Tonight I faded my brakes, much to my surprise.
I had half an hour to kill before picking up my son, so I had a nice little fang in the XJR on a windy sealed empty country road, and after about 10km of fast driving, with lots of heavy braking, the pedal went a wee bit soft, and braking ability halved. All this coming up to a T junction.
So I trundled the rest of my circuit, the hot smell went, and the brakes recovered after a few minutes.

The car had new front rotors and pads about 600-1000 miles ago, and perhaps this is just the final bedding in.. (he says hopefully). I asked for genuine Jag parts, as the old rotors had some shudder from high speed stops - I will check the brand fitted.
I may change to a synthetic racing fluid.

In the past I have hopped up my brakes in my old Falcon wagon for track days (slotted rotors, better pads, high BP fluid, home-made cooling ducts) and they never ever fade - even after 10 laps of Taupo track (at which point I need to cool down - it is stressful being the slowest car on a track with GTRs, Porsches, etc, appearing in the mirror coming out of every corner!).

I expected better of the XJR, especially with new front bits.

 

Yep, Bedding in can take up to 2500kms, depending on the brand of pad.

The EBC I run on the S took about 3K kms, a tad noisey at times until bedded in, and now I cannot fade them, and they have some serious "bite" straight off, no waiting for warm up.

The X300 ran RDA Semi Metallic, and also took some serious bedding in, but all sweet once done.

 

Grant, I'll try again in a couple of weeks, see how it goes.
i was giving the brakes a fairly hard time on that run, over about 15 km, not the 10 I estimated before

 

Sounds to me like you boiled your fluid!


With 'brake fade', in the classic sense, so to speak, you'd have a normal pedal feel but no stopping power due to overheated friction surfaces. As an example, if you've ever driven an oldie car with 4-wheel drum brakes down a mountain road, fast, you've likely felt brake fade.....the pedal holds up fine but you could be bearing down with all your strength using both feet and simply not get any stopping power.


Cheers
DD

 

+1 fluid.
If you haven't flushed the system in the past two years, it's probably time.