drdreydel

Hi All - looking into taking my '14 350 F Sport AWD to a novice HPDE day and wondering about necessary vs nice to have prep. Car is a CPO with just over 30k on the odo (had about 23k when I got it). I know that a brake fluid flush is part of the 30k (which I'll have done at 32k because of the 5k intervals they want on CPO cars). So, question is whether it's worth it for me to change to high performance brake fluid if track day comes before that service considering the dealer will be doing it an no charge anyhow. All the reviews I've seen and read suggest that the brakes on these cars are pretty fade free from the factory, but I do wonder if the press cars come with high performance brake fluid in anticipation of track time. Same goes for pads - I know I'll be needing new front pads in the near future, might as well just finish these off on the track considering I won't be going 10/10s first time out?

Thanks!

sdiver68

You will be fine as is. No offense but as a Novice you wont be pushing the car to where you need high performance aftermarket anything. That might come later after you progress in skill.

forum429

This is a fairly heavy car.
Brake pads and SS brake lines should be the first thing that you consider upgrading for a HPDE.
Also tires should at least get some ultra performance summer tires.
What type of tires are you using right now?

drdreydel

So there's two very different opinions haha

Car is actually a CPO lease so most I'll do is some yellow stuff pads and better brake fluid, SS line upgrade is out. Honestly I'll probably do this once or twice while I have the car. Running pirelli p zero Nero all seasons with about 7k miles on them, which will also limit how hard I'm pushing. I run a set of dedicated winters so I'm fine going to full summers once these tires are cooked.

LexGamer

Make sure you have a good tire pressure gauge and check your pressures just before your sessions and right after you park after the session.

redspencer

iTrader: (1)

You'll be fine with simply upgrading the pads and using a higher boiling point brake fluid for your car if you plan on doing a couple of track days during your lease. There's no need to switch to a stainless steel brake line as the factory lines will be more than adequate. Your all-season tires will definitely be a limiting factor to how your car handles on the track (besides your personal driving experience).

drdreydel

Thanks for the feedback ya'll.

bhvrdr

I agree you'll be fine. Just back down on the braking if you are overdoing it and alternate between a faster lap and a lap of cooling things down.


A myth is that novice drivers are not as hard on the brakes. They're usually harder on them in my experience as you still have to learn threshold braking and how to be smooth.

The all season tires could start to chunk a bit if you overdrive them so go a bit easy unless you are looking to get a new set of tires anyways.


The only thing I would do is just check your pad life before you go for the event. You do not want to start tracking with less than 40% (really 50%) pad life. I used up about 60% of my pads on one event. They worked really well but you will burn them up. You dont want to throw away $300 of a track day because of not putting on a set of $50 pads.


You can use OEM pads. I would not recommend EBC pads. They are inconsistent in quality. OEM are pretty tough and have really good bite. A decent "dual duty" pad is the Stoptech Street Performance. Keep in mind, if you want a pad that performs well, its also doing to dust. If you want a clean pad, you will give up performance. Akebono Ceramics are really clean but dont expect OEM level of braking.


For fluid, the OEM didnt boil on me at all but if you have the choice i'd put in RBF600 or Castrol SRF. Very cheap insurance.


Mike

drdreydel

Hi Mike - thanks for the feedback, really awesome.

This will be a typical 20 min on / off day so some brake cooling time is built in by default. I've done a few lead follow laps (nasa hyperdrive) so not a total and complete 'noob' and my instructor was actually quite happy with my braking! That being said, going to be dealing with higher speeds so great advice on alternating laps. Ditto for the tires. I'm going to have to replace them during the lease anyhow and have winters so not going to shed too many tears. A buddy of mine has the same set on his 2008 A4 and drove hard on them at Palmer last year - they actually held up really well.

As for brakes (which were my biggest concern), I'm at 5mm vs 8mm new according to a recent (this month) tech inspection at the dealer. Should be good?

Nice to hear about the OEM brake fluid doing fine, I'll look to upgrade it next time.

bhvrdr

You should be good to go. Have a blast. IMO the IS350 is a lot of fun to track and shockingly capable stock out of the box. I did 45 minute sessions and decided late in the day to try and cook the brakes to see how much they could take and they held up. I used them up to the backing plates but no issues with boiling the fluid. No fade. I was extremely impressed.


One thing to consider is if now might be a good time to get a set of performance tires and store your all season tires. If you think about it, you know you are likely to destroy all seasons for lapping so why not get a set of performance tires and then store the all seasons. When you go to turn the car back in, mount the all seasons back on the car and you are good to go. You saved yourself having to buy two sets of tires...now you just have to buy one set.

I do short term leases alot and I just store the stockers with basically zero miles on them. I get a cheap set of track wheels and performance rubber which lasts a heck of a lot longer than trying to overdrive all seasons and then when I turn in the car I turn it in with brand new OEM wheels and tires. I then sell my track wheels/rubber and get back 50 cents on the dollar or so. To me it works out. Just something to consider.


Also I forgot to mention that after about 30 minutes I would get a transmission fluid overheat warning. I'd have to cool the car for about 45 minutes (between run groups) in order to get another 30 minutes out of it. It happens. Its the apparent weak point. If I were going to enjoy tracking the car monthly i'd try and do a transmission cooler. Otherwise you may just want to try using manual mod to minimize the shifting.

Have fun man. Report back with some track ****....

forum429

Some tracks are harder on brakes and some aint'.
My local track is very hard on brake.
Stoptech Street Performance is a good street pads but I wouldn't use Stoptech Street Performance on a track.
EBC Yellow stuff has much stronger bite than Stoptech but much more brake dust too.
The IS350 AWD is a heavy car with curb weight over 3700lb.
This is my car chasing a Ferrari 458 on EBC Yellow Stuff, Continental ExtremeContact DWS, Motul 5.1 brake fluid and SS brake lines.

drdreydel

Good point about the tires, I used to do that with winters. Probably not in the cards for this session but definitely possible by spring time.

Interesting about the transmission, thanks for the heads up. That 6spd in the awd is just generally meh. Nice for the commute but definitely no dsg heh.

Will come back with track ****.

drdreydel

Track day done, it was a blast! My bullet point takeaways:

• The absolute worst part of the AWD model is the transmission, such a shame that they couldn't find a way to put the 8-speed in. On my first session out I left it in auto in Sport Plus so I would have one less thing to think about. The programming is crap and the lack of proper rev matching resulted in hard downshifts when getting on the brakes which of course unsettles the car. I put it in manual mode for the rest of the day as this track was mostly 3rd and 4th gear, didn't have any issues with overheating (actually nothing seemed to overheat)
• Went out with about 5mm of front pad left and came home with what seems like 2 (a small gap is left between the caliper and rotor). Actually got concerned that I was done and took a wheel off to check! Didn't have any issues with fade on regular brake fluid but pads definitely seemed to get used up quickly and there was moderate vibration under hard braking. I think that's combination of worn pads and rotors that after 30k have likely seen better days.
• Pirelli A/S did ok, don't look like they got beat on too bad but definitely limited cornering, would love to see how this car does on a set of summers. Interestingly the only time I got stability control to come on was after accidentally putting a tire on the grass. I had read a bit that it's overly aggressive at cutting power but didn't find this to be the case on the track at the level that I was driving.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the car. I picked this model as a dual purpose daily/spirited driving and 1-2 HPDE days/year while staying reliable. Wish it was RWD but they are hard to come by CPO in the NE. Need to find some better pads and get summer tires for next time.

One last question - when I looked into flushing the brake fluid and replacing with high temp, I was advised not to do it myself because if I took too much fluid out it would mess up the ABS system. Is this true?

Thanks!