Bendix - Pads for your Tow Car and Race Car

About 10,000km ago we fitted brand new discs and brake pads bought from a retailer onto our tow rig, a 4WD Mazda Tribute. The Tribute tows a Mitsubishi Lancer Rally Cross car but the problems lies in the braking capacity of the Mazda Tribute – when towing our Rally Cross car the Tribute would struggle to pull up at traffic lights and was extremely dangerous if under emergency braking. We also experienced a very long brake pedal under braking with the trailer and car on the back which is quite a frightening experience.

Safety is our number one priority so there was no way we were going to continue to tow our Lancer with the current brake setup. We needed to rectify this problem so we began to look around in the market to see brake pad that would suit our Mazda Tribute for towing. In the end we decided to go with Bendix Heavy Duty brake pads which we purchased from our local car parts store.

Not long after we had our Mazda Tribute up on jack stands and we began to remove the existing brake pads.

Pictured below is our existing brake pads alongside our new Bendix Heavy Duty pads. One of the most obvious differences between them is the Blue Titanium Stripe found on the Heavy Duty pads; this is a type of technology developed by Bendix to further improve initial stopping. The high friction Blue Titanium Stripe on the brake pad surface is designed to rapidly mate with the rotor when brakes are first applied. This eliminates the need to bed in the brakes which saves a lot of time. Full braking performance is achieved in a few stops rather than the usual minimum of 30 stops.

Off goes the old pads and in goes the new Heavy Duty pads. Perfect fitment for the factory brake calipers. So why did we go with the Bendix Heavy Duty pads?

Bendix Heavy Duty brake pads are ideal for towing. They are made from a specifically developed compound to deliver hard working performance for all sorts of load carrying situations. They feature an insulation layer containing natural ceramic particles to assist adhesion of the friction material to the backing plate and prevent heat transfer from the rotor, ensuring a positive pedal feel at high operating temperatures.

On our first drive with newly fitted Bendix Heavy Duty pads towing the Lancer we instantly experienced better friction and improved pedal feel. There was no need for bedding in the pads at all. Increased stopping power was felt instantly. The pedal feel was amazing and the brakes actually gave a strong bite compared to our previous set of pads. Braking was much more responsive with a heavy load on the back and on top of this there was very minimal brake noise which makes for a feasible pad for both everyday driving and towing heavy loads.

Overly pleased with the results on the Mazda Tribute we began to look at alternative pads for our Budget Rally Cross Mitsubishi Lancer. The Lancer currently sports an aggressive set of race pads from another supplier – these pads ultimately destroyed our brake discs and we weren’t able to get enough heat into them to perform at efficiently at the Rally stages we compete in. We’re budget racers so we can’t afford to be replacing our pads and discs at every event. We needed a high performance brake pad that wouldn’t damage our discs so quickly and able to get enough heat into the brakes at short rally stages.

We replaced the aggressive race pads with Bendix Ultimate pads. Bendix Ultimate brake pads are specially formulated to offer high friction, high temperature tolerance and a measurably better performance across a range of braking conditions. They have exceptional stopping power giving you shorter stopping distances and a significant resistance to brake fade at high temperature.

We found that the braking performance was not as “bitey” but saw much more value in them to our previous pads as they don’t require to be warmed up as much which is definitely handy on short course dirty rally stage.