Four years and five days ago, I posted this new thread: https://trackmustangsonline.com/threads/carbon-ceramic-brakes-theyre-on.12573/.
Since then, I've run 31 track days and 8 slalom-style events with these original front Chev/Brembo OEM rotors. The slalom event courses are laid out like a competitive slalom, but we run without timing and scoring. In a normal day, you get between 40 and 50 runs. In short, I've run these brakes a lot.
Back when I decided to take the plunge, there was a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt about carbon ceramic brakes. A decade of bad experiences with Porsche's PCCB's had really damaged the carbon ceramic technology's reputation. Claims about them being fragile or unreliable or whatever abounded. Then Chevy stuck them on the Corvette and Dodge stuck them on the Viper ACR-X. Suddenly, they were real and they worked. And, after four years of real-world experience, I can confirm that they're amazing, full stop.
It's hard to describe how easy your life gets once you have them. Once they're on, you can just stop thinking about brakes and focus on everything else. If you're a regular on this forum, you know that about once a month, maybe more often, someone posts a "my brakes are giving me trouble" thread. It's a a never-ending parade of rotor problems and pad problems. Well, this thread is the opposite - thanks for asking, my brakes work great.
From a durability standpoint, they've been stunning. The carbon ceramic rotors are very smooth - like a dinner plate smooth. Cool them well (I have Vorshlag deflector plates) and they last much longer than iron and the pads wear very slowly too. I experimented at first with a few different pad types, but then I put in a set of Pagids and just ran them on the street and on the track until they wore out. Which they didn't. The Pagid's that I started running in 2018 have about 20 track days and most of the slalom events on them and they're good for a while yet.
Which brings me to the updates I've done last year and this year. In 2019, I installed the rear ceramic rotor kit that keeps the parking brake working, and then last year I installed RB's rear calipers. The rear calipers are radial-mount top loaders with stainless pistons that take a bigger ("F40") pad, so even longer pad life and less heat stress all around. And, because they're radial-mount, you can take the rear rotors off without having to disassemble the parking brake. And, as I mentioned earlier, the GT350 parking brake still works.
This year I swapped out the used but still good front friction rings and Pagid pads for RB's new "CCM" rings and their new ST600 brake pads. I did it for two reasons. First, I wanted to have the same type of friction rings front and back. Second, while the Pagid pads were still serviceable, I was going to need new pads soon and the ST600's were released just in time. If you're wondering what's so special about CCM friction rings, CCM is a long-fiber technology pioneered by Surface Transforms and it handles heat even better than the Chev/Brembo OEM rings I had originally. Not only that, the rings from RB are directional - they have angled internal vanes to improve cooling, where most carbon ceramic rotors have straight vanes.
The inspiration for changing the fronts to CCM goes all the way back to when I started with carbon ceramic. As I said in the original 2017 post, I'm an early adopter. I wanted to know how it worked, and now that I know, it's time to dig into the newest CCM technology. Ditto the ST600 pads. RB says they set out to match the Pagid RSC1 pads, and having run them on track once, I thinking they pretty much pulled it off. I ran the new RB ST600 pads on all four corners at Area 27 last week (first time out this year) and braking was excellent.
Here's the way it all looks today:
Fronts - with the new CCM ring and the OEM Brembo calipers. Note the 35mm spacers - I run OEM 11" GT350 wheels on all four corners. I don't care about the weight of the OEM rims because each CCM front rotor weighs 14 pounds less than an OEM iron rotor. That makes the total wheel + brake weight 2 pounds lighter than you get with GT350R carbon fiber rims and regular iron brakes. What I like best about this is that the lower weight stays on the car when you change from one set of wheels to another.
Here's the rear setup with the RB caliper - this setup reduces the rear rotor plus wheel weight by about 7 pounds, so it's not quite as light as a GT350R:
Dust - did I mention the lack of brake dust with carbon brakes? This OEM GT350 rear rim just went 500 highway miles to and from the track as well as 100 miles on track. The dust that's there looks like road dust to me, not brake dust:
Rear pad size comparison - "F40" pad for the RB rear caliper on the left and OEM GT350 pad on the right. There's a lot more meat in the F40.
