Porterfield R4S Brake Pads?
 

What do you guys think of these? I am basically looking for a pad with very little dust and better performance than OEM. I hate having to clean my wheels so often. Any info would be great. Thanks.

Bump for info.

The R4S are what I'm using now as a street/track pad.
The R4S dusts less than the Hawk HP Plus. The dust is brownish red.

The R4S is strange, however. It has very little bite, but good modulation. It stops the car well with no fade, but the low bite makes one feel like there's not much braking force- when in fact, there is plenty of braking occurring.

Look into the Hawk Perfomance Ceramic if you want little dust.

Will those be as good if not better than oem for stopping distance? I ocassionally take some spirited drives and don't want less performance. Dust is my main issue though.

Porterfield R4-S
 

I've used the Porterfield R4-S since the early 90's in our Miata, as well as various trucks and my RX-8. Their pads are nice, but can be a noisy when new. Can't comment on dust, as this has never been important to me.

As for performance, when I burned off my stock pads at an HPDE track day I switched to the R4-S pads in my car. The next HPDE track day, all the fade problems I had with the stock pads were gone with the R4-S pads. I currently have a set of the Mazdaspeed "blue" pads on my car (stupid, long, expensive story), but will go back to the Porterfield pads when these are gone.

As for daily driving, the Porterfield pads will take a longer time to warm up and achieve peak grip than typical stock pads (this is true with any true "performance" pad compared to stock/OEM pads), so you should expect initial braking force (peddle pressure) to be higher for the first few stops of any trip, compared to OEM-grade pads which will have a more constant braking force profile over temperature.

The Hawk Performance Ceramic is a performance oriented pad.
Performance oriented pads are not so much about improving stopping distances over OEM- more so, they are about sustaining intense heat cycles.

There has been a debate over whether or not these pads are suitable for our car since it states they are best for luxury vehicles.

^^Never mind I found the answer to this.

Refer to the red dot scales on this page, per product.

http://www.tirerack.com/brakes/resul...&category=Pads

Yeah I have already done that, but wanted some real info.

I have been using them for 4 yrs. no problem.

You don't want Hawk. They wear out the rotos toos soon and too much dust.

I've used Hawk HP Plus for 18 months of daily driving and track days every six weeks. Documented the rotor wear and found it to be almost imperceptible.

Comparatively, the HP Plus dusts more during daily driving than the R4S.

In terms of feel, the HP Plus has much more initial bite than the R4S, even when brought up to operating range at the track.

I've had the R4S on for a few track days and for a few months and this is my only complaint about the pad- lack of initial bite.

The Hawk Ceramic will outperform the R4-S in all aspects, I've never cared for the R4, R4-S or HP+

I would recommend the R4-1 over the HP+, it has some serious bite at low temps, which is it's intended purpose (vintage racing) yet is still very easy to modulate at the limit, I think you'll be very happy with it SouthFL

MOT for the HPS, Ceramic, and HP+ is 750degF, 1000degF for the R4-1, the lack of bite and overall friction of the R4-S is obvious in the attached graph from Porterfield

so far all the people speaking negative about the Hawk Ceramic have yet to actually use them, including the dodo saying they're only for luxury cars; typical ... :rolleyes: they are not a serious track pad, but that's why they also don't have all the negatives that go with a track pad like heavy black dust that oxidizes to the wheel, noise, etc., they perform better than OE as many members here who have them will testify

^
Thanks for the informative post Team.