I thought I'd throw my experience into the mix because everyone has missed the biggest drawbacks to ceramic pads...

THEY CHEW THROUGH ROTORS!!!!!

I had ceramic pads on my last sports car and while the performace was great, they went through rotors like I do through free samples at Costco! Ceramic pads are harder (i.e. why they make less brake dust) so something has to give... which in this case would be the rotors. Over time they would also cause my rotors to warp so stopping would become very "un-smooth" and "jerky". I will say I never had any of the squeaks others are talking about.

 

I see that some suppliers (CarQuest) are offering semi metallic pads.

Anybody have experience with these?

 

Well -- I've had ceramic pads on StopTech rotors for 40k now, with very little wear and no warpage. Mind you, I suppose that rotor quality may come into play in that. But Rotors are a consumable item too.

 

Good point! I replaced my front Alcon pads at 30K miles and am glad I had it done at my dealer using OEM Jaguar pads. Even though they generate lots of dust, the OEM pads left my front rotors smooth and unscored and I was able to re-use them without needing to be turned, thanks to my honest tech and service adviser. My experience is that turned rotors always warp, so I was glad they were OK. Note that the list price for my front Alcon rotors is around US$500 each!! OUCH!

So, I saved around $1,000 by using OEM pads and not having to replace the rotors. The brake job turned out perfect; smooth as silk - no noise, no pulling, no pulsating. I'd rather take 20 minutes to clean my wheels once or twice a week than have to buy expensive new rotors. My front rotors are now good for another 30K miles!

Just my $0.02.
.

 

There seem to be no 'low dust' options available yet for the XFR.

My last car (Audi) I spent about 2/3 hrs pulling off cleaning, polishing,buffing drying, then dewaxing and applying Opti-coat 2.0 on inner and outer of wheels. Stuff is amazing - just soapy water and pressure washer even after 18 months!!.

Yesterday I did the XFR which was easy as car only has 700 miles on it and wheels in new condition. (20" Dracos)

 

i generally trust what tirerack says and they seem to be in favor of ceramics:

Brake Tech - Why Ceramic Brake Pads?


as for the rationale that "jag didn't put ceramics on as OEM therefore they're inferior" is bologna. porsche offers them...as an $8500 option/upgrade.

Porsche Ceramic Composite Brakes (PCCB) - Performance - Tequipment 911 (Type 996) - Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG

 

The ceramic brake option is more a reference to the rotors, not the pads (Though with ceramic rotors, you get ceramic pads). Ceramic rotors take a significantly higher amount of heat and disperse it better than metal. But they're expensive to make and a wee bit fragile, hence the option price. There are different grades of rotors in non-ceramic rotors though. And the metal grade/quality will determine what kind of mileage you get (literally and figuratively) when switching between different pad compounds.

I have no idea what kind of rotor quality the various XK incarnations have. I suspect that they may vary a bit from year to year and from XK to XKR. Not to mention the year or two that Alcons were a package. I think we should keep track as a group of what people are replacing them with and see what comes about.

 

Bologna, the argument against ceramic brakes may be, but we have still to hear your explanation of why Jag doesn't use them out of the box.

It won't hold that Tire Rack sells them. They are in business to turn a buck.

Nor will it wash that Porsche uses them on some models. After all, they tout many of their cars as "race ready" out of the box, which incidentally Jag has rarely done

The world awaits a better argument than "bologna" .

 

Ahhh Rahtok. I respectfully submit you are mistaken. Ceramic composite brake rotors are being used on a few "Super Cars". I don't think they are on the street car mkt. are they?

 

That I'm mistaken about what? About how they perform? Or why they're an expensive option on cars that offer them? <looks at previous post> And I didn't say anything about the street car market that I can see.

I'm uncertain what you're submitting I'm mistaken about -- clarify that and I'll be happy to offer rebuttal or admit incorrect assertions.

 

I have an '06 XKR with Hawk Ceramics all around. No brake noise, no appreciable wear on the rotors and plenty of stopping power. What little bit of dust there is is white and doesn't discolor the wheels. A 1,000% improvement over the factory pads.

 

Take it easy Rahtok. No disrespect intended.

What prompts my question is I am unaware of "ceramic brake rotors" being available for grand touring or passenger cars either as an option or on the after mkt. The operative word is "rotor".

I saw something on the subject in Autoweek but it related to all out race car development. If ceramic rotors are in fact available for our cars let us know details. We are talking about our cars here.

 

No disrespect taken!

I didn't mean to insinuate that they were available for our cars -- the conversation had appeared to be more general than just our cars, hence my comment. I haven't looked to see if they were available for ours -- and you're right -- I'd be surprised if there were. Our aftermarket is almost non-existent. I, for one, would love to see some more aggressive sway bars and a way to put more rubber out back for traction. There's another current thread going on about 0-60 times, and frankly I think that we just can't put down the power we have through the rubber we've got.

I should probably check to see if StopTech makes any of their Aero Rotor's for our cars. I've absolutely loved those rotors/calipers on my other car. The XKRs Calipers seem pretty stout from the factory.

 

This is an interesting thread.

