Nathan Brown:
What's up everybody? Nathan Brown here with FCP Euro, and today we're
here to talk a little bit about brake pads. Brake pads are one of the
more mysterious, misunderstood products that are going to go on your car.
They're also one of the most important. There's a lot of different options available. So
how do you know which ones are the best to choose? And it can be a little confusing, so stick with
us today, and we're going to go through all the different options that are available and how
to choose the right brake pads for you.
Nathan Brown:
So before we get into the compounds, we actually have to talk a little bit about how
brakes work. What they essentially do is convert kinetic energy, which is the energy stored in
the vehicle going down the road from the weight of the car, into heat.
Nathan Brown:
That's done by the brake caliper, pressing
the brake pad onto the brake rotor. And the different compounds will all result
in different performance at that point. Some are going to produce more dust, some are
going to produce less dust. Some are going to have a better performance when the brake
pad is stone cold versus when it's very hot, and some of them are going to offer more
or less wear on the rotor itself.
Nathan Brown:
So that's one of the important things to kind of consider. A brake pad is a wear
item, and you're using it up as you're using the brakes. A harder pad or a more abrasive pad is
going to use up your brake rotor more quickly and wear that out compared to a softer pad.
Nathan Brown:
So brake pads are a lot like tires and that
there's a lot of science and engineering that goes into them, but also a little bit of magic
that comes together to produce really the best quality product for you and your car.
Nathan Brown:
The most common types of brake pads
are going to be organic, semi-metallic and ceramic. The first brake pad we're going
to talk about today are going to be organic compound brake pads. And these are generally going
to be one of the more common ones that you'll find on a lot of vehicles out there.
Nathan Brown:
And these are traditionally made up with, as
you would expect, organic materials like carbon, Kevlar, glass and rubber, and all bonded
together with a resin agent to produce an actual brake pad. Believe it or not, asbestos is
one of the more common friction components in an organic or in older organic brake pads, and it
is still legal to use in very small amounts.
Nathan Brown:
So you'll find some organic pads that are labeled NAO, which stands for non-asbestos organic
as a way to differentiate those that have asbestos versus those that do not. Just because it doesn't
have that moniker doesn't mean that it has it, but it is something to pay attention to.
Nathan Brown:
Outside of those primary materials, the only
real rule when it comes to organic brake pads is that they contain less than a 30% metallic
content. An organic brake pad is going to be inexpensive. It's going to quiet, short stopping
from cold, and it's generally going to be fairly easy on your brake rotors.
Nathan Brown:
Organic brake pads have some advantages,
but they also have some disadvantages. One of the first and foremost is going to be
that they are quite dusty. If you own a factory European car, chances are you're familiar with
cleaning that dark sticky dust off of your wheels, that's primarily made up of the carbon
material that's common in organic pads.
Nathan Brown:
Outside of that, they do tend to wear more quickly than some of the brake pads out there.
And because of the material they're made out of, they tend to be a little bit more compressible,
which means that the brake pedal is not going to be as solid as some more performance
oriented pads like metallic or ceramic.
Nathan Brown:
Outside of that, organic brake pads tend to have a fairly narrow temperature window. So once it gets
over that temperature range, it will tend to fade or lose stopping power very, very quickly.
If you continue to push the brakes on the car with an organic pad, that material
will eventually fall apart completely. And so that is something worth noting if you drive
your car aggressively or are planning to ever do any kind of track days or anything like that.
Nathan Brown:
As brake technology and technology
in general continues to advance, there are some newer compounds that kind of fall
in-between some of these traditional categories that you think about. These are typically
going to be considered a hybrid organic. They're generally going to contain less than 30%
metallic content, but they are going to contain some additional friction modifiers to offer better
performance, less dust, and things like that.
Nathan Brown:
The more common brands there are going to be usually Hawk or Stop Tech. And
both of those brands utilize different materials to increase the stopping power, offer better brake
performance and less brake dust, but it still technically is an organic pad.
Nathan Brown:
Hawk has their Pharaoh carbon material that
they utilize and Stop Tech uses what's called a para-aramid material. The para-amid material's
a friction material designed to replace asbestos, and it offers a much longer wearing, slightly less
compressible brake pad that also offers lower dust with increased performance.
Nathan Brown:
Now, these are generally not going to be like
a racing type brake pad, but they help to blur the line between an organic and what we would
typically consider our next step, which is a semi-metallic. Some of the brands you'll find on
the FCP Euro website that offer organic brake pads include a lot of OE manufacturers. Those are
going to be TRW, Textra, Pagid, and Alte.
Nathan Brown:
Semi-metallic is one of the other more common brake pad compounds that you're going to
come across. And as you would guess from the name, they generally tend to have a higher metallic
content, something over 30% of the total brake pad compound.
Nathan Brown:
Some of the more common materials that are
included in a semi-metallic pad include iron, copper steel and graphite. Similar to an organic,
this is all bound together with a high temperature resin. Now semi-metallic pads offer some
pretty significant performance advantages over an organic pad.
Nathan Brown:
First and foremost, they are a more firm material,
they're less compressible, which means you get more feedback and feel from the driver's seat,
especially in heavier braking situations. Additionally, the metallic compounds generally
tend to offer an increase in braking performance as the temperature goes up, and they have a wider
performance range, which means that they work well over a wider range of temperature.
