I'm preparing for another open track event. I have been keeping an eye on my brake pads, which still had about 50% of their life left. However, I had a little noise coming from them, and brake pads are cheap enough. So, I ordered Hawk HPS (High Performance Street) pads for the front, and Satisfied Pro Performance OEM pads for the rear. This is because I wanted a small upgrade in braking performance, including increased fade resistence to improve brake feel at the end of long grades I travel daily. I didn't want the increased cost & wear associated with a more aggressive pad, and nor did I want to sacrafice cold performance. Finally, given that the front brakes do more work, those are the ones I concentrated on upgrading. One side effect may be that the car favors front bias a little more afterward.

So, what does it take to change the brakes in the Miata? It's actually rather easy, taking me about an hour and a half. The tools required are only a few metric wrenches (10mm, 14mm, and 17mm) and a 4mm allen wrench, plus whatever you use to jack your car up and remove the wheels. I've done brakes in quite a few cars, and these are some of the easiest. Let's step through what it takes.

Jack your car up, and take off the wheels. I suggest doing one axle at a time, allowing you to look at one assembled side while working on the other. The general steps are: remove the caliper, swap out pads, replace caliper by compressing the piston on the front or turning it in on the rear, and remove any glaze from the rotor.

Starting with the front, you remove the caliper by unbolting the bolts that allow the caliper to "float", which are 17mm top and 14mm bottom. Pull up on the caliper and put it somewhere such as resting on the lower control arm -- do not let it hang by the hose. Remove the springs that go between the pads, and they can be pulled out to either side. If your brake rotors are in good shape, you can simply use 150 grit or finer (higher number) sandpaper to remove any glaze from them. If not, you'll need to replace them. How do you know if the rotors need replacing? If they have significant grooving in them, heat cracks, or do not meet the OEM specification for minimum thickness; if you don't know, bring them in to a machine shop and have them check. After the rotors are taken care of, put the new pads in, replace the springs (assume these are to prevent brake noise), compress the caliper piston (note that this may backfill your brake fluid resivoir and you may need to remove fluid from it in order to prevent spillage. After the caliper is put over the pads, put the bolts back in (again, 17mm is the top one), torque properly, and repeat on the other side.

The rear brakes are almost exactly similar, except for a couple notable exceptions. First, the caliper forward bolt removes, but the caliper then "swings" up from the back. Second, because of the parking brake, you need to "unscrew" the caliper to get it over the new pads. This is done by removing a 10mm bolt covering a 4mm allen head. You turn it counterclockwise (out) until the caliper piston retracts enough to fit over the pads. This may seem to be a pain, but it's necessary to the parking brake function, and I've done it on other cars that were much harder.

Once the new pads are on, and the car is back on the ground, you can test drive it. First, check function of the brakes before coming up to speed. If they're working properly, go ahead and bed the pads in. This can be done by performing a few firm stops from about 30mph, then performing one or two firm stops from 60mph. This should help heat the pads up enough to vaporize any bonding compound left in them.

One more thing -- the parking brake may not work properly for the first few times, as the rear calipers need a chance to readjust after being backed out. This is normal. I suspect the self-adjusting mechanism works when backing up and/or hitting the brakes while in reverse.

For me, I'm happy. The brakes have subtly better "bite" throughout the stopping range. The brakes actually seem noisier. I shouldn't be surprised due to the increased performance, but I am. I expect a street brake to stay quiet. I'll have the car on the track this weekend, so I can test them well there. However, the previous stock brakes performed well enough, and I expect these to be better. That is, I expect them to be able to better resist fading and be more consistent throughout their temperature range. Currently, on the street, they're excellent, with better bite and better feel.