Since then, I've run 31 track days and 8 slalom-style events with these original front Chev/Brembo OEM rotors. The slalom event courses are laid out like a competitive slalom, but we run without timing and scoring. In a normal day, you get between 40 and 50 runs. In short, I've run these brakes a lot.
Back when I decided to take the plunge, there was a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt about carbon ceramic brakes. A decade of bad experiences with Porsche's PCCB's had really damaged the carbon ceramic technology's reputation. Claims about them being fragile or unreliable or whatever abounded. Then Chevy stuck them on the Corvette and Dodge stuck them on the Viper ACR-X. Suddenly, they were real and they worked. And, after four years of real-world experience, I can confirm that they're amazing, full stop.
It's hard to describe how easy your life gets once you have them. Once they're on, you can just stop thinking about brakes and focus on everything else. If you're a regular on this forum, you know that about once a month, maybe more often, someone posts a "my brakes are giving me trouble" thread. It's a a never-ending parade of rotor problems and pad problems. Well, this thread is the opposite - thanks for asking, my brakes work great.
From a durability standpoint, they've been stunning. The carbon ceramic rotors are very smooth - like a dinner plate smooth. Cool them well (I have Vorshlag deflector plates) and they last much longer than iron and the pads wear very slowly too. I experimented at first with a few different pad types, but then I put in a set of Pagids and just ran them on the street and on the track until they wore out. Which they didn't. The Pagid's that I started running in 2018 have about 20 track days and most of the slalom events on them and they're good for a while yet.
Which brings me to the updates I've done last year and this year. In 2019, I installed the rear ceramic rotor kit that keeps the parking brake working, and then last year I installed RB's rear calipers. The rear calipers are radial-mount top loaders with stainless pistons that take a bigger ("F40") pad, so even longer pad life and less heat stress all around. And, because they're radial-mount, you can take the rear rotors off without having to disassemble the parking brake. And, as I mentioned earlier, the GT350 parking brake still works.
This year I swapped out the used but still good front friction rings and Pagid pads for RB's new "CCM" rings and their new ST600 brake pads. I did it for two reasons. First, I wanted to have the same type of friction rings front and back. Second, while the Pagid pads were still serviceable, I was going to need new pads soon and the ST600's were released just in time. If you're wondering what's so special about CCM friction rings, CCM is a long-fiber technology pioneered by Surface Transforms and it handles heat even better than the Chev/Brembo OEM rings I had originally. Not only that, the rings from RB are directional - they have angled internal vanes to improve cooling, where most carbon ceramic rotors have straight vanes.
The inspiration for changing the fronts to CCM goes all the way back to when I started with carbon ceramic. As I said in the original 2017 post, I'm an early adopter. I wanted to know how it worked, and now that I know, it's time to dig into the newest CCM technology. Ditto the ST600 pads. RB says they set out to match the Pagid RSC1 pads, and having run them on track once, I thinking they pretty much pulled it off. I ran the new RB ST600 pads on all four corners at Area 27 last week (first time out this year) and braking was excellent.
Here's the way it all looks today:
Fronts - with the new CCM ring and the OEM Brembo calipers. Note the 35mm spacers - I run OEM 11" GT350 wheels on all four corners. I don't care about the weight of the OEM rims because each CCM front rotor weighs 14 pounds less than an OEM iron rotor. That makes the total wheel + brake weight 2 pounds lighter than you get with GT350R carbon fiber rims and regular iron brakes. What I like best about this is that the lower weight stays on the car when you change from one set of wheels to another.
Here's the rear setup with the RB caliper - this setup reduces the rear rotor plus wheel weight by about 7 pounds, so it's not quite as light as a GT350R:
Dust - did I mention the lack of brake dust with carbon brakes? This OEM GT350 rear rim just went 500 highway miles to and from the track as well as 100 miles on track. The dust that's there looks like road dust to me, not brake dust:
Rear pad size comparison - "F40" pad for the RB rear caliper on the left and OEM GT350 pad on the right. There's a lot more meat in the F40.