Nathan Brown:
So a semi-metallic pad can still offer very good
performance from cold, but still offer very good performance at much higher temperatures. Because
of this, they tend to be one of the more versatile brake pads that are out there, especially if you
tend to do more aggressive performance driving.
Nathan Brown:
Semi-metallics also have some disadvantages. First and foremost, they tend to be dusty. They're
probably not as dusty as an organic material pad, but they're certainly going to dust more than
a ceramic. They also tend to be a little bit harder on brake rotors.
Nathan Brown:
So essentially you're going to be going through
brake rotors more quickly. And if you're utilizing the lifetime replacement guarantee, that may not
be a big deal. But if you're talking about the ultimate serviceability of the brake components,
it's something that's important to consider, and something to think about.
Nathan Brown:
Another one of the potential
downsides of a semi-metallic brake pad is that they are more likely to squeal
or produce noise than an organic pad. Much like the organic brake pads, a lot of OE
and OEM manufacturers produce semi-metallic brake pads for a variety of cars. Some of the brands
you're likely to see on our website include TRW, Pagid, Textra, and one of our aftermarket brands,
Ferodo. A lot of the Ferodo brake pads that you'll see tend to be more of a street track type
brake pad compared to like an OE or a genuine performance brake pad.
Nathan Brown:
And lastly, this takes us to a ceramic compound
brake pad. So ceramic brake pads are probably going to be one of the newest ones on the
block. They really haven't been around very long relative to organic and semi-metallic
compounds. And so they're a little bit more of an unknown for a lot of people. Ceramic
brake pads are generally made up of ceramic materials, bonding agents and resins to produce
the actual stopping power of the brake pad.
Nathan Brown:
Ceramic brake pads are very, very well known for being extraordinarily low dust. And
the dust that they do produce tends to be very, very light and easily washed off. So that's one
of the main advantages of a ceramic brake pad is that it's very, very low dust.
Nathan Brown:
Other than the advantage of producing a tiny
amount of dust and very light colored dust, ceramic brake pads tend to be a much more firm,
not very compressible material. So similar to a semi metallic, they offer a very firm confident
brake pedal, which is obviously advantageous when you're talking about coming to a stop.
Nathan Brown:
Similarly, they tend to be very, very hard and
long wearing, which means you get a remarkable amount of life out of a ceramic brake pad,
but conversely, it's also very easy on brake rotors. So unlike a semi metallic that's
going to chew up the rotors a little bit more, a ceramic is going to be very rotor friendly,
and you're going to get extraordinarily long life out of both your rotor and your brake pad.
Nathan Brown:
Now with the ceramic compounds, I would say that
quality ultimately is going to matter here more than a lot of the others. A low quality ceramic
brake pad is going to be probably one of the worst feeling brake pads you could ever put in to your
car. You may notice a complete lack of stopping power, especially when the brake pads are cold.
Nathan Brown:
So because of that, you always want to make sure
that if you are choosing a ceramic brake pad, you want to use the best quality and the latest
technology that you can. And that actually leads me to talk about our new TRW Ultra line
that we just got in here at FCP Euro. We're really, really excited about this because as
I said, technology and quality is extraordinarily important in a ceramic brake pad.
Nathan Brown:
And with the TRW Ultra, we've been testing these
on our own vehicles here in-house for months before we introduced them to the website.
And we've been really, really excited by the amount of performance that we're getting
out of these brake pads for everyday drivers, while still having the low dust and long
wearing advantages of a traditional ceramic.
Nathan Brown:
Lastly, with a ceramic brake pad, they generally will never make noise. And that's
not to say that they don't vibrate because that's what actually you're hearing when a brake pad is
squealing. It's vibration noises and resonance of the brake pad in the braking system.
Nathan Brown:
With a ceramic, however, because
the material is so lightweight, the resonant frequency is well out the range of
human hearing. So the chances of getting a squeak or a squeal out of a ceramic brake pad are pretty
much nil. One of the things that's important to keep in mind with ceramic brake is they do
tend to be the most expensive to produce.
Nathan Brown:
Ultimately ceramics are the newest and most technologically advanced brake pads that
are going to be found on a lot of cars today. And as the technology has increased and as the
performance has increased, they become more of a viable option for European car owners that really
want to have the quality brake pad with a very low dust that still offers good stopping power.
Nathan Brown:
So hopefully this video has helped to explain
some of the mysteries and some of the differences between all the different brake pad compounds
that are available. Here at FCP Euro, we sell quite a few of all of these different
brake pad compounds, whether it's organic, semi-metallic, or ceramic.
Nathan Brown:
And there's not really one particular solution
that's going to be the best one for everybody. Depending on who you are, how you use
your car and what's important to you, whether it's low dust or ultimate performance or
things like that, that's going to determine the best brake pad for you.
Nathan Brown:
If you have any questions about any of that, or
if you would like a little advice about the best brake pad for a certain application, we can try
to point you in the right direction. Definitely throw those questions or comments in the section
below. And of course, if you did enjoy the video, please like, and subscribe. And with that, we
will definitely see you on the next one.
Speaker 2:
See what happens when you go a little slower?
