I drive a lot if highway miles and wear items are something of concern seeing as so many wear out staggered tires and brake pads in 10-20k mile intervals. I drive a LOT for work, 90 percent highway travel. As soon as I got the car I bought akebono pro acts for front and rear and easily installed them myself. No rotors turned, they looked fairly smooth....spray with brake cleaner and install.

I was also fortunate that when I bought the car, it had a brand new set of contitac dws06's which are also a popular choice for the 3is on here. I scored there.

First receipt was right after getting the car in November...i had just put the pads on and didn't trust a dealer to have actually changed the oil vs just turning the reminder off....so it was done then.

The second receipt is close to 10k miles later and today. As far as wear goes, everything is great per the measurements provided on inspection and noted on the papers.

10k mile review from me on both items:

Brakes - little to no dust just as everyone suggested. Braking power for normal driving is indifferent in feel from the f-sport oe pads. Performance? I beat on it a little bit but I don't autocross or anything like that. I've noticed no difference between feel of these pads and the oe....however as I said, I spent very little time with the oe pads as I wanted to go to a long term, low dust low wearing solution.

Continental contitac dws06: I live in NW Ohio in snow land and bought a RWD car with foot-wide rear tires to drive long distances in 4 seasons. I was pretty scared of my seemingly unwise purchase as "want" won over practicality on this purchase. I could easily summarize with - I will never buy another brand of tire. I've never had snow tires to compare, but these are surprisingly and amazingly good on both the wet and pretty ugly snow days. You have to try pretty hard to screw up with it.

So early indications are - great tires and akebono pro act pads seem to solve all of the fast, high wearing items this car liberally consumes. So far the tires are doing great, if they develop cupping or uneven wear from nit being able to rotate, I will purchase two fronts from a staggered set and buy 4 tires the same size. Though so far, I don't see that needing to happen.

Feel free to ask any questions you would like... I plan to check in in another 10k miles at the next oil change with another wear report.

 

Have you ever been in a situation where you wished you had just a little more braking power?
I'm considering these brake pads and want to know how they perform in those "Oh ****" mash the brake pedal moments that we all have.

 

I have the same question. I've definitely had a couple of panic stops, and I question whether the F Sport OE pads would stop shorter in such cases.

 

According to some people here, the OEM low friction pads are better than akebono.

 

Nope, I have had a few of those moments and have 0 complaints. I formerly raced dirt track with very aggressive pads, so for whatever it is worth I do have some experience with performance compounds.

I will never buy another pad.

 

I would mostly attribute that the placebo effect based on feel, but I am sure there is a difference on the skid pad. Metallics are far more aggressive....these are ceramics. To me the difference seems non-perceivable. As long as you have enough braking power to trip the ABS, more pad wont help.

If the OE pads doubled the braking performance over the akebono, I still would not switch back. Not worth the constant mess of dust, noise and wearing out in 10-15k miles.

We got 3-4 inches of snow this morning and she did close to 400 miles in it today. Man these tires are good.