Yesterday me and my brother took his E28 M5 turbo to the race track. Because of the understeer of E28's and the power of the S38 turbo (580Hp and 645Ft/Lb) we put some semi slick tire on it. We went with Federal 595RS-R in the sizes 235/45-17 and 255/40-17.
It went pretty good but 2 things need to be upgraded for sure:
Brake pads
suspension
Brakes are 06 Dodge Viper Brembo calipers with 348mm discs in front and E34 M5 3.8 rear brakes. The calipers where rebuilt unit from Centric and came with Chinese made pads which are crap!
So what pads do you guys recommend for street and track use?
Suspension is Apex springs and Bilstein B8 shocks. On higher speeds they where way to soft and the ride heigt is to high in the rear. The casr was still understeered and sometimes oversteered when you go way to fast into a corner and braking.
So coilovers with camberplates are a good solution for this. With coilovers there are some options:
Buy your favorite track pads and be done with it. I'm partial to Carbotech and Performance Friction, but there's other good brands too.
Once a person's skills get to the point where they're driving fast laps, there's no good solution for dual use brake pads. "Sport" pads can't handle the heat and you can burn thru a pair in half a day on the track. In a Lemons race we once got to the backing plates on all 4 corners in 4hrs and it was a short course so we weren't going very fast.
During the DE days I tried to change into track pads the night before the event and then put the street pads back on when I got home. That plan failed because I couldn't be bothered to put the street pads back on.
Which is how I ended up leaving the track pads on the car all the time. Track pads don't bite too well when they are cold, so for the first full second of braking you'll get more grumbling sounds then you will braking, but at the end of a second the pad surface will be warm enough to bite and they'll behave as you would expect. Just try not to get surprised such that the 1st heartbeat of braking becomes really important.
Track pads will occasionally be a little screechy. The best solution is to adopt a superior smile and think "ya, track pads".
Some old school track pads, like Hawk Blue, turn into dust that when wetted turns into cement. That would mess up your DD wheels.
Suspension is a "system". A person shouldn't mix and match parts unless they are very experienced. It's also hard to distinguish between people that really know what they are talking about re. suspension, and those that express opinions based on little more than their admiration for their own expensive parts.
The best folks to talk to re. suspension is racers because they pretty much only care about what really works. That removes the confusing chaff of "brand", "popularity", "cool because high cost", and "look at me" from the conversation. I'd call Bimmerworld, Turner and other folks that orient on racing, tell them what you want and then buy the whole system of springs, shocks, sways, and maybe bushings and reinforcements for the various e28 parts that weren't designed for that kind of hp, slicks, and banging over curbing.
That will get you a system that is "known" to work well together. Otherwise you'll be in suspension mod hell of wondering...."what if I <monthly suspension mod scheme>".
Last edited by RangerGress on May 10, 2013 2:08 PM, edited 2 times in total.
Hawk HP Plus are a decent street/track pad. They are more track oriented and squeal a lot on the street. They might not be enough for that car on the track, though. I just upgraded my front pads because the HP Plus pads were starting to leave deposits on my front rotors. That's the price of getting faster.
It's better to have two sets of pads and switch them out when you go to the track. Most aggressive track pads don't perform well until they're hot, meaning you won't have very much stopping power at street speeds.
RangerGress wrote:Buy your favorite track pads and be done with it. I'm partial to Carbotech and Performance Friction, but there's other good brands too.
I run Performance Friction 06's on my 535is all the time (to and from the track, to work on nice days, etc.). Sure, they squeak and are dusty, but they still perform better than cold than most parts store pads. The bonus of the newer PF compounds is while they are dusty, the dust washes right off.
I agree with everything Ranger said - with that much power and tire, look at suspension reinforcements (front and rear sways, stress bars or cage tie in to front and rear subframe and shock towers, etc.).
Jelmer538i wrote:We run a 25mm M5 bar in the front and a 18mm M5 bar in the rear. Also a strut bar in the front.
What I Meant by reinforcements is that you should box in where the front endlink meets the strut housing, and box in the rear swaybar brackets (both on the trailing arm as well as on the body). All of these can tear off, trust me.
