Wanted to encapsulate my timeline for the Evo brake situation this year now that it is resolved.

• Took the Evo to a track day with NASA HPDE 7/9-10
• Brakes failed near the end of day 1 – turned out I wore one of my pads to its backing plate
• Got some brakes from a fellow Evo owner – some no name hawks, installed to race on the second day
• Brakes felt terrible and bled them, but this did not fix the issue. Initially suspected the master cylinder, since it was manually bled by a stranger pumping the pedal. Pushing the pedal too far down can cause corrosion in the piston seals of the master cylinder
• Replaced the master cylinder – bench bled as well, but did not fix
• Friends suspected air, kept bleeding
• Read the firewall may be flexing/causing soft pedal by moving. Installed a grimmspeed master cylinder brace – did not fix
• Replaced the pads with Girodisc S/S pads, Girodisc titanium shims, and DBA 5000 rotors in the front and DBA 4000 rotors in the rear – unfortunately, did not fix
• Friends still suspected air, kept bleeding. Nearly 1 gallon of fluid gone through at this point
• Did another track day, overheating the brake system severely and had to drive around to cool off the brakes from smoking badly. Girodisc claimed the pads could hold up to light HPDE use – they could not
• Pads changed from orange to smoked gray/white, and caliper colors went to brown in the front.
• Brake feel still soft – read the caliper seals could be the issue, and since the color was ruined I sent the calipers off to be rebuilt with high temp seals by Racing Brake
• Racing Brake sent me a bad set of calipers. Instead bought a set of calipers from Detective Coating, using Racing Brake’s rebuild kit
• With the new calipers in, STILL did not fix – at this point, getting concerned as I’ve nearly replaced the whole braking system. Happy enough with the calipers to get the rears rebuilt as well though.
• After consulting more, I read that stainless steel lines can and do fail from time to time, especially under hard use situations. Picked up some AMS stainless steel lines and installed – still did not fix
• The braking feel was still very soft, nearly unbearable after a few autoxes. The pads were having trouble too, smoking after just a few runs each autox in cool ambient temperature situations
• Continued bleeding and did not improve. Bled over 2 gallons at this point. I bled, took the car for a spin, and pulled it back as the brakes were still soft. Finally, I pulled the pads out and found they were not in good shape at all, with one pad actually crumbling a bit. The track day they faced probably saw temperatures in the 2000’s, and seem to have ruined them.
• Replaced broken air guides with new ones to help the smoking pads – it did not help
• Without bleeding again, I took the titanium shims out, and put everything back together. Pedal feel was immediately restored, and the brake feel situation was finally resolved! The pads were ruined and will need to be replaced as well, but have a spare set of pads on hand