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Back on the topic of Street 5.0 pads, here is my initial review.
I have driven on these pads with a new set of StopTech / Centric rotors for about 3 weeks. I drove several hundred miles to let the surfaces mate, then bedded them in according to Hawk's instructions.
I like them. They stop better than OEM, are quiet, and do not produce much dust. Initial bite is fairly low, and midrange torque comes on smoothly with modulation of the pedal.
These pads have found a permanent home in my street brakes setup.
As things warmed up outside, things got better. They started to behave something like HP+, but with more civil initial bite, better midrange torque characteristics, and better resistance to fade. The high temperature was 54 at about 3PM, and I was able to drive to about 80% of my normal capability during that session. That is where the problem arose, and it is the same problem I encountered with HP+. I began to feel fade about 12 minutes into the session. Here is where they are better than HP+: I was able to take 1 cool-down lap and re-engage. They lasted another 8 minutes before they started to fade again--just in time for another cool-down lap at the end of the session.
I went into the pits and shot the temps of my rotors, calipers, and pads. The readings were not bad at all at about 360F-ish all around, which is lower than I expected. Obviously, the pads saw temps far higher than 360.
Could be that you were finally getting them hot enough to bake off the resins and were getting green pad fade. it may be that because the RX8 brakes are so large and these pads are pretty aggressive, it took a while to finally get heat in them. your very low pad temperatures may suggest that.
The pads were properly bedded in. I was either experiencing pad fade or fade from boiling dry fluid. It is more likely to be the pads, since I am using the same fluid with Carbotech pads and do not experience any fade with them.
And, I don't trust that pyrometer any longer. It has proven to be finicky.
