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Originally Posted by lvsranch
Not quite sure if the posts are going through or not, I replied earlier but it never showed up, but thanks for the replies everyone. I have the 17" wheels, 255-40-R17 rears and 205-50-R17 fronts and I don't see the Bridgestone RE-71 or the Hankook RS-3 listed on either Tire Rack or Costco in my size. Anyone know whether I can get them or a good alternate for the sizes I have. I did not see anyone mention Hawk pads, which are my pad of choice on my spec miata, has anyone had any experience with Hawk blacks or HPS?
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The very best friction coefficient for any pad on our cars is the Pagid RS-14 black. Amazingly they are also have the highest temperature rating of any pad in the Pagid line. The only negatives are that they are expensive, and if you drive them on the street much, they will squeal super loud.
As far as I know, all of the Pagid compounds are compatible with the OEM pads so that you can swap them back and forth for track days without any issue. This is not necessarily true of all pad compounds. I had severe brake judder one time when swapping to another compound that was not compatible with my street pads. Small particles of whatever pad you use become embedded in the discs, and when you swap pads, the two materials may not react smoothly. Eventually after 3-4 hard laps, the pad material embedded in the rotors will be gone, but up until then it can be pretty scary. Some folks say they can eliminate this issue by wiping the rotors down with the old style Ammonia Windex, but I'll just stick with the pads that are known to be compatible.
As far as tire sizes, as Steve suggested, you need to reduce the front to rear stagger to reduce the obscene amount of understeer these cars come with stock. I did have good success running a 255 Front / 265 Rear combo as a "bandaid" before fixing the camber problem with GT3 front arms. A slightly harder front sway bar can also help this situation, but if you go too stiff, it can make the understeer worse. There is a certain sweet spot on roll stiffness that you need to hit where reducing the camber gain due to chassis roll more than offsets the increased weight transfer of the stiffer front bar.
As far as tire types, Nitto NT-01's are tough to beat for a track tire that is fast, user friendly, and never heat cycles out. A few weeks ago at Barber I did a back to back test of NT-01's vs. RE-71R. The NT-01 were about 1 second a lap faster, which isn't much, but they seem to stay more consistent over many laps, wheras the RE-71R's tend to overheat and start to feel a little greasy after 5-6 hard laps.
One word of warning as you experiment with set up - you can get to a certain point in eliminating understeer where you may get oversteer unexpectedly, so proceed carefully, and test at autocross or skid pad before heading to a track.
Good luck and have fun.