An fascinating occurrence from metallurgy is that if you put a hard material against a soft, the hard material will erode faster than if you put two similar materials together. Over the years I have actively sought out ‘hard’ pads for my brakes that still gave me good braking but produced less dust & thus less rotor & pad wear. Generally the pay-off was the need for slightly higher pedal pressure, but one quickly attunes to that, and with ABS the overall braking performance didn’t seem to be adversely affected. The big gain was in both pad life which has been around double, and in rotor life, which has been simply amazing. I’ve had rotors last through 3 & 4 sets of pads, and I get between 80 & 100 thousand kms from the pads, with around 4 monthly ‘wheel cleans’.
My own observations are that ‘stock’ pads & rotors are usually junk by about 50,000kms. The cynic in me thinks that the manufacturers have not addressed this problem because they get to sell lots more ‘spare’ parts and the dealers don’t/won’t advise otherwise for exactly the same reason.

We have a small franchise chain here in Aus(tralia)called Brakes Plus, and they have a premium package for which they give a lifetime guarantee (lifetime of course being subjective, as always), but for about $270 you get all four rotors ‘skinned’, & new pads which produce very little dust, and as mentioned above, easily give 80 to 100 thousand kms of life. Better still, you don’t have to keep replacing rotors because they are worn undersize.

I’ve not paid a lot of attention to the newer ceramics etc, because in the past I’ve always changed my vehicles brake pads according to my reasoning at about 30,000kms and thus not had the dust problem to deal with. Any observations from the Forum about the effect of ceramic pads on rotors would be of interest & greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Languid

 

In talking "Pads" I guess I can jump in here with my experience. Sadly I can’t say how much of it will pertain to the Jag community, because I haven't studied vendors with product availability for our cars.

I personally have no use for ceramic pads (well, maybe for the ex's Ford Explorer). The term "ceramic" has become the buzzword in just about every "better than OEM" ad out there. But when you actually start talking about a “performance” pad they certainly won’t be ceramic. Ceramics are pretty generic and a safe sell because they do the basic job with very little noise and with dust that is lighter in color so it "appears" cleaner to most... Marketing takes over from there.

Couple things I understand about pads.... First you are buying it for its friction levels, and how its friction holds up under a desired range of temperatures. Racing pads can grip like Velcro, but need to be hot to function properly…. (Backing out of your driveway on a chilly morning will scare the be-gee-bees outta ya as you keep rolling onto the lawn across the street!)
Ceramics are the other end of the scale. The grip well when cold and do fine for the everyday driver, but heat them up driving your favorite mountain road and suddenly it is the corners that will scare the be-gee-bees outta ya. (Which do you think stands a better chance f killing you, your neighbor or that cliff?)
Most performance drivers are looking for a happy medium of acceptable cold bite, but capable of taking a car to its limits without fading on you. Dust is just part of what you accept in a performance pad. None of us like it, but Its just a fact of life for a performance car. I accept it along with the cost of a good performance tire and move on.

My favorite compound by far was the Original Porterfield R4s. A Carbon Kevlar that wore fast and bit with amazing predictability even when my rotors were glowing orange, but my goodness, the dust was there just backing out of the garage (sigh). The smiles from behind the steering wheel outweighed the extra labor of keeping the rims clean! If I were an XKR owner, these would be back on my shopping list.

Use EBC Redstuff (a notch above ceramics) once and found them fine for daily drives (good cold bite), and a relatively clean pad and no noise, but track time let them fade badly very early on (pretty much gave up a half my track time waiting for them to cool down....so I replaced with the Hawks.) I would think a mild mannered XK driver could use them and be very happy.

The Hawk HPS (a notch above Redstuff) still had the same problems, with the temp range shifted slightly higher than the EBC (cold bite was a little weak, but they warmed quickly and held out slightly better at the track. Maybe got a few more laps before fade came back into play. These to would be fine for an average to lightly aggressive XK driver.
If hawk makes the “Blue” compound for my car, I will probably go that route next. My conclusion: Damn the dust. I want brakes that work right every time I need them.

Backing plates are another thing to think about if you’re an aggressive driver. Hawk, Raybestos and a few others were also early adopters of the NRS style backing plate. I haven't experienced pad delamination myself but have been told the stories by a few track drivers that have. Seems the NRS system is gaining a lot of favor there.

Vince

 

The amount of brake dust generated buy my brake pads has finally over whelmed my theoretical aversion to ceramics. It sounds to me like the EBC RedStuff pads is a way to "slice the baby". I do need new pads (at 35K miles) on the rear soon.

Is there any compelling reason why I can't install EBCs on the rear and do the front later, as required, as opposed to doing both axles at once?

 

That actually a good question, and one I would like to hear more on as well.

It is not often you hear someone increasing the rearward brake biasing without a performance reason. I suspect the change would be minimal and our ABS sophisticated enough (I thought I read ours was a 4 channel system, correct?) to handle any premature lockup you might get from the rears under hard braking.
Must be someone out there with first hand experience rather than my educated guess...

Vince

 

Curious if your XJ's brake dust is heavy or as bad as the XK's?

 

Someone recommended Hawk pads, I went to their site and they don't have Jaguar (at least from 2010-12) listed.

Gotta find a better solution than the stock ones, yuck!

If my Carrera S's brake gave off very little dust with no noise (and they were not ceramic) then why can't Jaguar offer the same type pads?

Someone mentioned this brand http://www.akebonobrakes.com/afterma...uro/index.html and this model seems to fit the bill, no noise very low dust with good friction; just don't know if they will fit XKR's? I will call Monday.

 

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...68/#post474694