Owner reviews for brake pads

I am very happy with the Bobcats for street only

The discs and pads actually very good, i have tried EBC pads and discs, zimmermann discs and ebc pads, but none of them as good as the SBS

Hawk HPS review: Very good stopping performance, very close to OEM pads. Maybe slightly less initial bite. Less noise than the OEM pad. Very quiet, really. These pads produce less dust than the OEM, probably half as much nasty dust. I can go days without having to clean the wheels now. I'm pretty sure they can handle more heat than the OEM pads as well.

Some new brakes, as the old ones are, well old & warped! ATE POwer disc's front & rear.

I've been using stock pads on the GTI; TRW and Ate brands from the parts counter at my dealer. That was not a pre-planned choice but one I made after being completely surprised at the track performance of the pads. Yeah, they're soft, but they're remarkably consistent as long as I am too. They come back quickly from being overheated if I do miss a mark.

Update: I changed out the rear pads without difficulty and the brake hardware looked normal. I replaced the worn pads with Hawk Ceramics (ECS Tuning), greased the calipers up and will hope for the best.

You can also try the harder OEM VW pad in the rear. They'll take longer to wear down than the soft version of the OEM pads and generate less dust. I installed them on mine last year and there is no layer of black dust between car washes. The down side I get noise when there is rust on my rotors but that usually goes away after a couple of braking stops.

I have had EBC brakes for two years now with zero problems other than the ticking sound from the air hitting the dimples.

I'm running the same setup as you (Ferodo DS2500/Hawk HPS with ATE Super Blue) and also notice some mild fade after 6-8 laps. I also get a mushy pedal which persists after the brakes completely cool, meaning I'm probably getting some fluid boiling and need to bleed them out.

mintex reds are WORSE than stock in my opinion....i bought some, and got ride of em a few months later