Braking performance is all about managing heat. The heat generated is directly proportional to the swept area, and the mass of the car. Unfortunately, simple swept area calculations don't explain much because of weight transfer during braking, and severe differences in front weight distribution on front wheel drive cars like the SHO. If we look at a table of swept area per ton, for the front wheels only, for various cars, the SHOs braking problems become quickly apparent:

This means one of two things for our SHOs, either our front brakes are going to have to get a lot bigger, or they are going to get really hot! I find it a little ironic that we have the braking equivalent of a GTI, or a rear-drum braked Camaro. Because mostly of weight distribution, BMWs Corvettes, and Porsches will always have cooler brakes under the same circumstances. It doesn't necessarily mean they work better, they will just be cooler.

All right, so regardless of which front rotor system we have, we have to learn how to live with hot brakes. The first thing we should do is match the pads with the anticipated heat range we expect. (Fred Puhn - the Brake Handbook). The problem we have as consumers is finding out enough of the engineering data to make an informed decision. We need to answer two questions: What range of temps should we expect? And what range of temps can the pads handle?

I ran some brake temperature tests and measured 385 F on my front rotors in rush hour traffic on a 45 mph street because of several sequential stoplights. (I have an 89 SHO with 10.1 in. rotors.) Another test with four back to back 60 mph stops generated 550 F. That's plenty hot, and about as hot as you would ever get on the street, even with an aggressively driven SHO. Even just one 80 mph stop generates 385 F of heat. However, one high speed 140 mph stop will generate up to 1025 F!!! Repeated stops in a racing environment can get extremely severe, as our own Scott Chan reports seeing glowing red rotors (1300+ F) on his SHO at the race track!
 

Everyone expects race cars to have red-hot brakes, and many of them do. Nascar short track brakes glow in the dark (1300 F). But glowing brakes in Formula One can mean up to 3000 F! Other race cars can run relatively cool brakes, if they are light enough, the rotors are big enough, there is enough cooling, etc. Carbotech reports working with an IMSA / Trans-Am tube frame RX-7 at Homestead, Fla. with huge 13 inch Alcon rotors in a lightweight car that was breaking the track record during practice. But the rotor temps never got past 600 F!  (My SHO does this in traffic!) Because of the temperatures they were seeing, race pads didn't work very well, and a STREET pad actually worked the best! My point is that it is extremely important to know what range of temperatures you are expecting your brakes to work in. And FORD obviously had a different range in mind than we do!
 

I used Puhn's formulas and data from our SHO's to generate the following chart of anticipated rotor temperature rise for all three of the common SHO rotors. The brakes certainly have a lot of heat to deal with! Puhn says "brake fade is almost always caused by high temps, and the first thing to consider is cooling or higher temperature pads." 

My own testing also confirms that 300 to 600 F is easily achievable on the street given an aggressive driving style. Are these temps high enough to cause fade? Well, apparently they are, because it is the number one complaint from SHO owners about their brakes, and perhaps even the biggest complaint about their cars. The big question is, can the pads handle it? Or can we find some that can?

Puhn, recommends: ... "From an engineering standpoint, if you are not happy with your brake performance, identify what needs modifying. One of the very first things to do is test to determine your anticipated range of brake temps. ...One of the most important components to modify is the friction compound of your brake pads. ...It would be ideal to have curves showing friction coefficients vs temperature curves for your proposed brake pads. Unfortunately, only brake system engineers know those numbers, and they won't normally tell."