Hey guys, Andrew Esquivel here back with another review and today we're going to be reviewing
something that's a little outside my comfort zone, simply because I'm a computer technician
not a car mechanic, but I can still feel and tell when something is askew with the car.
I'm going to be reviewing the Power Stop drilled slotted vented rotors with their Z23 carbon
fiber ceramic brake pads.
A little bit of backstory, I've been using Power Stop for the last five years and for
the last of five years they've actually been pretty good, but five years ago the brake
pad formula was known as the Z16 formula.
Those were just ceramic brake pads and there was no information about the friction coefficient
rating for those pads, but I will tell you this, they were really good pads.
They performed way better than my stock pads which is why five years later after the rotor
started to warp.
I thought, "Alright I'll go with the brand that I know because they got to be still be
good.
I mean they're still in business and they're getting more well known."
I went and bought a new set of rotors and pads.
These pads are the carbon fiber ceramic Z23 formula brake pads.
Once again with the same style drilled slotted vented rotors.
For reference, these things are made in China.
That doesn't necessarily mean they're terrible, but I take that for what it's worth.
Immediately, right away after I replaced the pads, I noticed something was very wrong.
The brake pads or when I pushed on the brakes it was extremely spongy and I thought, "Well,
maybe air got into the brake line somehow."
I flushed the brakes once, tried it again and still really spongy.
I thought, "Well, maybe I should just replace all the brake fluids just to be safe," so
I flushed out the system, replaced it with some dot three formula and I tried it again.
Really, really spongy and I'm like, "This is not right."
The problem started to really compounds a little while afterwards because I went on
a little bit of trip saying thinking myself maybe this need to be broken in a little bit
before, and yes, I did do the bed-in procedure that is specified on the box to the tee.
I had people block off part of the road to make sure it was safe to do it because you
got to speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down and then you got
to let the brakes cool off by driving a little bit.
I did that.
It didn't really help.
I decided, okay, let's give it some more time.
I took 1 to 200 miles on these pads.
That's it.
No more than 15 days, no more than 1 to 200 miles.
Something really bad started to happen soon afterwards where when I pushed on the breaks,
the car wanted to veer to the right while the back end wanted to keep going straight
and I'm like this is not good.
I took it to my mechanic.
He took one look at it and said, "Yes man, you got what we call peanut butter pads."
I'm going to take these pads out right here and give you an explanation of what I mean
by peanut butter pads.
You can see, these are worn overly pretty badly and they are not worn evenly at all.
What they mean by peanut butter pads is when you apply pressure to them, instead of the
material simply just fading away, it splays outwards.
They push down and splay out and you can see what's going on here and the pads are just
flaking away.
Let me get a good footage here.
You can actually see them splaying outwards.
Sorry, I'm trying to get my camera focused.
They're crumbling.
They're just crumbling apart and some pads are worn really bad, completely uneven where.
This one you can still see the line and some of them the line is almost completely gone
and they're just brittle.
See it, they're just falling apart here.
I don't think that's pretty typical, especially of pads that claim to be better than OEM.
They just keep falling apart.
I decided, "Okay, that's not good."
See the impression from the brake piston on this one, too.
I say, that's not good, I don't like that one bit.
These have a friction coefficient rating of GG which is relatively higher up there and
my suspicion is they require a little bit more heat to produce friction than some other
pads out there.
I'm replacing them with Akebono pads that are ceramic and those have a rating of FF
but you can see on the brake material, it's lodged inward here.
I don't like that.
What can we take away from this?
For one, we used all new hardware too.
Came with new hardware, little shims, grease, new little boots here.
The pads are terrible.
They don't last long at all.
They've got this weird splaying out issue and they do not bite.
They are spongy, like Sponge Bob Squarepants spongy.
I don't like that at all so I'm swapping out.
My new rotors are going to be from Brake Performance, those are made in America and Akebonos those
are made in America too.
These are all made in China.
Something happened with Power Stop over the course of the last few years.
They changed their formula.
They changed manufacturers or something but they're not good anymore.
That doesn't everything they make is bad.
I've seen people talk about their race day pads which has a friction coefficient rating
of HH but they require an immense amount of heat to really grab, but that's a different
situation entirely.
We're just talking about the Evolution Series which have evolved into something garbage.
Long story short, I'm going to stay away from these for a while and just go with more reputable
brands.