Hello there. This will be my first time to post but I have lurked the boards for awhile now. I am in the Plano area and have had my g for about 1.5 years now. Recently I changed my brake pads from the brembo's to hawk hps. I got the idea of replacing them with the hawk's from other people's opinions on these boards because supposedly they are comparable in performance but with much less brake dust. Well anyways, I put the hawks on after resurfacing the rotor and burnished the pads within the first 15 miles of having them on. 200 miles later my rear rotors look horrible and rough and my braking power absolutely sucks. I took the car into pep boys for them to have a look and they claim that it is the pad causing the problem in the rear but nothing wrong in the front.

Has anyone put these pads on there car? Or have any suggestions as to what I should or need to do? My car is an '03 6mt with 45k miles. I can take pictures if someone wants to get a better idea at what I'm looking at.

Thanks for any help.

John

 

I have the Hawk HPS on all 4 corners of my '04 6MT. They probably have 12k+ miles on them and I haven't really had any problems ... other than the fact that they really aren't the ideal pads for track use.

When you say the rear rotors "look horrible", what do you mean by this? You did the brake job yourself? Did you bleed the brembo's by chance? Did you add any new fluid?

 

The only thing that I can think of is that back plate that goes between the calipers and the pad itself may have come lose and may be affecting your braking other than maybe just bad pads....I've used cheaper end ceramic pads twice now without turning the rotors without any probs. Post us some pics so maybe we can help you better.

 

By "look horrible" I mean that you can visually see something is wrong with the rotor. From a distance you can see that it is not a smooth surface. I did the brake job with help from another guy and I've never worked on a car in my life so this was my first experience. We did all 4 corners and had all 4 rotors resurfaced just because I basically read it would be the best thing to do. We then bled the fronts but not the rear and added the new fluid.

I'm not sure what is different in my situation from others that have installed these pads but I'll take some pictures tonight so you can see what I'm looking at.

 

Got some pics... you should be able to see the grooves in the rotor. I took a couple of the front rotor as well to compare the 2.

The first 3 are of the rear and the last 2 are of the front.


Rear:









Front:







There is no squeeking/squeeling either. The pictures were taken from one side but the other side is the exact same.

 

To me it looks like it was just a poor job resurfacing the rear rotors.

As for the braking power, it could have something to do with the way that you bled the front brakes. The Brembo front caliper is a 4-piston caliper with 2 pistons on each side of the rotor. The caliper has 2 bleeder screws that bleed each side of the caliper individually. Also, the service manual recommends bleeding in this order: "Right rear brake → Left
front brake → Left rear brake → Right front brake".

The rear brakes are not going to significantly effect braking power as most of the actual braking is done with the front brakes (hence the larger rotors and calipers).

 

project mus will prolly have better braking power and be just as good in regards to dust compared with the hawks.. i have hawks ceramic pads all around.. miminal dust but it doesnt quite brake as well as stocks.. but my stocks were brembos so they might be as good as the stock infiniti brakes.


it looks like a poor job in resurfacing or you didnt clean it very well before you put them back on and dust/debris was in between the pads and rotors.

 

project mu's will work the best.....no brake dust either an tremendous stopping power......I love them!

 

i love my Pmu bforce...

I think your rotor is fine.

 

I'm pretty sure we bled them wrong. I'll bleed all 4 as the service manual recommends, get the rotors turned again, and go from there.

 

I would at least get a second opinion on the rotors ... they can only be turned so many times before they're out of spec and too thin. Then they will be more likely to warp or crack. If you bed the brakes well after installing the new pads you are probably ok.

Just take it to a local brake shop and get an estimate to see what their opinion is. Hopefully they don't try to just make money and tell you to turn the rotors even if they don't need it...

 

I'll be heading to a bridgestone that will do a brake inspection for free and see what they have to say about it.

Thanks for all of your input.

 

they will just tell you to replace it...nothing is ever free...just take your rotors off and have them resurfaced...