For anyone that didn't read my other post, I did an IT race this weekend, in a 1987 ITB CRX.
https://honda-tech.com/zerothread/1650954
Nothing particularly special about that, but the fun part was that I usually run a GT1 Corvette, so this was a BIG change for me.

Anyway, I had a blast. I was co-driving with a friend who just bought the car, we ran it on Hoosiers (for a while).
Had ALOT of brake trouble, car had Metal Masters, which alot of guys around here use and have luck with, we bedded in 3 sets on Saturday.
All 3 sets were destroyed on Sunday, I guess there is a trick to getting metal masters to work, and I sure didn't do that trick. I did a one hour endurance race, about 75% through, I had zero brakes, after the race when I went to swap pads, the right side set were gone, totally disintegrated, and the backing plates were totally bent and warped with melted pad material in hardened drips hanging off of them, I have never seen anything like it.
The car was great other than the brakes, and I could run at the front of ITB while I had brakes, but I lost them every race and always had to drop back. I qualified 2nd in ITB, 2 tenths back.
It was very cool to actually do some serious wheel to wheel stuff, I had some hard battles that were a lot of fun.
The whole experience was very different than my usual weekend race activities, first and biggest change was that I didn't have to touch the car. Other than swap pads, and clean it, it required zero work, the GT1 car is on the other end of the universe in that sense, as it requires constant maintenance between each session. This weekend in the CRX I actually had the chance to talk with the other drivers, usually I don't have time to do anything. The driving experience was obviously different, going from 600hp to a bit over 100hp is pretty drastic, but over all, you still do the same things in the car, go in as deep as you can, be as fast mid corner as you can and get out clean. Its about a 10 sec per lap difference between the GT1 and the CRX at this track.
I am back in the GT1 car at the next race in July, but I do have an open invite to drive this CRX at any race that I don't run the GT1, and I definetly think I will take it up!

 

for my itb crx si, brakes = Carbotech.

tell them what you have and take their advice.

you might also make sure that the pins on the calipers are properly lubed and not bent and moving freely. sticking calipers will toast anyone's pads.

glad to hear you had fun!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by tom91ita &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">for my itb crx si, brakes = Carbotech.

tell them what you have and take their advice.

you might also make sure that the pins on the calipers are properly lubed and not bent and moving freely. sticking calipers will toast anyone's pads.

glad to hear you had fun!</TD></TR></TABLE>

 

That car also has rear drums, I believe. I've found on mine that adjusting the rears at least once a day (or before every race) is mandatory to help keep the peddle up where it belongs.

I've only run metal masters on the street. They were fine for that, but I cannot imagine using them on the front of a race car (about the same as EBC Greens -- which lasted exactly ONE practice session).

Other pads I've seen used successfully on the front of a Civic/CRX:
• Hawk Blues
• Cobalt Spec B or Spec VR
• Porterfield R4 (my personal favorite when I had stock rotors and calipers)

Thanks for the report. Glad you had fun.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by tom91ita &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">brakes = Carbotech.</TD></TR></TABLE>

 

Quite a few guys at our track run the Metal Masters with great success, but nobody told me how to get them to work until after I destroyed everything we had!
The car owner is switching to a better pad, likely the Axxiss Ultimate, I think that will be a decent pad on that light car, it does ok with my SiR street car on track days for 4-5 laps, so it should be ok for a 2000lb car for 15 laps, he has no desire to do the hour race that I did.

 

I find the piston side backing plate starts to bend when the pad uses up about 1/2 its life. To stop this bending, I ground off the pad material from an old set of pads and shim this second backing plate between the 1/2 worn pad and piston, effectively doubling the backing plates thickness on the piston side.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by pmachan &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Quite a few guys at our track run the Metal Masters with great success, but nobody told me how to get them to work until after I destroyed everything we had!
The car owner is switching to a better pad, likely the Axxiss Ultimate, I think that will be a decent pad on that light car, it does ok with my SiR street car on track days for 4-5 laps, so it should be ok for a 2000lb car for 15 laps, he has no desire to do the hour race that I did.</TD></TR></TABLE>

LOL... The secret to get them to work that nobody told you about... is not to use them and tell your competitors you're still using them and run Hawk Blues...