Save on the cost of buying separate parts with this quality Bluestuff brake pad and rotor kit which includes pads, GD rotors and caliper lube.
The weekend warrior brake kits that you pre-bed on the street for your trackday driving. Once bedded pads bite well from cold and are safe for street driving but withstand the harsh braking and heat in short track use.
Always monitor wear every 10 laps on track use, pads can wear faster in such applications and check you have enough brakes to get you home.
BSD (Blade Sports Discs) are made from a unique material known as “discalloy” for front and rear fitments.
The blade slot design is specially crafted to remove hot gases in an efficient way to help keep brake pads cooler and flatter. The multiple slots overlap to reduce the brake wind sound.
You would never fit upgraded pads in the front without also upgrading the rears. You would never fit braided brake lines on the front without also fitting them to the rear. So why have ‘big brake kits’ been sold as front or rear only kits for years? The EBC approach is simple, whenever upgrading the front, you must also upgrade the rear. That’s why every EBC front kit is additionally supplied with matching friction rear pads and braided stainless rear brake lines, at no extra cost to you.
There are two main reasons for brake vibration. The first is steering geometry issues and the second is installation or hub run-out issues.
One in seven cars suffers geometry problems during its life that can affect steering and cause brake vibration. These are NOT a product quality issue! These can happen by simply nudging a kerb or by driving over a pothole. EBC is not alone in recognising this problem but is the only brake supplier on the planet prepared to offer diagnosis and a solutions.
These cause what is known as DTV. The videos below show how to correct for brake vibration caused by DTV (disc thickness variation). DTV develops in a car after 3000-4000 miles caused by runout built in to the car or due to incorrect alignment of the rotors at install. This is quite a common fault on modern cars and many cars require this at every rotor change. Drivers also confuse hub distortion with a rotor quality issue but in 99% of cases the DTV is a car problem, not a rotor quality problem. You can replace the rotors as many times as you like trying to solve vibration and the problem will only go away for a few thousand miles and then return. This means you have purchased new rotors in good faith but the problem is not solved and will not go away permanently until you perform this procedure. After this skimming of the rotor surface you will have smooth brakes , more effective brakes and zero vibration. It is even a very worthwhile practice when fitting new rotors to have all four rotors skimmed into perfect alignment on your car with this inexpensive procedure.
Rotor distortion due to DTV is very common, in fact one in seven cars has a steering geometry problem either when it is built new or after nudging a kerb or hitting a large pothole (very common after road surface damage after winter snowy periods). Uneducated people still say “my rotors are warped”. Well the engineering facts are rotors do not warp, they are made of cast iron, they are very tough and can be run to red heat and cooled time after time and they will not distort, we do this day in day out on our dynos in the ebc lab. Thats why the whole world still uses cast iron as a vehicle brake rotor material, there has never been anything to beat it and probably never will be. Pro cut machines work on both plain rotors and even better on slotted and drilled rotors of all types.
Pro cut are a USA based multi national and extremely professional corporation. Their machines are used and approved by many major car manufacturers and used all over the world to do exactly what they do best, correct for rotor mis-alignment no matter how it arises on a car. You cannot achieve this with any other device.
Bluestuff™ NDX is a high friction sport and race material that now has R90 approval on almost all fitments for the EU. For USA and Asia markets where R90 does not apply, this compound is totally road safe and the perfect choice for performance vehicles driven hard on the road or track days.
Bluestuff™ is an entry level trackday and race pad that has good street manners and is actually R90 approved for street driving. There are two compounds within the Bluestuff range Bluestuff NDX higher friction 0.52 Mu and new Bluestuff™ B with a lower 0.42 Mu.
However, due to Bluestuff having excellent cold friction and being very controllable, this compound has quickly become the brake pad of choice for performance road car drivers in USA and Asia markets where R90 homologation does not apply. More recently, EBC is pleased to announce that Bluestuff has passed extensive road-focused testing and gained R90 approval on some E.U. fitments, making it unique in being the first truly track-focused pad which is also perfectly legal for use on the public roads across Europe. There is no requirement for E.U. customers to inform their insurance company following the fitment of R90 approved pads.
