Bedding Pads? ST43?

colin_koehler

colin_koehler

Great SCOTT!
I've been running the Cobalt XR1's for a long time as they are my version of a "miracle pad". Smooth sexy braking, and they go deep every corner of every lap without giving up. Best part, just put them on and go. Bedding in brakes is completely foreign to me. However, everyone says that the ST43 wears like IRON and works like I want so I gave them a shot.

I know there's lots of people in our Conference running the Raybestos ST43 pads. After trying them for the first time in Portland I came away from the weekend swearing I would never run these god awful pads again.

Under hard braking they tugged the car left or right making deep/threshold braking very spooky and the worst part, they tried to shake my car to pieces. No, I do not have any bad ball joints, tie rods or "other". These were new pads and new rotors.

Now, I'm revisiting my research and finding out that there's others out there who had the same experience but have overcome it by bedding these pads. However, these pads need a lot of heat to bed and on our little cars with our brake ducts that's hard to accomplish at some place other than Mission.

Anyone else have any feedback on ST43's with uneven transfer layer and a necessity to bed them in? I'm willing to give them another shot if I can make them work but if not, they're going in the spares bin, never to be purchased again.
 
If you have found a pad you like in the Cobalts, why change unless they just don't last more than a couple of weekends and are hard on rotors. Seems it's just another variable that may not move you forward. I'd stick with the Cobalts if you love them, as it seems you do. I have been running the same pads and rotors since the Enduro...doesn't really answer the question you posted, but couldn't help myself......
 
Bill, are you suggesting I don't try new things in the pursuit of winning? :p

FWIW: The cobalts gave me 2 weekends at best but they were too expensive and cobalt is a pain in the ass to deal with.
 
Rick Asked me on the weekend what I thought might be the problem , He dosnt seem to have any problems with them, I didnt have an answer other than the usual suspects ... But if your car is pulling one way or the other there is a inconsistantcy in the calipers, mounts brackets ect.. ive even seen that chattering problem be the shock tower bushings ,, or the front strut rod bushings . they are an agressive brake pad that need everything working at its best. Have a look at everything even the pad mounting slots that they are not to sloppy
 
Rick might not have had the problem there but he's had it everywhere else. Hell, he was nervous entering a braking zone next to someone at ORP because of the tugging and shaking. They also did it at portland for him... Just was the video from tucker racing his car. My shocks, shock tower bushings are new as of this season. My strut bushings in the lca are still like new (poly). The calipers are old but they're just blocks of iron with a piston in them.

Like I said, never experienced this with any other pad and trust me the cobalt xr1 is plenty aggressive to cause this if there was indeed a problem that is not transfer layer related. So while I will be re-inspecting my car I would be curious if anyone has over come this by "bedding" the pads.
 
Couldnt hurt to bed them in a practice session and use them later
Thats not true about the calipers, could be blocks of crappy iron
 
colin_koehler said:
Bill, are you suggesting I don't try new things in the pursuit of winning? :p

FWIW: The cobalts gave me 2 weekends at best but they were too expensive and cobalt is a pain in the ass to deal with.
Click to expand...

I thought you said they were your version of a "miracle pad". Doesn't sound like it to me if only good for 2 weekends and are expensive. Obviously, you have seem to have good reasons to shop around.....

Bill-
 
If you installed the new/different pads and ran them on discs that have had other brake pad material deposited on them, many times you will experience uneven deposit of new material causing the results you describe. Very rarely do discs "warp", more often it's a case of uneven pad deposit which initially looks like warping, but if you put a dial indicator on each side you'll see that they're actually thicker in spots.

Easiest solution if you feel that these new pads are worth the effort is to install new discs and gradually get the brakes hotter in cycles (bedding). Easier still is to just use what has worked for you in the past, but you'll probably have to start with new discs or have your current one's machined to remove uneven deposition, which usually isn't as cost effective as just installing new discs.
 
