Brake pads for manual brakes

[Artfrombama]

My car has a hard brake pedal that I attribute to old cheap compound. I rebuilt the calipers with caliper kits from our host but I did not replace the pads.
Looking for recommendations for pads with good street performance over noise and brake dust.
Your $.02 please. Thanks

[Jonny042]

A lot of the "better" compounds are going to make the problem worse as performance pads will tend to be a bit "hard" until heated up a bit.

Might be worth a phone call or email to Hawk Performance to see which of their compounds has the best cold coefficient of friction.

I'm guessing their HPS or HP+ compound, or they be able to point you in the right direction.

EDIT/PS - As part of the backdate on my project car I eliminated the power brake booster so will be interested to know what you come up with. I intended to contact hawk and maybe one or two other manufacturers to get the same info.

From what I can tell street pads will normally have a cold cf in the .3 to .4 range, but some race pads will have a cold cf as high as .5 and even greater when hot.

[Artfrombama]

Called Hawk and Porterfield, decided to go with the Porterfield R4S compound. I'll report back when I've tried them out.

Originally Posted by Jonny042

A lot of the "better" compounds are going to make the problem worse as performance pads will tend to be a bit "hard" until heated up a bit.

Might be worth a phone call or email to Hawk Performance to see which of their compounds has the best cold coefficient of friction.

I'm guessing their HPS or HP+ compound, or they be able to point you in the right direction.

EDIT/PS - As part of the backdate on my project car I eliminated the power brake booster so will be interested to know what you come up with. I intended to contact hawk and maybe one or two other manufacturers to get the same info.

From what I can tell street pads will normally have a cold cf in the .3 to .4 range, but some race pads will have a cold cf as high as .5 and even greater when hot.

[Jonny042]

Originally Posted by Artfrombama

Called Hawk and Porterfield, decided to go with the Porterfield R4S compound. I'll report back when I've tried them out.

Were they able to give you some data on the cf of the R4S compound? I have them on my 87 coupe and they seem good but never given them much thought.

[Jonny042]

A quick google search answered my question - R4-S will give a cf up to .41 according to porterfield. This is interesting:

[Locker537]

EBC has a good reputation as well if you are looking for another company to compare against.