Infiniti G35 Brake Pads: Street vs Track Compound Choices

By Core Brake Parts Tech Team — Circleville, OH warehouse

For a street-driven Infiniti G35, a ceramic or high-performance street compound is the right answer: it gives full braking power from cold, stays quiet, and never sees the heat a race pad needs. A track compound only makes sense if you run the car at speed on a road course or in autocross, because those pads are built to work hot and many of them feel wooden on a cold morning commute. The pad you choose matters more on this car than the rotor does, and the G35 makes it easy because the same popular pad shapes cover a long list of model years.

Why the G35 is a pad-choice car

The G35 was sold with four-wheel discs, and the sportier builds carried a Brembo front caliper. That front caliper is the one that decides which pad set you order: nearly all of the high-performance pad shapes for this platform, including the Hawk HB545 family, are cataloged for the 2003-2007 G35 and Nissan 350Z with Brembo brakes. If your car has the standard front caliper instead, the shape is different and a Brembo pad will not fit. Look at the front caliper before you buy: the Brembo unit is a fixed caliper with pistons on both sides of the rotor and the Brembo name cast into the body, while the base caliper is a sliding unit with pistons on the inboard side only.

Because the car is a rear-drive coupe or sedan with a lot of weight transfer onto the nose under braking, the front pads do most of the work and take most of the heat. That is why nearly every compound decision on a G35 is a front-pad decision, and why the front axle is where the money is worth spending. Browse what fits in brake pads and match the compound to how you actually drive.

What a compound rating actually tells you

Every friction material sold here carries an edge code, and the two letters in the middle of it are the part that matters. Under SAE Standard J866, the first letter describes friction performance at normal low temperature, tested from 200 to 400 degrees F, and the second letter describes high-temperature performance, tested from 300 to 650 degrees F. Letters further along the alphabet mean a higher coefficient of friction. Two matching letters mean the material holds a similar grip level cold and hot, which is what you want in a street pad.

What the edge code does not tell you is the full temperature window, and that is where the manufacturers' own published ranges come in. A street pad that works from cold and gives up somewhere in the 600 to 750 degree F region is fine for road use and even for an aggressive back road. A race pad rated out to 1,400 degrees F earns that ceiling with a material that generally wants heat in it to do its best work. Neither is better in the abstract; they are answers to different questions.

Street compounds for the G35

These are the pads to look at if the car sees commuting, weekend driving, and the occasional spirited drive. Every operating range below comes from the manufacturer's own compound page.

In practice the split is simple. If clean wheels and silence matter most, the Hawk Performance Ceramic front set or EBC Redstuff is the pick. If you want more bite and can live with more dust, Hawk HPS, HPS 5.0, or EBC Yellowstuff give you a higher ceiling while still working cold on the first stop of the day.

Track and autocross compounds

Once the car does lapping days, a street pad runs out of temperature and you feel it as a long pedal and a car that will not slow down at the end of the straight. The track-oriented options for this platform are:

The important line in that table is the DTC row. A compound whose published range starts at 400 degrees F is telling you plainly that it is not a street pad, because a pad below its range is a pad that is not doing its job at the first stop sign. That is why HPX and HP Plus are the compounds most G35 autocrossers land on, and why EBC RP-X, which EBC positions as a race pad that still bites from cold, is the aggressive end of what makes sense on a car that also drives home.

Symptoms that tell you the compound is wrong

A soft, long pedal that appears only after several hard stops and comes back after a cool-down is pad fade: the material is past its temperature range. That is a compound problem, not a leak, and new rotors will not fix it. A pedal that goes long and stays long, or that sinks slowly while you hold it at a light, is a hydraulic problem instead and points at the fluid, a hose, or the master cylinder.

Squeal on a cold morning that goes away after a few stops usually means an aggressive compound on a street car, or missing hardware. Blue or heat-marked rotor faces and a burnt smell after a hard run also point at a pad past its limit. Going the other way, a race pad on a street car shows up as poor cold bite: you press the pedal at the bottom of your driveway and the car does not slow the way you expect. Watch for uneven pad deposits too, which cause a shudder through the pedal that owners often blame on a warped rotor.