Ok, thank you Randy. Instead of going down the ugly road of throwing new, expensive parts at my car I'm going to try the DTC-60 and the PFC83's at Spokane and see how they turn out. Many people swear by the DTC and PFC pads and say both last longer than the Cobalts so with a smaller price and them being easier to order I hope one of those 2 work.

The ST43 is going on the shelf until after Spokane. Maybe back at PR (where we have practice sessions) I will try bedding them and see how that turns out.
 
I use the ST43 on my STi and I'm pretty happy with them. Then again my car is much heavier (3250-3300lbs race weight). I've noticed that if I don't bed them properly I do get a pulsating effect (ie rotor "warp" symptom). For me it has work to just clean the pad and rotor with some sand paper and re-bed them. I've run through about 4 sets of ST-43's over the last 2 years and only had the bedding problem once early on.
 
We tried Hawk pads on our sports racer and experienced severe chatter, they are easier to get and a little cheaper but eat rotors and chatter. We will stick with the performance friction pads they are rotor friendly and work well. unfortunately have to buck up and order through Pegasus.
 
What I've noticed over the years is that one car's perfect pad is another car's nightmare.
(I run Hawk Blues- HT-10's, which everyone says 'is better' were wretched on my car)

That said, I've never had great luck with a new pad on a new rotor. I keep some bedded rotors
and 'not dead yet' pads around, and when I put something new on, I make sure the mating surface
is well- bedded.

fwiw.

t
 
Having a street legal race car comes in handy for bedding in pads! I used carbotech XP10's on my big volvo wagon last year (for driver training), bedded them in according to their instructions - progressively using the brakes harder, NEVER locking them up or coming to a complete stop. I drove to an empty deserted stretch of road and got up to 60kph or so, slowed down to 10 lightly dragging the brakes.. Again up to 60 and down to 10 with a bit more pedal pressure. I must have repeated this 10 or 15 times, by the last few stops I was braking as hard as I could - being very careful to not lock up the wheels. If you lock them up during bedding, the pad material gets deposited on that spot and you'll never get rid of the pulsing.

Then you basically want to let them cool off without touching them again - so driving home trying not to use the brakes was interesting :D

Best done on a test day, hopefully either without much traffic or with an understanding group hehe.
 
On Rx7's Hawk Blues are a very common choice and have always stopped the car well from the very first application without any drama or any bedding procedure whatsoever. I was perfectly happy with those on that race car. For my E30 BMW track day rat I picked up a set of Porterfields from Scott Adare (long enough ago that I can't even remember which compound!) that have been excellent stoppers and have had great life driving primarily at Pacific, Spokane, and Bremerton. They also worked well from the first application although they smoked significantly on the first lap that I got them to full temperature, then never as much as a puff after.

Certainly, different cars seem to thrive on different pads and doing a good job of adjusting brake bias can make significant differences in performance and life - way more than I thought it would.

Scott Adare has a funny story he tells about brake pads for BMWs. I had used up my garden variety street pads at a practice day in Spokane so I went over to talk to him about what I should replace them with for the E30. I said I had used Hawk Blues on the race car and I felt pretty confident about them. He said "Yeah, Hawk Blues are great - I always keep a set around. They are so destructive to rotors that when one of my customers is having pad transfer problems and getting lots of pulsing I put those on for a couple laps and when they come back the rotors look like they have been turned on a brake lathe. Then they are all cleaned up and ready for some Porterfields."

hehe
 
rick_bostrom said:
On Rx7's Hawk Blues are a very common choice and have always stopped the car well from the very first application without any drama or any bedding procedure whatsoever.

He said "Yeah, Hawk Blues are great - I always keep a set around. They are so destructive to rotors that when one of my customers is having pad transfer problems and getting lots of pulsing I put those on for a couple laps and when they come back the rotors look like they have been turned on a brake lathe. Then they are all cleaned up and ready for some Porterfields."
Click to expand...

Yeah, and I got tired of replacing rotors with Hawks.
I get a lot more life, less rotor cracking and a whole lot less dust running CarboTechs.

I'll never go back.
 
