rev up your engines today I'm going to talk about what are
the best brake pads for your car, welcome to mechanic Monday, as usual I'm just
sponsored by the truth, I'm going to tell you the truth about brake pads, then you
can make a decision on which ones you want to buy, now to understand brake pads
you need a little history lesson, when I was young,
brake discs just came out as a new thing and they were all made out of asbestos
which worked fine, but asbestos dust causes lung cancer, so they made it
illegal to make brake pads out of that and they had to find other materials, so
in the 1980s that came out with ceramic pads but originally they had a lot of
problems with them making terrible noises and a lot of dust, so then they came up with
organic brake pads, that didn't have the same problem, but they didn't last as
long and didn't work quite as well, and then came semi-metallic pads that had more
metal in them and they worked quite well but they did have a tendency of wearing
the brake rotors out a lot faster because if the brake pads had more metal
in them, that's going to wear the metal rotors and they would wear out a lot
faster, but time marches on and the engineers got better, they finally
figured out how to make ceramic pads that don't leave a lot of dust and don't
make noise that we can hear as humans, now ceramic pads and actually do make noise,
but it's a high frequency that we can't hear, so maybe you're going to be bothering
your neighborhood bats while you're braking, but people don't hear it at all,
now I personally been using these Akebono brake pads for a long time, the
company is very progressive, they actually work with the manufacturers, so
their pads equal or surpass the braking capacity of the ones that
originally come with the car, and I know you're not supposed to do this, but I had
a customer, they were in a hurry the brake pads had worn down, they gouged the
rotors a little bit, but they said just put some pads on, but we don't want
any noise, so I put on Akebono pads and even though the rotors were somewhat messed
up, it didn't make any noise and they brake pretty smooth, now if you wonder
what's in ceramic pads, well they're composed of clay and porcelain that are
bonded to copper flakes and filaments and so they have a nice mixture if
they're made correctly, so that they stop good and
don't make any noise and can last really long time, but of course you have
to realize that braking is always a compromise between one thing or another,
the ceramic pads will not stop quite as fast as semi-metallic brake pads will, so
if you're a racing fanatic, hey your better off with semi metallic brake
pads, they're going to wear things out faster, or full metal brake pads, but the
full metal brake pads is what race cars use the pads themselves when they're metal
they hardly wear at all, but the rotors get eaten up really quickly, so it's not
something you're going to use for everyday driving and if you want the ultimate in
stopping capability, if you want to spend a fortune and if you can even find them,
carbon fiber rotors and carbon fiber brake pads are the absolute best, because
the giant planes that we fly around with when we go places, those who have
carbon fiber discs and carbon fiber brakes, because carbon fiber actually
wears less the hotter it gets, so they work great under high pressure
situations, but if you don't own a 747 hey, these Akebono ceramic pads are
probably the best pads you can use on your everyday driving car, and since this
is mechanic Monday, I'll be giving away a set of Akebono brake pads, so just post a
clean non-offensive comment and YouTube comments below, but this time also put
your make, model, and year of car, so I can send you the correct pads if you win the
contest, so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos,
remember to ring that Bell!
