Brakes: Stillen Slotted Rotors & Hawk HPS pad review
 

Link to DIY if you are interested: https://themustangsource.com/f800/di...-5-0-a-501151/

After a hair over 21,000 miles in my Brembo-optioned 2011 5.0 I was in pretty immediate need to replace my brake pads and rotors. The Ferodo-compound pads are fantastic, but as we all know they dust up a storm and do quite a number on the factory rotors. So I set out to find replacement rotors and pads for street use.

Coming from the Nissan 370Z platform I am very familiar with Stillen as they make quite a market in the Nissan/Z community. I ran Hawk HPS pads on my 370 at Stillen's recommendation and was quite happy with their performance. They are (relatively) low dusting but maintain great repeatable stopping performance for a spiritedly-driven street car with good pedal feedback and a long life expectancy for a high-performance street brake pad.

I am also familiar with Stillen's sport brake rotors, which a number of friends in the Z community use successfully on their track applications. Not only does Stillen make rotors for the Z, but they also make them for the Mustangs which was great news to me. They are available in several flavors depending on your needs: Slotted, Cross-Drilled, Cross-Drilled & Slotted, and Hook-Slot (J-Hook).

I was tempted to go with the Hook-Slot design because of it's popularity in many track-oriented applications as they are known to have a good bit more initial bite than Slotted or Cross-Drilled rotors, but they also tend to wear the pads out a bit quicker and I have heard from some that they can be a bit noisier than other rotor types. So I decided to stick with the traditional slotted design as a bit of a compromise between a blank rotor and the hook-slot -- more initial bite than a blank rotor with some pad cleaning capability but not quite the wear associated with a more track-oriented Hook-Slot design.

Here are some installed pictures and my thoughts on my new setup:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-0...0/IMG_9937.JPG

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-_...0/IMG_0038.JPG

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-w...0/IMG_0032.JPG

A little bit of a detail shot here. I was impressed with the quality of the rotors... nice machining. Ignore the bits of dirt that you can see on the rotors -- that's a bit of grease transferred from my gloves to the rotors during the install.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-I...0/IMG_0016.JPG

Driving Impressions

After bedding the pads in properly and spending a few days driving the car in wet and dry conditions I am very pleased with the performance of the rotors and the pads. With the slotted rotors the HPS pads have a nice initial bite, moreso than with a blank rotor like when I ran them on my 370Z, which is definitely the feel that I was looking for.

On spirited drives these pads and rotors perform flawlessly. You get the nice initial bite as mentioned above and solid, consistent brake feel under both light and heavy braking. I got the chance to put them through a pretty good test on my local back roads and am left with the impression that they can definitely take just about all that you can throw at them with spirited street driving.

If you are like me and want a street pad/rotor combo that provides nice initial bite, solid feedback, and overall a (relatively) long lifespan with (again, relatively) low dust, I think this is a great option. Having run the HPS pads on my Z I was always impressed with them as a street pad, and now with Stillen's slotted rotors I think they are even better.

Another observation... Noise. I know a lot of people here are noise-sensitive, especially considering how loud the factory Ferodos can be. With brake-quiet grease (either the Permatex stuff you can buy at AutoZone or the supplied Hawk grease) the pads are very quiet.

And some final thoughts: I think at some point next spring I will be doing a full fluid flush with some higher temp stuff DOT 4 stuff. Since I will be bleeding the brakes I will likely go ahead and swap the stock lines for Goodrich stainless which should help even more with improving pedal feel.

A parting shot of the little baby rear rotors ;) :

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-i...0/IMG_9928.JPG

I hope you guys found this review helpful. :)

nice write up

Good write up! I'm not brembo'd, but I plan on upgrading in the spring. I'll have to remember this.

Next stop is a set of coilovers!

Thanks guys.

@Hytek -- They have these rotors available for the base front brakes as well. I'm sure with a pad like the HPS they'd be a nice upgrade.

@BlueBoss -- funny you should mention that. I have a set of Koni Yellows in my garage waiting on installation. I'm so close to putting my winter wheels on, though, that I am going to hold off on that upgrade until the spring. I'm probably coupling them with Steeda Sport springs unless I decide I want to go lower. Should be a nice upgrade over the current suspension!

put them on already! lol

Thanks for the info these were next on my to buy list.

thanks for the write up :)

So after three weeks my wheels still look fairly clean! With the Ferodos they'd turn black in 3 days! These are great street pads.

The HPS pads still dust a bit, but the color of the dust is a very light grey instead of black.

They definitely do dust, there's a little film, but it's not thick like the Ferodos.

Is it possible to upgrade to this on a non brembo equipped mustang?

Yes. Just get the rotors and pads for a regular mustang and not a brembo/gt500/boss.

Yep, definitely. Rotors and pads for the standard brakes are available on Stillens website.

Fwiw, the Brembo cars and GT500s have the same rear rotor/caliper as the base. The only difference is the pad compound that comes stock.

Just checked Stillen's website 3/20/2014...front rotors are only avail Brembo 14" caliper option for 2011 GT. Only carries Stillen & DBA rotors, which is fine, but I have stock 2011 GT brakes