There are very good articles on the stoptech website that you will find very useful.

On my Volvo I use hawk DTC 70 in the front and DTC60 in the back. Hawk blues worked very well but ate coleman rotors like crazy. I could never get the ST43 compound to work with the coleman rotors. No matter how I bedded them is the brake material did not transfer evenly and I needed to put a slight cut on the rotors to get them to work with any of the hawk compounds.

On my Opel which is severely brake limited (i routinely warp the brake pad backing plate due to heat) I found Hawk DTC 70's to work the best until I tried the ST43's. I have had no pulling or bedding in issues at all. The ST43's take a while to get used to because they have a lot of initial bite. I have learned to be a bit more gental on initial braking. Modulation is excellent. The DTC70's gave me 6 laps at ORP before pedal fade started setting in (AP super 600 brake fluid). The ST43 suffered no fade issues.
Now that I am moving to FIP I look forward to the allowable vented front disks (opel Omega) and allowable conversion to rear disks (95 civic si :eek:).

I think the bottom line is to find what works on your car.
 
"Yeah, Hawk Blues are great - I always keep a set around. They are so destructive to rotors...
Click to expand...

Amusingly, I get most of a season (8-10 weekends) out of a set of pads, and 2-3 seasons out of a set of rotors.
Yep, with Hawk Blues.
And no, you DON'T want to run them cold- a better brake lathe was never invented...

t
 
Oh yeah, well I'm on my third season in my ground pounder with the same rotors AND pads. Which are now at about 50%. Really. Pagid RS19 ceramics, PFC rotors, ATE Super Blue that I bleed once every two years whether it's needed or not.

The key is a huge amount of cooling. Cooling isn't about fade resistance, it's about equipment longevity.
 
I've been doing some obsessive research I think I have an opposite dilemma. Getting the pads hot enough. The ST43 doesn't get hot enough on the CRX, it appears to be too much pad for a 2250lb car with 125whp. Rick has noticed that if he drags his brake pedal for the entirety of the pace lap then the pads work better which I attribute to him getting them above the needed 600 degrees F. Rick also uses his left foot on the brake pedal a lot more than I do. Between the trick of dragging the brake pedal for 2 miles and lots of LFB'ing his St43's work better for him, however many of the same complaints are heard from him on tracks that are easy on brakes (Portland/Pacific). They are probably the ideal Enduro pads for these cars.

Everyone I've talked with who has a seamless experience with these pads has a heavier car, typically with more HP as well. I think there's a short window of time to induce enough heat into them for an advantageous transfer layer. Heavier cars will do this easier, even with ducting than lighter cars. If you can't get the brakes hot enough, soon enough then they just turn you down, roll over and tell you they have a head ache and you have to race the rest of the weekend with the braking equivalent of blue balls.

After 1 weekend my rotors have 2mm deep groves in them from these pads, it looks like they never transferred from their abrasive stage to their adherent stage. I'm going to plug my brakes ducts for the purposes of burnishing during a practice or Qual to see if I can get these to set down a decent transfer layer.

Is it a smart thing to run pads that need to be SO hot to function on a light car with 3" ducts? The best way (possibly only) way to make them function properly to abuse them in the beginning or remove cooling to get them in their ideal temp range. This presents a conundrum: Do I allow more heat in the braking system to run these pads at the sacrifice of wear on other parts (bearings/seals/higher temp fluid/etc) or do I try to bring as much cooling as possible and run a pad that functions at a lower range (say 400-1200 instead of 600-1600).

I'm going to learn some things at Spokane. I bought 20 rotors, Rotor Temp Paint, and have 3 different brands of pads (PFC/HAWK/Raybestos).

Let the research begin!
 
I have been a fan of Porterfield R4 compound pads since the mid 90's. The ceramic insulation keeps heat from the calipers and fluid. I agree with Randy that you can't get enough cooling. My car has to run the stock solid rotors and getting air to them is very important. Also I use the Ford high performance brake fluid. ~550degrees boiling point, readily available and in expensive. Change it often. G
 
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