I also endorse Akebono; have used them on other cars and they are a decent aftermarket option. Like others have said, aftermarket can be fine, and it can be trash. You just need to research, buy and inspect accordingly.

I forget the name of the firearms manufacturer that got that reality TV show about making guns. My dad is a machinist and I own a lot of firearms and bladed weapons over several hundred years of manufacture that were acquired mostly when new by family. I would be scared to be in the same room for an initial firing of one of their weapons. I honestly think I could make a better gun in my basement with my 50 year old Maximat lathe and mill. For every Wilson Combat there seems to be ten Carl'n'Friends ShedGunCorps. For every EBC there is a R1.

Research brands, research technical data, research engineering, inspect parts, and hope for the best. A good car brand with good OEMs lets you just buy OEM and outsource the learning by just paying more for a relative guarantee. Make your choices .

 

But Akebono is an OEM. It is a very major Japanese company supplying many car manufacturers.

From their website:

"Our main OEM customers include all Japanese manufacturers including Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mitsubishi, and Isuzu. We also supply to a wide range of global manufacturers, including Porsche, GM, Ford, and Mercedes Benz."

One could say they are the Japanese equivalent of ATE in Europe.

 

I bought a set for my X100 that lasted 50k miles, at a time when I was stateside quite often.

Sadly not been able to source them this side of the pond for my X150, or would have chosen them ahead of the ebc's

So if anyone has a source/url and part no's I'd appreciate them sharing

 

I bought my Akebonos on ebay - trueblueparts

 

They aren't OEM for Jaguar though, are they? I thought that was like Pagid and Jurid.

 

I would divide the market into OEM companies and the rest. Any OEM will have their products tested over hundreds of thousands of miles by each car test program they are involved with. They have the ability to produce products that meet the expectation of car manufacturers. Their aftermarket products should be similar or hopefully the same.

The non-OEMs might be excellent or might be complete rubbish at making a stable product at the performance level of the OEMs. I have used EBC Redstuff and I found that they are subjectively weak when cold and OK when warm. They test weak on the brake torque machines but seem to have a great reputation from users, probably because they believe the marketing blurb. Most users opinions are rather woolly because we don't have enough to compare with and no test equipment to make a valid objective judgement. When it comes down to an objective test, trendy stuff often appears second best.

Hence my attitude to generally buy from industry OEMs for important components even if it is not the original OEM. If products can pass the car manufacturers' test programs they can't be bad. No car manufacturer will intentionally spec a poor brake product, especially on a sporty car. Every magazine test includes a brake test and a comment or two on brake feel, hence good spec for brakes and tyres. Remember they don't pay much extra for the good stuff, so why would they chose an inferior product.

What I have found with Jaguar pads is that they often spec. very grippy compounds, especially the Jurid ones. The ATE/Galfer ones are usually one step down but still at the top end of what is commonly available. Most aftermarket pads don't have the same friction levels, if you believe the edge codes. So why would I take an aftermarket pad for my car when it is of a lower specification to the original and when tested, performs less well. Only when it is really better, is a change a positive one.

With brakes, I would trust the likes of TMD (Textar, Pagid, Mintex), ATE, Federal-Mogul (Jurid and Ferodo), TRW, Zimmermann, Brembo, etc, but I would try and pick pads that have similar or better ratings than original, and that is where it seems to get difficult. Akebono would also clearly be fine, but they are rare as aftermarket products in Europe.

 

I actually work for an automotive OEM, a massive one. It's always interesting to hear from people who don't have skin in the game.

My only complaints about my X150 XKR factory pads are the dust level, but they've never squeaked and I've been very happy in street driving, so hey, I just wash the car more often. I don't know what ones it has since I haven't looked close and I have a receipt from the former owner at the Jaguar dealer for all around pads and rotors about a year before I bought it. My X100 XKR, which does NOT have the Brembo brakes, is another story and the brakes are best described as "adequate".

