Brake Pads

Additional Details

Australian Design Rules (ADR) mandates that any vehicle driven on the public highway in Australia be fitted with brake pads that are recognised as being of ‘equivalent functional performance to OE parts’. Specifically, this means replacement brake pads fitted to road vehicles in Australia must be tested and approved to an internationally recognised standard, such as brake pads carrying R90 approval.

Many EBC brake pads carry R90 approval, meaning they match or exceed OE levels of performance and making them totally legal for use on the public roads in Australia. All R90 approved EBC brake pads will have an ‘E11’ certification number clearly printed on each brake pad, however, to make things crystal clear FitEBC uses a or а classification system to quickly indicate whether a brake pad is road legal in Australia or not.

You will notice that many of EBC’s trackday/race brake pads will be marked as road legal. This does not necessarily mean the pad has unacceptable cold performance, or would be ‘un-safe’ if operated on the road, it simply means a brake pad has NOT been tested to R90 standards. R90 approvals are expensive, hence it is very rare that a trackday/race brake pad will put through an R90 test, after all they are developed for track use, not for the street. It’s also worth noting that R90 approval requires the friction level to be within +/- 15% of the OE pads, hence most of EBC’s high-performance track focused materials would fail R90 for being ‘too good’ i.e. their friction level is more than 15% higher than OE pads.

If you live outside of Australia then you can legally run whatever brake material you like on the road. In such scenarios, if you wish to receive advice on suitable brake pads for your individual usage then please get in touch with us and someone from our technical team will be more than happy to advise you on a suitable product.

With the increasing popularity of trackdays, more and more driving enthusiasts are taking their high-performance cars on track to experience their full potential. However, before turning up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on your first trackday, understand that track driving puts considerably greater strain on your vehicles’ brakes, hence one of the first modifications you should make is to suitably upgrade the brake system (unless you want to waste half your day in the pits waiting for your pads to cool down).

A good starting point is some decent brake pads and high-temp brake fluid. EBC has a broad range of Track Suitable products to suit the huge variety of vehicles, driving styles and budgets. To make things easier, every EBC brake pad on FitEBC has a or a classification to show whether it’s suitable for track use.

As a minimum, a track suitable brake pad should be capable of operating at temperatures of 5000C without brake fade and possess reasonable wear life at these higher duty levels. Any brake pad with a will meet this criteria.

With track/race pads, generally you get what you pay for. Take EBC Racing’s flagship SR-11 sintered race material for instance, this pad has absolutely zero fade up to 9500C and the wear life is so minimal it could do 24hrs of Le Mans without a pad change, yet it is considerably more expensive than, say, EBC YellowStuff. The important factor to consider is ‘pence per mile’. SR-11 will last at least 4x longer than YellowStuff but it won’t cost 4x the price, so whilst it’s a big up-front investment, SR-11 is going to pay for itself over time if you plan on doing multiple trackdays… And all the while you’ll be enjoying SR-11’s considerably higher levels of performance. However, the problem is SR-11 isn’t R90 approved so is NOT road legal, unlike YellowStuff which IS road legal.

If you live in Australia and drive to-from the racetrack you’re going to need a brake pad which is both Road Legal and Track Suitable. This limits you to YellowStuff or BlueStuff. If you want to run some ‘spicy’ brake pads at the track then ADR rules unfortunately mean you’ll have to do a quick pad change once you arrive at the circuit.

If you want to speak to someone about your individual requirements then please get in touch and someone from our experienced technical team will be delighted to assist you.