OP, as you probably know, there’s no consensus about anything in this hobby. So I’ll take the contrary view to Julian. My theory is that our cars are so rear biased that the rear brakes don’t do much of anything. Putting higher bite pads on the rear won’t overcome enough of this bias to be detectable.
Back in 08 or 09 I spent a bunch of time testing brake pads. One of the lessons learned is that the difference in braking g’s between limp rear pads and vy high bite rear pads is so small that it’s indistinguishable from noise.
Yes, I put high bite pads in the rear, but this isn’t really because that idea was obviously better. The data supported the idea, but the difference was so small that with some more rigorous testing, we might find that I got over excited by not enough proof. I use high bite pads in the rear because the idea ought to work better. I can’t honestly say that the data made it a slam dunk tho.
Our rear piston is a 1/3rd smaller then front so that gives us a ~60/40 bias. Then our bias valve kicks in at ~300psi, depending on who you talk do, and that adds another 60/40 so now it’s about 70/30 forward biased.
As an experiment a couple years ago, and with my high bite pads in the rear, I bypassed my brake bias valve. I expected the car to suddenly become a handful under hard braking. To my surprise, bypassing the brake bias valve didn’t seem to make any difference. The relative size of the pistons seem to dominate the situation.
One last thought. One thing that did make a difference is tires. If one front tire is less grippy, for whatever reason, braking g’s go way down. Sure, this is intuitive, but the affect is more significant then I’d figured. The one front tire slips and then ABS kicks in. With fresh front tires, one can do some serious braking g’s. But if one of those front tires is hot/cold/worn, or just hits a patch of asphalt with a little less grip, stopping distances are long.
That’s front tires mind you. Since the rear brakes don’t do much, the rear tires don’t matter much (to braking distances). I feel strongly that everyone that has ever reported that their rear tires locked up, is wrong. That is unless their tire was airborne because the car was bounding, or the rear tire slid across something very slick. Rear ABS engages “ice mode” which is, in a breaking zone, quite exciting.
Caveat. There’s certainly folks that are better able to feel what the car is telling them than me. I’m mostly here for comedic relief.
