Just passing along my experience with ceramic pads. Some will love them, I
didn't.
I used to do a bunch of highway to and from work (95 mile round trip just
about all highway). I've always gotten excellent wear out of pads and
rotors. The truck in question here is my 00, it has always had a rotor warp
issue. I tried this pad, that pad, this rotor, and that. Mind you I didn't
have a pad wear issue per se. But at one point I tried the ceramic pads.
They stopped fine, dusted less (more pale than the factory reddish dust).
But they squeaked a bunch more than any semi metallic I had, and they ate
rotors to the point of undrivable rotor wobble quicker than the
semi-metallics. It got to the point where I just threw cheap rotors at the
truck. On one of these occasions, I checked the pads when the calipers were
off, and there were chunks of pad missing, and the balance of the pad was
riddled with cracks.
The ceramic pad seems to be more brittle. It also seems to not dissipate
heat as quick, and while stopped at a light can leave a portion of the rotor
MUCH hotter, and thereby inducing the rotor wobble (peddle pulsation) much
quicker than a semi-metallic pad.
Also, on tossing rotors (every 10-15K while using the ceramics), I'd notice
they were much more prone to hot spots (blue patches) on the face than while
using semi-metallics. Choice of rotors didn't matter. I had PowerSlots,
cheap asian, good quality American rotors all get eaten. In the end, I went
with the cheap asian ones so I didn't care about throwing a $50 set of
rotors out every 10-15K. Since going back to a good quality semi-metallic
pad, I haven't eaten as many rotors.
Granted the 00s are much more prone to brake bias issues than the other Gen
IIIs, but it only exaggerates the issues with a ceramic pad in my eyes.
Just a heads up.
TonyC
-----Original Message-----
From: steve preston <steves287dak@yahoo.com>
To: dakota-truck@dakota-truck.net <dakota-truck@dakota-truck.net>
Date: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 8:53 PM
Subject: DML: Let`s talk about ceramic pads some more!
>
>What does the brake dust from ceramic pads look like?
>Does it clean off without too much effort? Oh yeah?
>How easy?
>
>Can you use just regular type rotors,or are they meant
>to be used with slotted or drilled rotors?
>
>Are they fairly noise free?
>
>Do you remember where you were the first time you
>heard about or saw your first pair of ceramic brake
>pads?
>
>Thanks. Steve P.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Oct 01 2004 - 11:38:58 EDT