Brake pads OEM BMW or Hawk Performance
Depending on the track the factory pads may be adequate for your first day, but a more aggressive and higher temp pad would be my recommendation because nothing will up the "pucker factor" like your brake pedal going to the floor. A pad like the Hawk HPS 5.0 is what I'd consider to be minimally acceptable for street tires on an average track. I'm a big fan of GLOC pads and I can confirm their R8 compound on all 4 corners works great on the GTI/R/A3/S3 for street tires.
My local dealer has the “value service” pricing on BMW USA’s website, front rotors/pads/sensors on an 18 330 x drive for $419.95 front and $435.95 rear.
Hawk makes the DTC series for the 718 base. Can't go wrong with the DTC-30 for a pad that you can drive back and forth to the track and will perform very well on track. The dust is nasty and corrosive though, so I'd recommend cleaning the wheels and changing the pads out for street duty.
I had Hawk HP+. They were extremely noisy and dusty, very strong bite though. I now have the standard Hawk HP pads, no noise and far less dust. Not as much initial bite, but still really great performance. I wouldn’t swap back to the HP+ after having both.
I installed R56 front brakes.
Have used these for a while now and will be getting them again to pair up with some DBA t3 rotors
Hawk (no, not that Hawk) pads work well, bedding in process is straightforward, and they only squeaked for a first few hundred miles or so when coming to a dead stop.
I autocross mine. With whatever pads the last guy used and old fluid, I could put the brake pedal to the floor without activating ABS. I swapped out pads for hawk hps 5.0 and put on new standard rotors and now I can stop almost instantly. I very highly recommend the hps 5.0.
I used them on the street and in autocross on my '79 RX-7 and would agree that they were noisy and dusty on the street - the dust also ate through the finish on my wheels on that car. I didn't have fade issues with them, but that car was light and not very powerful, so it wasn't very hard on brakes.
Meanwhile, my basic 330i standard rear brakes were apparently almost 500 bucks to replace…holy cow I don’t think I actually make bmw money anymore hahaha
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