For more information about brakes see these pages:
 

TEP - Thrasher Engineered Performance
Extreme Performance Carbon Fibre Brake Pads

These Carbon Fibre pads from KVR Performance are Kevlar insulated and molded with a high density carbon compound and are designed to improve stopping distance with less brake fade while needing no warmup time.

These pads are stated to have a coefficient of friction of 0.39, vs. 0.28 to 0.34 for stock production pads.  The higher the number, the more friction the material produces.

Factory brake pads are always a compromise involving factors such as maximizing pad/rotor durability, and minimizing the amount of dust generated and brake squeal.  Obviously, most customers are not very forgiving when it comes to squealing brakes, and complain if their wheels get dirty on their newly washed car!  Warranty costs skyrocket from poor brake pad/rotor durability.   Unfortunately, improving these these factors are also detrimental to braking performance!  So you really can't have the best of both worlds.  A pad designed for maximum performance will tend to have a shorter life, create more dust, and be more prone to squealing.  Some people will give argument on some or all of these points, but in general this is the case.  We have found in over 5000 miles of evaluating these pads, that they do squeal more than any stock factory production pads and do seem to produce more dust.  We cannot comment on their durability however as we don't have enough miles on them yet!

So, we mounted our trusty Vericom, went back to our test road, and did a 60-0 test.  Boy were we shocked!  You can see the results of that run to the left!  This is well under the best run of 127 ft and 3.3 sec we'd previously recorded with the stock pads and our 12" rotors!  (This test was done with the plain 12" rotors, NOT drilled or slotted ones.)  Unfortunately, it started to pour rain right after this run, and we had to deliver the car for further development and review the following day, and we have not had a chance to do any more brake tests since. 

Do we believe these numbers?  Frankly, we wouldn't bet anything substantial on it!  We did note however that the indicated starting and ending MPH was 62.0 & 0, so we didn't "shortchange" ourselves by running less than 60.   About all we can say for sure is that this test run was significantly better than any with the stock pads, and it was better by a large enough margin that we feel confident additional testing would have proven these pads do improve stopping distance, although possibly not consistantly by this much!  

For results of our previous brake tests, click here.

Other brake pads we evaluated:

In our quest for better brake pads, we evaluated two other pads of significance.  One which showed promise was manufactured using a non-asbestos organic (NAO) material (as opposed to the more typical semi-metallic material that our stock factory pads are composed of).  The benefit of the NAO material is that it is more insulative and therefore conducts less heat into the caliper and brake fluid, and would thus help reduce brake fade from boiling fluid.   Yes, the heat would be contained in the rotor more, and the manufacturer verified this fact but felt the mass of the rotor was large enough to sink this heat without detriment.  Unfortunately, we do not have the facilities or equipment to accurately evaluate claims of improved brake fade, so we must assume it to be true.  However, we were able to perform our 60-0 tests, and we did not see any improvement (or regression) from the stock factory numbers.  To the manufacturer's credit, they did not intend for there to be any improvement in 60-0 stopping times/distances as they were only seeking to reduce brake fade over repeated or extended brake use.

The other pad of significance that we evaluated was one we had high hopes for due to the number of GTP owners using them on the Internet who were reporting favorable results.  We special ordered a set from our local Pep Boys (or was it Parts America?), noted when we opened the box that the backing plates were indeed painted bright red, installed them and took them for a test after breaking them in a few hundred miles.  We were fairly disappointed with the results as the 60-0 stopping times/distances actually increased significantly (on average of 10 feet) over stock.  We decided maybe they needed to be properly broken in over a longer period of time and tested them again about a thousand miles later.  Results improved a bit, but on average they were no better, and actually still a bit worse, than stock.  Curious, we consulted with the manufacturer and discovered that the pads we were testing were never designed to be a high performance pad in the braking ability area, but rather, they were designed for professional fleet use for increased durability!  (And we know what increased pad life means in terms of braking performance!)  It turns out these professional grade, severe duty pads were not designed with the supercharged cars in mind, but for taxi fleets using the base model of the GM W cars!  This explained our findings!