November 2007 Archives

Don't use race brake pads on the street.

I thought I'd make it work. Just like I thought that I could use street pads (Axxis Ultimates) and make those work on the track.

Horses for courses. Using race pads when driving on the street:

• Make tons of dust that, even though it's not technically corrosive with my pads (Hawk HT-10), still can be a bear to clean off of my nice Contour II wheels
• Squeal horribly, so that it sounds like you're an old rusty school bus every time you come to a stop
• Don't give much stopping power when cold, so you're constantly trying to keep the brakes warm in town, which leads to...
• Premature wear on brake rotors, because race pads operate in abrasive mode when cold

Of course, I knew all of these things before I started to drive with race pads on the street. But, it's one thing to know something, and another thing to experience it. Even though the S2000 is my daily driver, I still want to jump in the M3 occasionally and drive to work or somewhere else around town. As it stands now, the M3 just sits in the garage (or, rather, my neighbor's garage, who is so kind to let me use her empty space).

Which is sad, because it's a really nice car to drive.

The Driver's Edge track event at Texas World Speedway this last weekend was great. I officially was checked out to the Red run group, which is the "highest" group before you become an instructor. I felt very comfortable in Red, similar to how I felt when I first got promoted to Yellow. There were some other E36 M3s out there that I could keep up with, if not pass, and they were on race tires. In fact, I was probably one of the few, if only, cars out there still on street tires, and I feel like I held my own pretty well.

I had to get used to the race pads, as I expected. My heel-toeing wasn't very smooth at first, because of the vastly different initial bite of the pads, but I got smoother as the weekend progressed. (My checkout instructor commented on this--I insisted it was the new pads.) Lots of dust created by the pads, as I expected, and some of the dust left some etching in my wheels. Oh well, that's the cost of having a track car.

I'm still trying to decide when (not if) I will order race seats (leaning towards the Sparco Evo), 6-point harnesses, and a bar (probably a Kirk Racing 4-point bolt-in bar). I don't think I'm going to tear apart my M3 to be a full race car, as I thought about before, because it's too nice to turn into a $5000 piece of junk. But, it's still my track car, and since I'm in an advanced run group, and the speeds (and aggressiveness) are high, I want to add some more safety equipment.

Overall, the M3 performed wonderfully, as always. Just an incredible track car. Oh, and no more coolant leaking, except for a little bit of spray, which I think was just the cap venting a little bit because the tank was a tad full. Once I wiped that off, I didn't see any more coolant.

Next event is with Driver's Edge, at Motorsports Ranch-Cresson, southwest of Fort Worth. I've driven this track once before last spring, with the BMWCCA, and I'm looking forward to going back.