 

No mention of edge codes for brake pads yet? Pads are now rated with two letters to denote their performance; first is from cold, second is from hot. E is the lowest rating and H is the best. OE pads on a 5.0 XKR are rated FF for the rears and GG for the fronts. I bought some EBC Red Stuff pads recently for the rear of my XKR and found that, despite showing FF on the photos on their website, the pads that arrived had EE stamped on them, so in theory at least they're worse than the stock pads (although much less dusty).

The OE front pads fitted to the XKR are made by Jurid and while those are not ceramic/low dust type, Jurid do now have a ceramic range called Jurid White. I have a set of these to fit this weekend, these are stamped with GG, so the same rating as OE and hopefully a lot less dusty.

I should give credit at this stage to neilr as he and I have discussed this at length recently and he's educated me greatly on this subject. The same thing came up on jaguarforum.com recently, there's a chap over there who it's probably fair to say is an industry expert on this stuff, and his brother actually works for JLR in the braking engineering team. A member over there found the same issues with disc warp, this is the expert's view on the subject:

https://www.jaguarforum.com/showthre...=1#post1164307

Do read his other posts on there too, a lot of forum myths dispelled in one handy thread.

 

That I am aware, pad codes are net yet required here in the US.

Redsuff is a ceramic compound that was designed for low dust and broad temperature range for 'Joe average around town driver' rather that better grip. That consumer is excited to see clean rims, and immediately leaps online claiming "These are the best ever!". This general lack of understanding, and subsequent praise for low dust compounds has set every manufacturer out there to release ceramic compounds of their own just to capitalize on easy money.

I've run a slew of performance pads in my time, as I drive very aggressively. I ran Porterfield R-4s, on prior cars, then tried Redstuff (hated them), Hawk HPS, Hawk HPS Plus, Porterfield R-4s, and now Ebc yellowstuff.
I'd give my eye teeth to go back to Hawks, but our cars are too limited to warrant being included in their lineup.

So when the XK and XKR came due, I fell back to Yellowstuff with a shrug. I did try Porterfields R-4S (Street) compound on the XK, and felt they lacked the serious bite of the original R-4, and were overly noisy for what was my daily driver at that time. My next round will be getting the full R-4 race compound.

For me, dust is of little concern. Exceptional braking, carries a price, and that means not following the overly excited ceramic crowd. Also, that I know of, EBC is the only company making pads for Jaguar that utilize the NRS back plates, which in my opinion should be used on every manufacturer pad out there.

Vince

PS. I've got to read the 'full' thread you linked to, but right off the bat, the person I believe you reference seems to have relayed some misconceptions about brake rotors. Maybe he clarifies his comments later, so my concerns may be unwarranted, but he put the 'expert' title on hold in post #34 until he proves otherwise later on.

 

Do you feel the same about Lada?.....just taking the ****
Indeed, a car manufacturer is merely an agent who chooses the right compromises holistically for their target audience.
In this regard, I have been unusually impressed with every Jaguar decision on the XK.

As an example the paint, there are hard paints and soft paints. The hard ones offer tremendous swirl protection. So hard that on friends M6 I have to use one step short of sandpaper to just polish it.
Its intent is to stand up to improper washing, as most fleet/executive cars would be.
The XK is insanely soft, the wrong cloth will leave swirls.
Soft paint, like that found on an aluminium can of coke, it stronger than hard paint when it comes to stone-chip protection and other dents where the paint is stretched. Hard paint chips.
Which do I want on my enthusiastically cared for Jaguar, ability to take it to a cheap car wash or ability to withstand debris.

I particularly like the choice of braking components on the XKR.
I could not find anything that surpassed it overall. Less dust, sure, but at the cost of few things I was not willing to give up.

 

I don't believe I suggested pad edge codes are required in the US, but they are at least in California, as of Jan 1st 2014 (source: Brake Edge Code Updates Explained). Like many others, I purchased EBC RedStuff pads for my previous XKR off the back of forum feedback of low dust (easily observed) and better than OE performance (far more subjective). I only brought them up in this thread as someone else already mentioned them and as I was introducing edge codes to the discussion as being a real means of assessing pad performance beyond forum feedback I thought it was worth mentioning that the items I received had a lower than OE rating.

