ron Earp · 10-15-07, 06:13 PM

From the looks of them they are SL series, sames as on my RCR T70. Wilwood will also cut the pads down if needed to a certain thickness, at least I'm told that by a Production racer that uses Wilwood pads with a very odd rotor on his 240Z Prod Z.

Mike Drew · 10-15-07, 08:30 PM

FWIW, I recently changed to Wilwood's newest compound, the "Smart Pad" series in my Pantera. On paper it looked to have the best overall performance for a dual-purpose (street/track) car. The Wilwood tech rep agreed with that assessment when I spoke with him (people in this internet age forget that there is an awful lot that can be learned with a *telephone*).

They work measurably better than the old Wilwood "Gator" green pads I had before, and put out substantially less dust. Also, Wilwood pads are actually manufactured by Raybestos.

I also swapped out Hawk HP+ pads for my old Gators in my Cobra, and they work really well too, with noticeably better braking performance at cold temperatures, and less dust.

Richard · 10-19-07, 02:02 AM

Guess it's about time I chimed in as I did start the thread if only to mention I use the Hawk HP+ pads on my Talon and have never had better brakes on any car I've driven. They do dust a bit but they work for street, autocross and track day use so I'm hoping that Hawk makes a set for the Wilwood's. Picked up my car today so now I can look for myself what kind of Wilwood's come on the car.