I'd be very inclined to give the G-loc (or the Carbotech equivalent) a try. I haven't used the "8" level pads from either, but the Carbotech AX6 on the Jeep bite fine in sub-zero weather and take heat quite well. Tons of dust and sometimes they're noisy under light braking, but I'd actually call them a good street pad in terms of behavior, wear, etc.
There is no magic bullet. If you're driving a decently powerful/heavy car and are a decent driver, you need to be swapping from street pads to dedicated track pads before events, then back again afterwards...
GameboyRMH said:In reply to dps214 :
Yeah R4S is available, sounds like they might be a bit more street-oriented than the PSAs though...Porterfield doesn't recommend the R4S for track use.
They are what I ran for my first full season of sundae cup. They work but don't have the overall grip the r4 has. If you get caught in traffic they will overheat.
I've used carbotech 8's on both my Miata and Mazda3, both track and street. A little noisy and dusty, but not a problem for summer driving.
PSAs got delayed again to late March, which was cutting it too close for me, so I'm getting that order refunded and I've ordered a set of G-LOC R8s to try on the rear. They were about 20% more expensive than the PSAs.
In reply to GameboyRMH :
They will be way better than the powerstops.
So I've now got break-in done plus about 5 hours of street driving on the PSA front + R8 rear setup, first impressions are that the R8s may be a bit too track-oriented for the street, or at least to be paired with the PSAs:
- The R8s are a lot noisier than the PSAs, you get some whining and squealing any time you touch the brakes below 60kph, if 1 is silent and 10 is horrendous screeching any time you touch the brakes, the PSAs are a 2 and the R8s are at least a 4.
- They seem to be more temperature-sensitive, if I do any moderate to hard braking when they're cold I get significant pull to one side or the other, it goes away as the brakes warm up a bit. It's bad enough that it could easily cause an accidental lane change if you don't countersteer quickly. I noticed this in 10-15C ambient temps yesterday. This could become a big problem in autocross or in near-freezing weather. Oddly the brakes don't seem weaker at these temps, maybe they're more grabby when cold? On one occasion I heard a rear tire chirp as this happened. It could also be that they're doing more work now and I'm accidentally pushing the rears a lot closer to lockup/ABS activation than the fronts.
Floating Doc's long-term brake review thread reminded me that I didn't update this thread after the first autocross of the year. Guess I got distracted by that whole issue where I smashed the nose of the car on a lamppost in the same event 
Anyway there weren't any real problems with the PSA front + R8 rear setup in autocross. Maybe a hint of ramp-up time when going on the brakes but no generally weak braking or instability. It could be that the stickier summer tire setup had more grip which made it harder for the rear tires to lock up.
But I've had another thought, the R8s might be more race-pad-like than EBC Yellowstuffs so maybe I should give those a try as well. I've run those on my AE92 and the only thing about them I had a problem with was the rapid friction ramp-up with temperature from cold, which was especially bad in autocross with no ABS. But they were way quieter than the R8s, which seem to have the same temperature sensitivity issue. So I may try some Yellowstuffs on the front when the PSAs wear out. With the amount of time it's going to take to pay for all these repairs and get the car back out that might be next summer at the earliest.
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