Hawk Brake pads for my XJ

Review of the Hawk HPS 5.0 brake pads

I have been using Autozone Duralast Gold pads on my Jeeps for many years. They have always performed adequately and the lifetime replacement warranty has been great. I have not paid for pads in years.

However, the last set of pads I put on my Jeep, however, have performed less than I expected.  I don’t know if they changed the formula, or I just got a bad set. They have even been wearing faster than usual.  But the stopping power has been downright scary at times.

Since I have had such good results with Hawk pads on the 944 Racecar I decided to try a set on the Jeep. I studied the charts on the Hawk website and decided to go with the HPS 5.0 version.  These showed the best stopping power while most of the other parameters were close to the same. 

I ordered a set from Amazon.  https://amzn.to/2MrSFcd


Brake pads swaps are easy on the Jeep.  This one was complicated by having an earlier Heli Coil insert back out on me. So I had to put in a new insert.  This time I made sure to put Lock Tight on the insert and anti-seize on the caliper bolt.

Just remove the wheel, remove the two caliper bolts, press the pads back into the caliper. Remove the old pads, put the new pads in, reinstall the bolts and the wheel. Then you are ready to bed them in.

I did a few braking sessions from 35 to 5 MPH to bed in the pads.  They seemed to come in with just a few stops.

The pedal feel is great. There is noticeably less effort required to achieve the same stopping power.  Today I got to experience my first real emergency stopping situation. The kind that has been scary on the most recent set of Duralast pads.  The Jeep slowed quickly and in a straight line. I got stopped quicker than I expected to. While I don’t have any real data to indicate stopping distances, I am much more comfortable with the feel of the brakes now with the Hawk pads installed.  It will be interesting to see how they wear.