I’ve used Performance Friction Z pads for road and track duty over the past few years and whilst I’ve been more than happy with the on track capabilities of the Z’s, the on road (cold bite) has been very poor almost to the point of being dangerous!
Cue the group test of Andy Freemans EBC blues. Fortunately I was given a set to try out and up until yesterday I’d only used them for fast road and 20 minutes at Brands.
My first impressions were that the cold bite and sheer stopping power was head and shoulders above the PF Z’s. Very impressed indeed!.
So, onto yesterdays day at Snetterton 300.
I typically stay out for 20-30 minutes on track and thrash the knackers off my car without any mechanical sympathy whatsoever!
Whilst the Z’s took a while to get up to temp and gave me some confidence the Blues were bang on the money from the start and needed very little warming up to perform.
But, after approx 15+ miles of very hard non stop track abuse they started to fade slightly and needed to cool down before getting back to their best.
There have been plenty of comments about brake judder and pad deposit left on the discs from the Blues, but not once have I had this problem with them, where as with the Z’s I’ve had a nightmare with judder and trying to remove to deposit has been a right royal pain in the ass!
PF Z deposit on discs…

Old PF Z pads…

So, back to the EBC Blues.
My overall impression is that as a fast road and occasional light track pad the Blues are fantastic value for money and pretty much do all that is asked of them with no downside whatsoever.
But when given some real abuse (and I mean some heavy abuse) they don’t cut the mustard compared the to Z’s.
Pics…



Obviously the Blues have smeared quite a bit and started to crumble in places but they still did a good job of stopping me, although two track days would be their limit where as the Z’s have previously last me six+ hard track days.
I look forward to trying the EBC Orangestuff at some point, although they will have to be real good to match the hard race capabilities that PF offer.