For customers with experience of EBC’s widely acclaimed Yellowstuff material, Bluestuff boasts a similar friction profile but with a usefully higher friction coefficient across the now larger working range, feeling much like you’d imagine Yellowstuff to feel after a double hit of espresso. Bluestuff has the added benefit of much faster bed in time has a high friction coefficient without feeling grabby, taking things up a notch from EBC’s Yellowstuff material by bringing superb pedal modulation to a track pad with even greater fade resistance.
When planning a track day, even bedding in of the Bluestuff and Yellowstuff grades is essential that you bed your pads incorrectly. As they tweak compounds to further gain performance this advice changes, latest advice on bedding in these two Hybrid grades for track use is here.
For customers seeking the ultimate road/track pad with even greater levels of performance, check out EBC’s range of RP-1 and RP-X race brake pads which deliver faster bed in and higher temperature fade resistance.
EBC’s track and race materials are exceptionally kind on brake discs, making them especially desirable for modern performance cars that feature complex and hugely expensive 2-piece brake disc systems from the factory. Customers report that EBC track and race pads are far kinder to brake discs than comparable granite-like semi-metallic pads, which may last longer but take the rotors with them.
When we say “Trackday” don’t underestimate this fantastic material. The reason we draw users’ attention to the words Trackday ( also known in the USA as lapping ) is because of this material’s fantastic ability to bed in quickly. Weekend fit and go drivers do not want to spend their laps bedding in brake pads.
Yet when used on more serious race track drivers this material delights and up to rotor temps of 550C /1030 F Bluestuff is the way to go. This material has been used by numerous spec series cup car racing groups in Europe.
The NDX pad material is bonded to the steel backing plates using the patented NUCAP NRS hook system which raises shear and bond strength by a factor of five and prevents pad to plate separation. The pads are then baked and ground and feature high-volume Vee grooves to catch the larger amount of debris from track use.
Target use is all types of fast and heavier cars in performance and race driving with a much enhanced lifetime over previous Yellowstuff grade pads.
R&D Manager Steve Payne checks out the first batch of the Bluestuff NDX material made with a revolutionary process to produce the highly acclaimed EBC Bluestuff NDX Race Pads. The process involves 5 steps never before used in friction materials and sets EBC Brakes firmly in the lead as a provider of brake friction.
Bluestuff is available in NDX high friction version at 0.52 Mu and a lower B version for many rear applications on lighter cars with a lower 0.42 Mu.
EBC Bluestuff are heat scorched which helps bedding times but you still need to take care especially on the highway and when using on part worn rotors. Use the brakes gently for 200 miles, gradually increasing demand on the brakes in a SAFE ROAD ENVIRONMENT until you feel totally confident and can evaluate their stopping distances in all traffic conditions.
Remember, it’s down to you and your bedding-in process. If you do feel brake fade a couple of times and even smell the brakes, this is totally normal and once achieved and the brakes are allowed to cool, they will have improved a lot.
There are several ways of surface scorching pads and EBC has chosen an infra red lamp tunnel for surface preparation of its pad ranges. The furnace is now scorching all pads for resale including the Bluestuff NDX range.
The curve shows that friction builds quickly during bedding in even after 2-3 stops but in a real world TRACK USE where rotors may not be perfect and calipers not serviced weekly (like lab dyno ones) the bedding in process with Blue may exhibit 20-25mm contact bands in the centre of the discs after 4-5 laps and on some standard street calipers some vibration.
This is simply the pad telling you “ I cannot hold onto the disc at these torques until I am fully bedded in”. If vibration happens you should continue driving whilst BRAKING EARLIER TO BE SAFE until the contact band widens to almost entire disc/rotor sweep at which point the vibration will stop. In street use the torques will not normally be enough to generate vibration during bed in but drive safely for 200 miles gentle brake use to bed in your new brakes and test them to performance in a safe and quiet road environment until you have total confidence that they are bedded. Hitting the brakes too hard, too soon can not only shorten pad life it may cause loss of brakes and an accident. Bed brakes in progressively.
Pre-bedding burns off a lot of the volatile organics in the brake pad surface by passing the pads under an apparatus similar to a toaster after manufacture for a few seconds; this chars the surface and the paint around the pad surface but the result is a major reduction in bed in time which all drivers will appreciate.