So my two day weekend was cut short Saturday night by the discovery of some completely cooked front pads (nearly two hours on the track will do that, I guess). I ended up buying a set of crappy pads from Autozone (24 hrs RULES!) to get me home, but now I'm not so sure proper planning could have saved me. Let's say that I had a second set of brand new race pads with me. I can't exactly just put them on and go back out on the track without at least bedding them in. Do they need to cool afterward? What kind of prep do you guys use when you have to change pads for same day use?

 

You're right you'll need to bed them.

Buy a few sets of fronts and bed them all in the same weekend. Won't do much for your love life but you'll be set for brake pads. Hey, at least you'll be "bedding" something.

 

During race weekends, I bed them during hardship practice if needed (15 minutes between qualifying and race planned just for such things).

At a lapping day, just throw them on and take a few laps easier than normal. Same goes for fresh tires. There are better ways, but if you aren't racing, it really doesn't matter as long as you have enough sense to back off a few tenths for a bit.

 

the Hawk Blue pads are "pre burnished". when i used to use them, i'd simply put them on the car, bleed out a little brake fluid out of each caliper until it looked clear and clean, and then head out into the next session.

with street pads, you must break them in because they will be "green" and must out gass or they will fade severely when you least want them to! take the first few laps semi easy, but get some heat into the brakes. then do 2 or 3 cool down laps, staying off line and letting everyone past. then take 2 or 3 hard laps, getting everything up to temp. do several more cool laps and you should be ready to go; but watch the brakes carefully for signs of fade. if they fade, do the cool down routine again.

todd

PS at the NASA VIR race weekend I changed pads in between the last qualifying heat and the ECHC demonstration heat. had no brake problems, and I really didn't even bed the pads, except during the warmup laps (Raybestos Ceramic QS pads). Of course, I had clutch problems instead

 

For the NASA event, I slapped on a brand new set of Hawks, and just prior to my first session, just drove around the empty part of the paddock with my instructor in the car, driving up to 30 mph, and coming down to 5 mph until I could smell them. Then, I just stayed off of them while in the paddock and rolled onto the grid. Sat on grid for about 7-8 minutes to let them cool, and was all set. Whole process took about 10 minutes.
I didn't like the feel of the brakes, though, until much later in the day. Guess it was getting the new pads to grind down my rotors to their liking.

 

Heh, heh. You mean chicks don't dig brake pads? Back to the drawing board...

Thanks for the comments, guys. So the solution is:

-buy a couple extra sets of pads
-bed them all in using the same 'ol bedding procedure as always and allowing them all to cool
-stick them in the parts box for when they're needed
-when needed in the middle of the day, take a few easy laps to bring them up to temp and keep a close eye on them.

About right?