My dad and I were having a dicussion about low cost brake pads versus your standard Bendix, Raysbestos, and Hawd pads. He thinks there is no difference in the quality of the brake pad itself, and that all pads will do the same thing, while I believe that the higher grade pads have more quality product built into them to improve performance. Discuss.
speaking for the g-body perspective i would go through about 2 sets of the low cost pads compared to the severe duty raybestos.
There are HUGE differences in coefficient(s) of friction in different pad materials. Be it organic, metallic, semi-metallic, ceramic based…they all have different attributes. Operating temperature ranges, coefficient of friction, dusting levels and linear application of brake torque usually go up as pads go from street to performance levels…but at the same time low temp friction, initial pedal bite, longetivity (including wear on rotors) all go down when pads get more aggressive. Saying that pads are all the same is just plain wrong.
it’s all relative. I did not notice any difference between cheap pads and expensive ones with my altima (same with tires), but I am sure if the car was driven hard (autocross or something like that) it would be a noticable difference. If all you do is drive the car to/from work and never push it, I bet it would be hard to tell the difference.
i agree 100%
maybe one would give off more brake dust… and only last 2000 miles less. but over all 80% of the public if not more never really have to worrry about pushing their cars. i just bought the cheapys for the grand am. 50 bucs for rotors and pads. but i would never think of that of my old camaro.
I agree with the sentiment that one will not notice higher grade pads (unless dust levels and longetivity are different), but he was asking about pads in general…in which case they are not created equal.
I agree, it depends on driving style and needs.
For my Jeep:
It had less than stellar braking when towing.
Went to Bendix ceramics . . . I have more dust, feels the same with out load.
But when I have the trailer on there is a big difference. Much Improved!
For my Formula:
Put on Hawk HPS’s and Brembo rotors - awesome difference. But you gotta drive it hard to notice.
take him to an autox and have him drive a car with standard pads and then a car with performance pads. i bet he’ll notice a difference.
I went from OEM pads to Hawks HPS’s on my 3. While driving around town, they are comporable to the old pads, with regular pedal modulation and what not. But like Bowtie said, when I’m hussling and working the car on a windy road, there’s definitely an improvement in responsiveness with the Hawks.
I see it this way: If you’re just tooling around town, cheaper pads are fine. If you’re an aggressive driver or you do track days, it’s much better to upgrade to something that will be able to handle the rigors of being abused.
Some of the “better” names do manufacture their own products end-to-end and show some quality improvements over the no name or house brand pads. But some also buy the same shit pads from China, slap them in a different box, and mark them up.
If you want some “performance” you need to get away from all the no name and house brand, get away from Bendix and Raybestos and get into a real performance pad maker. I assume “Hawd” was supposed to be Hawk. Assuming you choose the right Hawk pad for your application you should feel a marked improvement in braking performance over even the best Raybestos or similar.
In short, none of the pads you’re going to pick up at your local parts store are going to offer any type of real performance.
-TJ
You’re absolutely right. I use Wilwoods now in my Wilwood calipers, I used Hawk (HP+ for Street and AutoX, great pads if you don’t mind sounding like a big-rig coming up to stop signs and some dust) previously as well as Performance Friction (PFC-01, amazing road course pads, not very practical/useful outside of the track). Here’s some fun graphs from Wilwood:
The only piece of the puzzle these graphs don’t give you is noise/dust. But you can pretty much assume any of the ones in the upper graph are going to be noisey and dusty, the lowers are intended as street pads and aren’t so bad.
I chose the Hs for my car. I have Qs that I was going to swap on for the street to keep the harsh dust off my bling wheels, but (as you might have read in my other thread) the bling wheels are getting sold anyway so I’m returning the Qs and I’ll just run H’s all the time.
As you can see they work well cold (vital for street and the first few AutoX laps) but just keep getting better w/ more heat. I toyed w/ the idea of A pads, but I’ve been told they are extremely tough to modulate and cause a lot of ABS kick-in in that mid-heat range (aka AutoXin). I think they’d be good in a heavier AutoX only car on really sticky tires (say a ESP Fbody) but not so much the 'vette.
-TJ