Selecting the Right Friction Material (Part I)

How do you  select the  right brake pad for a vehicle? And, how do you select the right friction line  to  stock  at your shop or have as your first call? These are  difficult questions to  answer. Every time your shop  installs a set of brake pads on  a  vehicle you  are taking a gamble that the  friction formulation will meet your customer’s expectations. But, like all risky situations you  have ways  to  stack the deck  in your  favor.

Buying a quality brake pad is like buying medicine. When you are  buying  a legal  drug, you are not just paying the cost  to  manufacture, package and  market the pill. The bulk of what you are paying for is research and development. The same is true for brake pads.

Aftermarket brake pads require a great deal of testing and  engineering because they are made for a specific vehicle. A  quality brake pad  manu- facturer will spend a lot of time and money  developing a brake pad application for your vehicle. This  includes simulated and  on-the-vehicle testing. These types of testing are  time and equipment intensive.

As a technician, it can be difficult to judge  a brake pad  before  you put it on  the vehicle. But, doing  your homework and  looking for certain visual cues  can  help  you  make the right choice.

CATALOGS
When you first start looking for a brake pad  application, chances are you will start in the  pages of a catalog or in front of a computer screen.

Before  you  start looking at price, look  at what the pad  manufacturer is calling the pad or formulation. Many manufacturers  will have multiple pad  types for one application. Some of the distinctions in the lines may be guided by price, but many manufacturers use material types as product specifiers.


CERAMIC
Ceramic material’s structural properties are  very  stable under high temperatures, much like Corning  cookware. But  this is where the comparison ends. Ceramic materials that go into a brake pad  are  very small strands that are  engineered to be a certain length and  width.

There are  three advantages of ceramic pads in  certain applications. First, since  the  ceramic materials offer stable performance under a wide  range of temperatures, they can offer quiet performance. Second, ceramic brake pads manage heat in the  caliper better on some  vehicles than some non-ceramic applications.

Third, ceramic brake dust does  not show  up  on  or  stick to  wheels like some  other brake pad  formulations. This  could  be an  important  factor if you have an expensive set of custom wheels.

NAO
Soft  nonasbestos organic (NAO) friction materials  typically wear more than harder semi-metallic compounds. It’s hard to generalize about the  wear characteristics of NAO and ceramic-based compounds because there are  so many. Wear varies depending on the  formula the  friction supplier chooses  for a particular application. Different vehicles require different coefficients of friction, so formulas are  often “application engineered” to deliver the  best  combination  of stopping power, wear resistance, pedal feel  and  noise  control. Most  premium-quality NAO and  ceramic-based linings will provide long life and  wear less than an equivalent set  of NAO pads on the  same application.

KEVLAR
If you were  to hold  Kevlar fibers in  your  hand, they would  look  like cotton candy. But  this innocent looking  material is  stronger than steel and  can  stop  a bullet, or keep  your brake pads together under high  temperature and  pressure.
Like  ceramic materials, it is used as a fiber in brake pads to give them structure. It is a very expensive ma- terial, but  it can help  extend the  life of the  brake pad.

SEMI-METALLIC
Semi-Metallic pads use  metal fibers to give structure and  provide friction. The metals used are  typically  high  quality steel, copper  and other exotic  metals.
So what is  the  other part of the semi-metallic mix?  It is a variety of materials like  glues, lubricants and structural fibers. The  manufacturer will  blend the  components together to give the  best  performance for that application.

Replace your brake pads

How do you know it's time to take your car at your favorite repair brakes West Valley? You can hear that annoying squeal of the brakes when they are used. Or maybe the thrill of the vehicle applying the brakes at high speeds.

So instead of taking it and brake repair in West Valley, says it needs new brakes. Not usually ask what type of brakes you want to have installed. But I question therefore asks you to find out what kind of pills will be installed. There are four types.

One of the best types of brake pads is one that is made of ceramic material. They are quieter, last longer and are less likely to deform. Of course everything has a price, probably three times the cost of pills cheap budget.

Semi-Metallic is what makes the pills under costly. Can contain any metal parts 35 to 60% and quality in this category ranges from the cheapest to most expensive carbon fiber's. This is what I normally put your brake repair garage in local West Valley (the cheaper it is).

Next on the list is organic. And no, going green, even if you can claim if you wish. The benefit of organic is that they are quieter, but the disadvantage that use faster.

Metallic lower the last on our list. They are a mixture of semi-metallic and organic. They are a bit noisier than the organic but also last a little longer.

If you need new rotors that are generally not very many options. High performance clamps are drilled to help get rid of the gases when braking from high use. They do some different materials for the rotor, but usually have no choice unless you have a luxury sports car.

Remember the old saying, You get what you pay for. You will have a brake operation safer, quieter, softer premium brake components as opposed to negotiation. As a good rule of thumb, purchase materials brake the next step up and eventually will have less problems with them.