Bedding, what to replace with the pads, and job difficulty

New pads need a proper bed-in to lay an even transfer layer on the rotor face, and the makers are specific about it. EBC says Yellowstuff needs some warm-up and a longer bedding procedure that happens naturally over the first 100 to 200 miles of urban driving, and that Redstuff, being a hard-wearing pad, can take as long as 1,000 miles to fully bed. Skipping that and then doing one hard stop from speed is how you end up with an uneven deposit and a shudder that gets blamed on the rotor.

Replace pads and rotors as a set when you change compound, because a fresh compound bedding onto another compound's transfer layer invites judder. A slotted rotor such as the EBC USR slotted front set or the EBC BSD V-slot front rotor gives the pad a clean wiping edge under repeated heavy use; the full range is in brake rotors. Replace the anti-rattle clips and shims at the same time, and inspect the flexible hoses. Fresh fluid matters more than pad choice once the car sees track heat, because boiling fluid produces the same long pedal that fade does; use the DOT specification printed on your own reservoir cap.

As a job, front pads on this car are a solid beginner-to-intermediate afternoon: wheel off, caliper hardware out, retract the pistons, fit the pads, then torque every fastener to the value in the factory service manual. A fixed Brembo front caliper does not need a piston wound back the way a rear caliper with an integrated parking brake does, which makes the front the easier end of the car. One G35-specific item worth knowing while you are in there: NHTSA campaign 03V200000 covers a brake stop lamp switch that may malfunction so the brake lamps do not illuminate, so confirm your brake lights work on an early car.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I run a track pad on my G35 every day?

You can fit one, but you will not enjoy it. Compounds like Hawk's DTC-60 and DTC-70 do not start their published operating range until 400 degrees F, which means weak braking on cold streets. Compounds built to overlap both worlds, such as HP Plus at 100-800 degrees F or EBC RP-X with its claimed full brake effect from cold, are the realistic dual-purpose choices, and even those are noisier and dustier than a street pad.

Do these pads fit a G35 without Brembo brakes?

No. The high-performance pad shapes listed for this platform are cataloged for cars with Brembo front calipers, and the base caliper takes a different pad. Identify your front caliper first, then order the shape that matches it.

Will a more aggressive compound wear out my rotors faster?

Generally yes, and the makers say so in their own descriptions. Hawk describes HPS as gentle on rotors, while EBC rates RP-X as excellent pad life with moderate disc life. The harder a compound works, the more of the wear moves into the rotor, which is another reason to plan pads and rotors as a pair.

Are ceramic pads actually better?

Better at being quiet and clean, not better at everything. Hawk's Performance Ceramic is published at 100-650 degrees F with an optimal window of 100-450 degrees F, the lowest ceiling of the street compounds here. For commuting that is plenty; for repeated hard stops it is the first one to run out of range.

How do I know if it is fade or a fluid problem?

Fade appears only when the brakes are hot and the pedal returns to normal once things cool. A hydraulic fault does not care about temperature and often shows up as a pedal that slowly sinks while you hold steady pressure at a stop. If a long pedal shows up cold, stop driving the car and inspect the hydraulics.

Should I change front and rear pads at the same time?

Change them as axle sets, both sides of an axle together, always. Front and rear do not have to be done in the same visit because the fronts wear faster, but if you move to a much more aggressive front compound, check that the rear still has enough life to balance it rather than leaving a worn rear pad behind a fresh front.

Sources

1. Hawk Performance street compounds - published operating and optimal temperature ranges for Performance Ceramic, HPS and HPS 5.0
2. Hawk Performance motorsports compounds - operating ranges for HPX, HP Plus and the DTC race compounds
3. EBC Yellowstuff product page - 400C/750F fade threshold, dust statement and the 100-200 mile bedding note
4. EBC Redstuff product page - 0.5 nominal friction coefficient, dust reduction, no race use, bed-in time
5. EBC RP-X racing pads - 0.55 friction level to 750C, brake effect from cold and the R90 road-use note
6. The Brake Report on friction codes - SAE J866 two-letter edge code and its low and high temperature test ranges