Incidentally, at the time I checked on EBCs website, all their colour coded pads show FF on them - RedStuff, GreenStuff, YellowStuff etc. If that remains true given that the Reds I received most recently bore EE then there's nothing to separate them in terms of performance.

Regards the poster who's post I linked, I would encourage anyone to seek out and rear his posts on that forum. He is not in the business of perpetuating misconceptions, I'm aware of his credentials and am inclined to believe what he says on this stuff.

 

No offense was intended 8bit.
My comment on pad codes was more of a disappointment than anything else, as the European market has had them for some time, and I wished we did. I do see the codes on my new pads for my Mitsu. which is nice.
I did find reference to DOT codes, but hadn't found the actual DOT document yet, so I stayed quiet till then.

As I stated, Redstuff is a base compound, marketed for low dust. I would suspect OEM would out perform them in drag coefficients in average conditions. Ceramic may have an edge of a broader temperature range, but not having OEM specs that too is subjective.

I'm off on a trip, so research is off the table for me at the moment. Couple things the poster referenced that raised an eyebrow was that they indicated all disks are 'just' cast iron , which is certainly not true, and 'rotors warp' which of course is refuted by every quality brake manufacturer out there. The comment on 'brake bias' seems miss represented in that first post as well.

Personally, those three points are all I need, to wait and read much further before putting the poster on a pedistal.

Vince

 

Wow lots of deeply technical stuff and much kudos to those posters as I've learnt a fair bit (a day without learning sommat new is a wasted one IMO)

But if you have great pads and rubbish/chocolate discs/rotors does that not make a difference?

Appreciate here that I'm guessing less than 10% regularly track/drag/airfield their cars, if so then the cosmetics play a major part in braking decisions.

In my old X100 I upgraded the brakes & pads and also fitted SS brake lines, albeit that was on a 300bhp car with some pretty old brake tech, I went for EBC/goodrich and the difference was very noticeable for me in normal brake use, that said I rarely used my brakes relying on engine braking coming up to roundabouts/junctions/lights, hence the reason they usually last so long.

As some of you may know I went for Wortec discs and ebc reds and in my limited 3k mile driving since fitted they have performed better than the OEM brakes I had fitted (with 80% meat still on the pads and 80% on the discs). Plus I don't get that brake dust and have saved a fair bit in unsprung weight!! OK so I spent £2.5k in total, was it for the weight saving, the low dust or the looks...in truth I'm not too sure??



And yes as I've been told the R is around the wrong way, so no need to repeat yourself

 

No offence was taken! Regards pad edge codes, I assumed since Cali now require them that it was a US "thing" and it would be adopted nationwide in due course, I wasn't aware it was a European thing. At least we have a way of assessing a pad's performance now though, beyond subjective forum opinion - not that that's useless, just less scientific.

As for 2woody on the UK forum, I'd encourage you to ask him about your points. I'm no expert but discs/rotors do warp, although these days when people thing a disc has warped what's actually happened is pad deposits have built up on them which gives a similar impression. Despite what manufacturers say though, it can and does happen. Regards the disc compounds, I think essentially, when comparing compounds from a variety of manufacturers in the same sort of price range, there probably isn't much between them so for most practical purposes he's right there. Yes if you spend a lot of cash on properly exotic materials you will likely buy yourself something extra but in the main it's a fairly level field.

I don't know enough to be able to comment on what he said about brake bias really, but given the 5.0 XKR has almost the same sized discs front and rear where the 4.2 had significantly larger front discs then that must tell us something. Extending on from there, I do think the 5.0 brakes are much, much better than the 4.2 system (non-Alcon), which is nice.

 

Edge codes are really D.O.T edge codes, referring to the US Department of Transport. The requirement is a US one with European stock only comparatively recently adding the friction grades. The other giveaway is that it is referenced in degrees F. In my experience, European brake manufacturers pretty much refuse to talk about these codes and values. DOT edge codes have existed for decades but they seem to be almost unheard of in Europe. Many US car forums have some discussions about them and the usual consensus seems to be that OEM pads are never bad and often very good.

From a Pagid where they state that the GF is a US friction value code: