Have just fitted new EBC Redsuff Ceramic pads on the front brakes.(Head told me to go for pagids but wallet shouted louder!) Is there a good way to introduce yourself to new pads or do you shout and stamp on them as normal? Will let you know how we get on, previously had Lotus Motorsport pads which behaved very well.Any one else tried these?
Kam
As far as I am aware, the Lotus Motorsport pads are in fact…Pagid RS14
If the EBC are no good, I suggest you try Mintex 1155 or 1166 - somwehat cheaper than Pagids.
Bedding in - 4 or 5 gentle applications from about 30 mph. Then 4 or 5 from 50-60 mph, followed by same from 70 mph. (Just make sure you pick a quiet road, otherwise you might end up being rear-ended )
Kam
(Just make sure you pick a quiet road, otherwise you might end up being rear-ended )
Not something I would wish upon anyone!!!
I thought the normal bedding in proceedure was to use the brakes gently for the first hundred miles or so.
I thought the normal bedding in proceedure was to use the brakes gently for the first hundred miles or so.
What was that I heard…??? Sounded like a can of worms being opened up to me
Kam
I put green stuff pads on mine, together with muts nuts discs - they took a while to bed in properly - couple of trips down the M27 to Sainsbury’s should do it! Be prepared for them to be crap the first few times you brake - makes the adrenilin run quite nicely!
Must say Pagid RS-14’s are pretty much ready to go
The whole bedding in thing… Don’t know about “road” pads but all the racers I knowwill do a a lap to bed them in and then give them full abuse from there on in
Agree about a couple of average laps then time to cool down properly befor you go out again, is what we do as well.
FWIW here is link to pagids suggested bedding procedure, gonna try it when my pads arrive this week.
Looks the proper biz, Jason, but I’m not sure how we can check the temperature in between the stops !!
Touch the pads with your finger, if it welds onto the pad then it’s hot enough
Touch the pads with your finger, if it welds onto the pad then it’s hot enough
Thats the same principle for checking if the caps in your amps have power
I was thinking a digital pyrometer which i wanna get for tyre setup anyway.
Gonna give it a bash anyway, before i get out to the track just to see if it works, as i will have brand new diskc and pads to bed in at one time.
Will keep you posted.
I’ve tried the EBC red before, and although they’re ok when they are bed in, they take a while to get there.
All pads bedding in process consist in two parts:
-physical conformation of the pad’s surface to the shape of the disks surface. For this using the pads gently for the first 100 miles would be ok, even in subzero temps. If the disks are new, it takes maybe 10 miles, if the disks are used and are not perfectly flat, it takes longer. Until then they should not be overheated or they will be cooked on the parts that touch only.
-cooking them to the operating temperature. For this you need to cycle the pad’s temp, heat them and let them cool. This will make them stable at high temps and release most of the gases that make them fade. Every time you reach a higher operating temperature they will release gases again, ie fade.
The EBC reds are unfortunately the worst pads to bed in, temperature-wise. They take about 6-7 heat cycles until they are finally ok. Use them hard until they start fading and smell, let them cool… and again.
By the time I had them working nicely, they were half worn. Meanwhile, I had lost 1/2 trackday, staying more time in the pits letting them cool, than I would want.
Besides, they don’t work well from cold, but you just have to know that the frist few stops it’ll take twice the distance to stop, and you will have a wooden feel. When hot, they feel ok.
Short, try them if you want, you may have a different experience (I’m very hard on my brakes), but I think if you just don’t want to pay Pagids, and don’t do trackdays, go for EBC greens, and change them often.
Hope this helps.
I thought Nick Adams recommended a few hard stops from high speed to heat them up and then a hard stop followed by standing on them for a couple of minutes to shape them to the disk?
Anybody else recall?
Ian
Ian, Do you mean Nick Adams
Ian, Do you mean Nick Adams
That’s what I said! Um…honest…I didn’t have to edit the post to correct it at all…nor apologise to a customer of mine who’s name may have accidently been used in place of a the Lotus guru.
But do you remember NICK saying such a thing?
Ian
ps. Thanks Phil, it’s early.
pps. You and Trudy must have got good at handling sleepless baby filled nights?!
I’m pretty sure that thing Nick Adams wrote about pads was actually about ‘refreshing’ the pads; If the pads haven’t been worked hard regularly, they tend to go a bit crap and spongy. To get them working properly again, you need to heat cycle them as Uldis described above. Nick was describing this process. I would still be inclined to do the 100 steady miles first.
The procedure Nick described was for bedding in new pads and based on the standard Lotus compound. It could also be used as you say to refresh them too.
Can’t remember those sleepless nights anymore, after the first one i never woke up (I didn’t have the right equipment )
OK, you’re right. Here’s his procedure in full:
With new pads and discs, or just new pads fitted run the car around for 10/20 miles using the brakes gently as normal to bed the two surfaces together. Once this has been done, check the surfaces of the discs and make sure here are no signs of any scoring or damage. Assuming all looks well take the car to an appropriate piece of quiet and straight, well sighted road and perform half a dozen medium pressure stops from 50 mph down to 20 mph to warm the brakes up. Avoid more than a minute between each stop so that the temperatures do not get a chance to deteriorate too much. Once the brakes are warm and the coast is clear, perform 2 or 3 hard stops from 70mph (where local laws allow!) to 20 mph, braking as hard as you can without locking up. Do not come to a halt between each stop, do them as fast as you can to get the brakes really hot. On the third stop come to a halt and keeping your foot on the brake press the brake pedal down as hard as you can and hold it there for at least a couple of minutes, don’t apply the handbrake. This hurts if you are doing it right! This will bed the pistons, shims and pads together and will compress the pad material, giving a hard and repeatable pedal. Once the 2 minutes have passed, release the pedal and go for a short drive, using the brakes as normal to let everything return to normal temperatures. The brakes are now fully bedded in and ready for use in anger. Recompressing the pads once every few thousand miles to the above procedure will help keep the pedal firm, especially if you don’t normally use the brakes hard.
As Uldis said, with older discs, I would give it a few extra steady miles before the hard stops.
I can only imagine Nick’s legs are not that strong.
If I stood on the pedal as hard as I could, it would never come back up.
Take this from a guy that has been in a crash before where the brake pedal was completely bent down to the floor, I also used to race Mountain bikes and broke a few chains and wheels, and can leg-press 300Kg even now that I’m not that fit.
Also, this procedure applies to pads that can loose their compactness, like standard ones. An driven in the city, like any… Porker!
Pagids, Mintex (or even EBC greens if used frequently on track) don’t really need this, first because the material is less pronne to sponge, and second, because at the track you’re compressing them all the time!
I also think doing the compress the pads/materials etc together step at the end with the rotors up to temp runs the risk of getting warped discs… no ??