Purchase a complete set of drilled/slotted rotors and the kit came with pads and brake sensors. I put the fronts on first and drove the car and then did the rears. Now for the first two or three stops the the brakes don't work as well as they did before. If i warm up the brake pads the stopping becomes much better. Do i need to change the ceramic pads that came with the kit to an organic type pad.

 

I am old school and born skeptic. I firmly believe in everything has tradeoff. When it comes to grabby brakes, you have your choices - rotors give or pads give, or both. Low dust = not so grabby brakes.

I may be showing my ignorance, but that is OK as I learn most from mistakes. Ceramic pads are for those find brake dust in their immaculate street car wheels objectionable. You cannot have grabby brakes and durability, or low dust at the same time. Pick one, two or the other.

For what's worth, most brake pad manufacturers requires you to take the new brake easy for some milage before mashing on them hard.

 

Generally most mfgs suggest 400-500 miles for proper bedding in of new brakes. Also you need to adjust your technique for a new set of brakes/rotors.

When I switched to Ceramic from OEM on the MINI I noticed an immediate drop in performance until I adjusted my foot work. Then I got used to them and no issues since.

 

I have switched from OEM pads/rotors to Drilled/Slotted/Ceramic and from day one, they were way beyond what the OEM's were. Have you bled your brakes, just in case. I'm sure you had to compress your pistons prior to getting the new pads in, maybe you got some air in the line?

 

Do a bed in proceess and bleed them, or flush if its been a while.

 

What kind of pads are they? What are their specs? There are some competition pads that need to be warmed up before they really start working. That is why many manufacturers that make competition pads don't recommend them for the street.

Just another thing to look into with all the good advice others have given.

 

Was there an instruction sheet in the package, most usually say how to brake in. Also, are the rotors "handed", the ones I just bought were.

Last, as noted above, are you confident you bled the calipers correctly? I would do the fronts even after all that as changed were the rears.

Going to put you in the Stock Problems/Issues area as well. Should get more views.

 

I have bleed the brakes and took about 1 1/2 pints to bleed them. I went easy on the brakes and followed the directions. It will get better after a few stops and feels like a great set of brakes then. How do I check my vacuum and master cylinder to make sure it is work at its best

 

How do I know if the rotors are handed. Which direction should the slots and drilled holes go. Looking at the side of the car should the slot lean to the front or the back of the car

 

The bedding process doesn't always mean "go easy." The recommended process for my Hawk HPS involved repeated stops from varying speeds to really heat up the pads to transfer material to the rotors followed by a gentle cool down. I'd check what the manufacturer recommends.

 

I am not an engineer but had more than a few folks that I considered quite intelligent tell me I was pretty smart. With that said I also would tell people that I needed no help looking stupid as I did that very well all by myself.

On brakes, the drilling of the rotor decreases the ability for heat dissipation. More surface area equates to better ability to shed the heat. If the rotor is enlarged to compensate for the loss of the area from the holes it is better. The holes themselves can also create issues. In construction if you punched a square hole in anything you got re-entrant cracks at the corners. Even a round hole will have force exerted on it and some companies such as EBC do not drill the rotor but rather dimple it. Porsche does drill their rotors and I think incorporates a cyrogenic process in the mix as well.

On the slots, and after looking at my rotors and thinking about the matter, the installed instructions on mine were that the slot angles from the front of the car down toward the back. For me this has the slot contacting the pad so as to help remove particulates and would seem to create a negative pressure force that also helps evacuation.

I went with a more aggressive pad that has a 1,000 mile break in period. I have taken it pretty light on peddle pressure per the instructions but in a couple instances when I had to, how they bite.

If what i said above are merely lunatic rantings from an old man, perhaps some nice person will educate me.

 

Plain, drilled, or slotted, the brakes we have are Flintstones technology.

Interesting read of F1 brakes with this Brembo infographs.

 

Very interesting article. The g-force comparison was holy sh_t, but of course the F1 folks don't have to worry about spilling their coffee.

Don't know about Flintstones as they were "stick in the ground". Thinking more like Model A.

 

Like most things, there are more than one simple view and that applies to blank, drilled, cast holes, or slotted rotors. Very often the consumer or the manufacturer choose one over others for appearance or association. I am very surprised that Porsche and BMW production cars often has drilled rotors. But so too I was surprised that my GT4 has black tinted headlight covers and tinted brake lights. If you know the most elemental of optics, you would say WTF?

When I was shopping for a set of front BBK recently, I opted for a set of Wilwood with blank rotors for a variety of reasons, amongst them is price differential. However, I do not mean to say slotted, or drilled rotors should always be rejected outright.

Young people in the mobile age are so lucky. So much information can be have with just a few finger strokes of the right search keywords. The challenge is to separate the junk from useful information. Case in point. I came across a short article about time delay in carbon F1 rotors and pads. While there is a fraction of a few tens of a second from the time you mash on the pedal before the brakes reach maximum frictional coefficient the article twisted the fact out of proportion. It says for the first 1/2 second you stomp on the brake nothing happens as the pad and rotor needs time to heat up to before effective deceleration takes place. And this site has a connotation of a place to read about F1 technology.

While this 2008 article is ancient by how rapid F1 racing evolves, it is a worthwhile one.

 

Regardless of pad and rotor choice- much improvement can be achieved with a proper fluid flush. From Chinese cheap rotors to expensive Brembos, many vendors sell rotors that have oil glaze on them to prevent shipping corrosion when " on the boat".
In my experience, a careful cleaning with simple green or brake cleaner and scrubbing pad prevented my new pads from getting glazed up. With more driving and heat cycling you will achieve the same result- just takes longer.
what fluid are you using? Do you have a pressure bleeder to help? When ATE Super Blue was popular- I'd just pass enough fluid through until I saw the color change at each caliper. No need to do that- but at the end of the day for me that approach never failed and I had a firm pedal from day 1 when doing the brakes over.
Good luck- I'm sure you have the potential for a better/firmer pedal with some cleaning and rebleeding.

 

It seems odd that your ceramic pads need heat to work properly. What you are describing sounds more like the attribute of a semi-metallic pad at temperatures around freezing.

Generally ceramic pads are noted for low dust street applications and a low operating temperature. People who track their cars do not run ceramic pads because they have a fairly low upper temperature limit. By low I mean something less than 1,000 degrees F. I put Raybestos ceramics on my Mini because I don't like black dust from OEM types. They work OK on my blank rotors.

Originally rotors were cross drilled to relieve gasses that built up from organic pads at high temperatures. The gas trapped between the organic pad and rotor surface works like an air hockey table. "Brake fade" was the term applied to this condition.

Cold stopping may improve as the pads conform to the grooves and holes in your rotor, but if not you will need a more aggressive pad to get the "bite" you are looking for.

If that does not improve, you could consider a street/track pad, but trade off will be more dust, and noise. Carbotech might be able to advise you on this. They make everything from HPDE to full race pads, faily low dust levels and easy on rotors.