Brake pads EBC or Akebono

I ran bluestuff on my FK8 for two days. I am a novice and it worked great.

I use EBC blues on front and EBC yellow on rear (they don’t make blues for my rear brakes). I love them, I think they work great on street and track, although wear a lot faster than Yellows did when I was first starting out.

I always buy akebono ceramic pads. They are made in japan and are great quality for the price. Dead silent too.

I had ebc reds on my last wrx and loved them. There were a lil dusty, but I was very impressed with their stopping power

Last week I got R1 Concept drilled & slotted with EBC RedStuff brake pads. This is my 2nd set of redstuff pads. Did about 40k miles on the first set with no squeal or shakes.

The steel lines are great addition. The EBC pads add significant bite, but I did warp my stock rotor with a full weekend at Road Atlanta. Put a Galfer rotor on there.

I just changed my oem rear pads to them after 160,000km and it works well without any vibrations.

I prefer non-OEM pads (Akebono) so I go with my Indy for that, though the value service pricing is super competitive and honestly impossible for Indys to really match? $99 oil change is so low margin

I'm in the "Akebono are not better" camp and I have done some extensive testing.For a ceramic pad, yes, the Akebono are better than ceramic competitors. However, they do not have as much bite as the semi-metallic pads. This is something that can't be debated, they can't bite as hard as the semi-metallic compound.I too hate brake dust and tried the Akebono pads on my wife's VW and I immediately noticed that they didn't bite as hard as the OE pads. That same week, I ordered the OE pads and it fixed the problem.I've also tried the Akebono on an E350 and I came to the same conclusion. I actually think the EBC Red ceramics may bite a little more (when new) than the Akebono. However, the EBC reds always left this weird deposit on rotors that would make it feel like they were warped and they would need to be turned down.

Took the Swift for a spirited drive down the horseshoe pass today, by the bottom the brakes stank, pedal went soft and stopping power became dangerously weak. Drove it softly for a mile or so and they were back to normal and I could lock the wheels again.