Gettin’ parts, gettin’ parts.
One Lap starts on May 2.
Photograph by Chris Tropea
Wheels and tires: check. Now we needed brakes.
With Bridgestone on board supplying its Potenza RE-71RZ tires and Superspeed supporting with its FlowForm RF03RR wheels, only one remaining piece of performance-related prep was needed: brakes.
The braking system on our Hyundai Elantra N is quite good, and the stock pads can be used on track. The only question is for how many days? Enter Porterfield Enterprises.
For 40 years, Porterfield has been engaged in manufacturing brake pads as well as acting as a retailer for other top brands. Of note, it can make almost any pad shape by cutting down from a larger shape–or building from scratch.
Last year, Porterfield supplied our effort at the Tire Rack One Lap of America Presented by Grassroots Motorsports with its R-4 track compound for our Ioniq 5 N. They were fantastic on the track, not too noisy on the street, and hardly wore during a week of track appearances. So we asked for those again, but only for the front.
Porterfield brake pads performed well on last year’s One Lap entry, so we’re going to run a set this year as well.
Photograph by Tom Suddard
What about the rear? Informed sources tell us that the factory ABS can get confused by higher-than-stock braking friction levels at the rear. The result is the dreaded ice mode, where the pedal gets rock solid and no braking occurs. You can imagine how this would be possible in a nose-heavy FWD car trail braking into a turn with the inside-rear wheel off the ground.
So instead we opted for the R4-S street pad for the rears, hoping to get a little more durability and friction without stepping over the line.
The final piece of the braking puzzle was fluid. The OE juice was probably good enough for three hard laps at a time, but we’d need to change it out for fresh anyway. Tom had a case of AP Racing Radi-Cal Factory R DOT 5.1 fluid from a previous project that seemed like a way better idea to give us some headroom on boiling point: 512° dry and 356° wet.
From here, it’s down to alignment, oil change and stickers. Lots of stickers.
Oh, and JG took our Elantra N to Circuit Florida in OE form for some baseline laps. Spoiler alert: He already wants to buy the car! Stay tuned for that one next.
Photograph by Chris Tropea
Gettin’ parts, gettin’ parts.
One Lap starts on May 2.
As if I didn't want an Elantra N enough as it is.
If only Hyundai would sell me an i30 N...
In reply to Colin Wood :
Sounds like you and JG can fight over this one.
I love bidding wars
Maybe Chris will get in on the action, too.
David S. Wallens said:Maybe Chris will get in on the action, too.
He's the sneaky kind -- wait's until the gavel is about to fall and then snags away the prize when no one's expecting it. 
As the year winds down and I may be having my 2nd kid soon, I've been really tuned into these kinds of cars because I am wondering what will fulfill my need as a daily driver/auto-x/light track day vehicle. My google skills are not that good, but I can't seem to find the differences between the Porterfield compounds anywhere?
Tell someone ten years ago that you could buy a new Elantra with those brakes.
I wish you guys would have done at least a couple of track sessions on the stock pads so you could tell us if these pads are actually an upgrade over stock and what the trade offs are.
CrashDummy said:I wish you guys would have done at least a couple of track sessions on the stock pads so you could tell us if these pads are actually an upgrade over stock and what the trade offs are.
Did you read the last sentence of the story?
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