After I drive a litte hard or fast I notice this burning smell. Originally I thought it was my clutch because I am fairly new to driving a manual car. But then tonite I went out and did a little test. On an open street I opened up the car a little shifting hard up to 4th gear and then let myself coast to slow down and then lightly used the brakes. No smell. Then I did the same but at the end used the brakes hard to slow down and I would get this smell almost like burning rubber. So Im pretty sure its coming from the brakes now but my question is, what could be causing this? Do I need new pads? They have been squeaking but Ive been told thats normal on some brakes. Is it the rotors, calipers? Any advice would be great.

 

if they squeek, then you need new ones. go with OEM, cus Hawks produce waaay too much break dust

 

Thanks for the advice.
I took it into the shop for a check up and they said that the brakes still had 90% left but they squeak because they are "low metallic" brakes and if I want brakes that dont squeak I need to buy some ceramic ones

 

i switched to OEM and it stopped squealing, they also produce a lot of break dust

 

thats pretty weird. I am running my Hawk HPS pads all around and I have noticed that they produce significantly less brake dust than any pad I have used to-date.

 

Hawk pads should produce less brake dust. Had a set of Hawk HPS pads on my car it the dust was close to or less than stock. Follow the bed-in procedure and then go have some fun!