I just finished doing a tech inspection on the evo and bleeding the brakes for my next HPDE, but when I was looking at the rotors and the pads (still inside the calipers) I had no way of knowing what the hell I was looking at.

Anyone have any pointers?

 

Look at the pad material on the backing plate. If its below a 1/4in then I would not run the HPDE on them. I typically swap pads at 50% for track season.

 

yep. Get a good flashlight and look at the pad material left on the backing plate of the pads. look at both the outer and inner pads, and take a look at the centers. You get a good view of the centers if you shine your light on top of the calipers where the pads are inserted. They sell a little mm ruler thingy you can align next to the pad material to measure how much pad you have left. After a while you can guess pretty well if you have 5mm, 3mm, or 8mm left without it.

 

Do I need to pull the pads or rotors off to check or can I just look down into the caliper?

 

If you inspect them in the caliper, be sure to view both ends of the pad. I had one pad come off of my car that had lots of meat on one end but was nearly down to metal at the other.

On the other hand, it is silly easy to pull pads on an Evo (two pins). Your choice.

 

Tires off. Turn the front wheel so that the brake is more visible. Inner pads typically wear faster. Make sure to look for those. Rears can be seen with the wheels off.

 

Pop the pads out. It's easy enough to do and the only way to see if you have a significant amount of stress fractures on your pad.

l8r)