PFC 97 fan club

[Hilux]

Snake oil 1) ??

Snake oil 2) ??

Snake oil 3) ??

Snake oil 4) ??

Snake oil 5) ??

 

[Hilux]

First drive of Big Blacks with Red Stuff pads is not good at all.

How did you break them in? You`ve got humungeous calipers and pads so will need to have generated a lot of heat to `bed` them in and burn off the manufacturing residue and start to melt/gas out the pad adhesive material and expose a bedded in wearing surface.

I`ve always bedded in pads with the traditional minimum 6 very hard brakes from at least 60mph in quick succession (a la Paul`s method earlier?) Worryingly smelly but it works [8D]

 

[Diver944]

Initial impressions are very good for the PF97s. When cold they seem just like a normal OEM pad, plenty of bite straight away and I haven't detected any squealing in light braking yet (maybe they did once but I'm not quite sure). After one or two big applications of the middle pedal at high speed they really reach out and grab that disk by the scruff of the neck and yell STOP! This must be the effect of heat bringing them up to working temperature. I'll be very interested to see how they feel with grippy track tyres

Paul, I have always heard extremely good things about the P21s wheel cleaner. If you search the forum as a whole I have seen quite a few positive posts from members in the other Registers

 

[sawood12]

John, unfortuntately after about 1500 miles on my EBC red stuffs the lack of bite let alone initial bite doesn't improve. Granted it was on my old brake set up but I wasn't willing to use them with my big blacks. I also agree with the woolly brake modulation. They did stand upto temperature well on the Donington trackday I used them on with not a sniff of fade on standard dot 4 fluid. By all means give them a good go and see how you get on, but I would be surprised if you get much improvement out of them after the bedding in process. In contrast the EBC yellows that Stuart of K300 recommended to me are much better regarding bite - pretty much like OEM pads, and judging from Bedford they are unnafected by temperature, however I was a bit dissapointed from their feel, although the feel is fine on the street, when I was giving them a hard workout at Bedford they didn't seem to modulate very well. They had no problems stopping me, but they lacked feel and if it wasn't for the ABS I don't think I would have a chance in hell of judging where the limits of tyre grip was.

 

[Peter Empson]

For what it's worth, I gave up on the EBC combination I was running. I had yellows on the front and reds on the rear (which I'm sure could be argued was a possible problem, as was the fact that I only used them for hundreds and not thousands of miles).

For me they really lacked bite, felt spongy and the fluid would boil on the track quite quickly (fluid was changed twice during their use so it wasn't anything wrong there). They were definately holding up a bit better than standard pads (but with lower feel from memory) but at least they produced less dust than normal. However I like to have a very firm pedal and they just weren't doing it for me.

I went back to Porterfields and I now have a rock hard pedal, great feel and tremendous stopping ability.

I can't help thinking that it would be interesting to try the titanium plates before writing them off. I can possibly imagine they might help to equalise the temperature throughout the pads, although whether this is even a problem remains to be seen! At least they are fairly cheap and easy to swap in and out. However the thing that would stop me giving them ago is that I really couldn't be happier with my braking performance at the moment. The only change I will make in the forseable future will be to get some air ducted into them as it might extend pad life a bit.

Best regards,
Peter

 

[sawood12]

I'm in the camp that thinks these Titianium plates are a bit of a gimmick. If 5mm of steel backing plate can't distribute the heat evently then an extra mm or two of Titianium is going to make sod all difference.

I think the EBC yellows might get replaced at some stage in the future as I am a bit disapointed after Bedoford. I was hoping that as they got more heat built into them they would suddently come to the party but they felt lack lustre. To be honest standard Textar pads seem to work OK for Andrew Sweatenham!

 

[Hilux]

To be honest standard Textar pads seem to work OK for Andrew Sweatenham!

He had big blacks mind so the pads were bigger, would have been toast on s2 calipers and smouldering on medium blacks

 

[333pg333]

There is really no comparison in my experience with both brands and I have nothing to be gained by saying so. I haven't noticed the brake dust attacking my paint either? I can't imagine going back to something like the ebc's or to anything else, but never say never I guess?

 

[edh]

ORIGINAL: sawood12

I'm in the camp that thinks these Titianium plates are a bit of a gimmick. If 5mm of steel backing plate can't distribute the heat evently then an extra mm or two of Titianium is going to make sod all difference.

I think the EBC yellows might get replaced at some stage in the future as I am a bit disapointed after Bedoford. I was hoping that as they got more heat built into them they would suddently come to the party but they felt lack lustre. To be honest standard Textar pads seem to work OK for Andrew Sweatenham!

I was wondering if they might help with brake squeal - & from what I read, they are there to try & insulate the caliper & fluid from the heat of the pad.

 

[Neil Haughey]

I did a search on here for thermal conductivity:
http://www.matweb.com/search/SearchProperty.asp
and punched in less then 8 and metals and got a list that was nearly entirely titanium alloys. Maybe not snake oil then, tonight I might punch on some numbers for the heat energy in the pad and do a simple fag packet calculation to see how much difference this makes to say a steel shim with a thermal conductivity of 50 or 60.

 

[John Sims]

When I looked it seemed that titanium and stainless were almost equal as far as heat conductivity were concerned.

Stainless had a higher specific heat capacity though so once hot might stay hot for longer. It would take longer to heat up though.

Obviously Titanium sounds far more high tech than stainless steel.

 

[John Sims]

Does anyone want to buy a nice set of hardly used "Big Red" Red Stuff Ceramic pads? Hardly used because everytime my right foot goes near the brake it is like chalk on a black board. They better bed in soon or my head may explode. []

 

[Hilux]

it would be interesting to try the titanium plates before writing them off.

The pad backing plate `should` be equally heated IMO and then will transfer the heat to the pistons which in turn give up heat to the brake fluid. Better brake fluid is probably a cheaper solution.

Note also that there are a lot of Porkers out there with OEM equipment. Bigger brakes and therefore pads are the real answer. Its the route I`d always take particularly if you really intend to abuse too small a set of brakes using Titanium backing plates (or whatever they are) and then heat them up too causing catastrophic loss of brakes.

 

[sawood12]

Once the Titanium plates are temp soaked then the performance will be the same as if the were not there. Titanium ins a metal therfore conducts electricity so the heat is only going one way. Into the fluid. Its go nowhere else to go once the caliper, disk, pads and Titanium plates heat soak. If you really want to protect the fluid from exposure to heat then you need a material that doesn't conduct heat, which basically means some sort of ceramic material.

Anyway, we should stop making things out of Titanium that don't warrant it's use like golf clubs, brake pad shims and other things. Its popularity is meaning it's becoming more difficult to find foundries that will make aerospace grade Titanium because it is far cheaper and profitable to process cheap grade Titianium for golf clubs. The company I work for has had to buy our own Titanium ore mine in Russia somewhere to guarantee our supply of the stuff. Golf clubs don't need to be made of Titianium. It's just a good marketting ploy. What do they do? make a nice lightweigh club head out of Titianium then insert a lump of lead to add weight. It's counter productive but unfortunatley Titianium sells.