Hello everyone and welcome, in this video we're gonna be talking about performance brake pads.
And theres really 7 key focus areas
when looking into brake pads
cold performance, hot performance, how wide is that temperature range...
pad wear, rotor wear, due to the pad selection you make...
...uhh, and then depending on the application, noise and dust may matter as well.
So looking at a brake pad here, uh, several things going on...
...some common features you may see: chamfer on the ends.
and that's to improve engagement and also help reduce brake noise.
Uhh, you also may have slots, pretty much all of them will probably have slots.
And this is to help remove debris from the pads or the rotor wearing.
And also, so that when your pad expands, uhh, from heating up so much
prevents cracking within it.
so it has a little bit of space to expand
underneath you may have an under-layer and there's ...
multiple roles this can play and they're can be multiple layers as well.
But basically you're gonna want to insulate your brake calipers so you don't heat up your brake caliper.
...and then heat up the brake fluid, you wanna try and prevent that.
And it also aid in bonding between the brake pad and the backing plate.
And then, of course, you have the backing plate.
And this helps hold the brake pad in place in your caliper.
So a performance change you might go with is larger pads...
...so if you upgrade to lager calipers with more pistons, you can use larger pads.
So why would you wanna use a larger pad?
Well, you're gonna have reduced pad wear because you've got more material overall.
And you're also gonna have better fade characteristics because you're distributing a heat across a larger amount...
...of, uh, material versus if you have a smaller pad.
Now the one thing to note is that if you do use larger pads you're gonna be covering up that section of the brake discs...
...so you're not gonna have as much air flow over that section of the brake disc, and it could impact the cooling of the brake disk.
So its not always necessarily the best...uh...its not like you just want a massive caliper that goes all...
...the way around the entire disc.
as you wouldn't have anywhere to reject the heat
so you do need some air flow, but ultimately larger pads are gonna give you less pad wear and better fade characteristics.
So there's all kinds of materials out there.
that are gonna be used in brake pads
I just listed a few: Ceramic Asbestos which are no longer really used, Semi-metallic, Carbon-Carbon are some other examples...
...there's all kinds of materials out there.
That's not really that important for the consumer to know necessarily about the material.
What's more important is this graph right here.
Which is the coefficient of friction versus the temperature of the pad.
So as different pads are gonna have different characterics,
a lot of that due to the material selection.
And so something like your family car, you know, it's gonna have a high coefficient of friction
at basically low temperature.
So right when you get on the pad, you're not braking as much in street cars as you are in a race.
And you're not getting it to as high temperatures so you want high cold friction.
And this preformance kind of tapers off.
So if you go down a really long hill, you can notice some brake fade
in your cars, that's why they recommend using gearing to brake your car.
Because these brake pads will start to get too hot
And then the coefficient of friction drops dramatically, and then you won't really have that good of brakes.
So something used in racing will look very different, where the coefficient of friction maybe very low at cold
but that doesn't matter because once they get up to operating temperature, that's the range they're gonna stay in
throughout the whole race.
So something that has, you know, depending on the race, and how much braking is involved...
...you may want something that has better friction coefficients at a lower temperature..
...or at a higher temperature, something that's just very consistent throughout.
So there will be all kinds of different variations...
...and actually, the pad manufacturers, if you're looking at buying these...
....a lot of them will show you this graph so you can, you know, get the pad exactly for the application that you want.
If you know there's gonna be a ton of braking, you want it to be consistent...
...you know, getting something with flatter curve at higher temperatures
Now with street cars, you actually want high coefficient of friction at lower temperatures.
And that"s because, you know, your pads and your rotors aren't gonna be getting that hot.
You're not stopping constantly, so if you get off the highway you're rotors are essentialy cold, you know, they...
...got a little bit of rubbing on them, but really they're not that warm.
And so you wanna have high friction immediately so you don't have to wait for them to warm up
And you can stop quickly.
So thank you for watching, and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below.