Thread: Brakes upgrade question

Howdy team,

Once again my d2 is demanding a sacrifice on my wallet for its service. This time for the brakes, namely rotors but also pads cause I'm not completely silly

Reading the forums it seems the most recommended setup for the fronts is

Dba slotted rotors with yellowstuff pads

My questions are:

Is it worth getting the yellowstuff pads for oem grade rotors? If not should I just get the repco ceramic pads?

Are the standard dba rotors better than oem?
If they are should I still proceed to get the yellowstuff or the repco pads?

Or

Do I just bite the bullet and cry as fork over half my weeks pay for the slotted and yellowstuff combo.


Semi related, but what brake fluid do you guys recommend as ill be flushing the system while I'm there?

Originally Posted by AK83

My experience with Repco ceramic pads ...

On my D1, which had solid front discs ... povo pack! .... much better than anything else I tried. (namely Bendix and I think TRW).
The benefit was just initial bite. D1 had a very woody feel, so it seemed you had to push hard at the start, just to wash off small speed increments.
Total power always felt weak compared to most cars, but gave half decent feedback.
I think this 'feeling' in the D1 was primarily due to a slightly weak vacuum pump tho.
But for sure the Repco ceramics helped on initial application on the D1, just that when you needed more braking(ie. harder) they didn't seem to give a linear stopping feeling.

Hope that made sense, because having good experience with the Repco on the D1, same pad type on the D2 was pretty ordinary by comparison.

D2 always had more total power(again when pushed hard, they seemed to give half decent stopping compared to the D1), but for some reason, the Repcos on the D2 didn't give that initial feeling.
So D2 always needed more pedal to start with, but then gave more consistent feeling.

For a few years I had this commute to work where it was all traffic through inner suburbs. D1 always felt easier to brake in slow traffic(less push on the brakes) than the D2.

Because of lockdowns, etc, and the need to work more to catch up with finances, D1 was primarily a daily around town car ... no real time to do trips. The Repcos lasted 70K klms, and were basically down to their last few mm's of pad.

I wouldn't recommend the Repcos as a 'performance' replacement, but would recommend them if you're looking for value for money tho.

Originally Posted by Slunnie

The biggest difference in brake performance will come from the pad rather than the rotor, but given that they form a system. EBC yellow should be fine with an OE rotor.

The OE rotors are pretty low quality. You'd be better off with a disc of cheese. The OE rotors wear quickly and they ripple forming grooves so are a shocker for 2nd set bed in, in the unlikely event that you can get a second set of pads onto them. The dba rotors will easily do a second set of pads and they will not groove up.

You don't need to have slotted rotors, I think in many respects the plain rotors brake better in regular cool braked situations and they're quiet, unlike the slotted rotors which humm. Don't get drilled rotors at all. That said, I use slotted rotors on my car and the Disco2 and they work really well.

Cheers both for the input. Have ended up ordering a set of the dba slotted for front.

Dba standard or slotted for the rears?

Thinking im just going to go all out to save myself trouble in the long run so going to order yellowstuff pads as they do seem highly recommended