After having spent the last 2 years on Pagids (first RS42s and then RS14’s) I was pretty happy with them on my S1, never really had a problem and didn’t see the need to change (if it ain’t broke don’t fix it!).
My last set of RS14’s wore down rather too far…which I’m pretty sure caused some pads deposits on the discs.
My new set of RS14’s were giving me some vibrating problems at the recent Oulton Park trackday, so I thought I’d take the chance and try the PF01s and clean the discs up to remove the pad deposits.
Visually, the PF01’s looked very promising… they provide a bigger swept area due to no cutout at the bottom of the pad and no grove…
However, one problem this caused, was that because I’d been running pagids for some time, the disc was ‘shaped’ to the pagid height… meaning that the PF01 would be running on a previously unused section of the disc which was thicker than the rest of the pad contact area (where my pagids had worn the disc) - Something to bear in mind if you are thinking of changing !!
Whilst I was doing the change I scrubbed the discs to remove the previous pad deposits (you could see them visually).
So, I was kinda worried about this raised section of disc but ran with them at Silverstone yesterday anyway… fortunately it was wet in the morning so the brakes got a pretty gentle time… I had some slight judder, but they didn’t feel too bad so I stuck with it (hopefully wearing the thicker part of the disc to match the rest)
The track dried up in the afternoon and I gave them some hammer… initial bite is better than the pagids, and I think overall stopping power is improved too (probably down to the extra pad swept area). No vibrations or fade at all even with pretty long track sessions (to be fair I don’t think I ever had fade with the Pagids either).
To conclude, the PF01’s were excellent - the only thing I’d be wary of was the pad area if you are putting them onto pre-worn discs… they will be using parts of the discs that haven’t been touched before (ultimately a very good thing though!)
I guess ideally you could get the discs skimmed down to be perfect before fitting but I didn’t have time for this!
Hopefully you can see the newly scrubbed area on the pics below (taken post trackday yesterday) - the slightly raised area closest to the disc bell.
Another close up…
Oh, probably worth adding - there seems to be a lot more brake dust from the PF01s… doesn’t bother me as my car is abused like a ginger haired stepchild, but it might bother some of the GJOBs