Know How to Choose the Right Brake Pads? Read This

Trying to sort out what brake pads work best for you can be frustrating and time consuming given the choices out there. A search for “best brake pads” on Google will provide you with thousands of links to articles, sites, top-10 rankings, and sponsored brands, all of which may be useless to you.

So, how do you really know what brake pads to buy? We’ve summarized the answer to that question in this article by giving a brief summary of what you should be looking for to narrow down the choices you face when selecting the right brake pad for your vehicle. Keep reading below to find information that will help you make the right decision. If you don’t feel like reading the article, skip to the end for a table that summarizes everything.

Let’s start off with one overlying statement: there is no such thing as a “one-size fits all” brake pad. This being the case, you’ll need to first understand what you’ll need from your brake pads in order to choose the right pad for the right application.

A Quick Statement About Stock Brake Pads

Before we jump into the characteristics you’ll need, we need to make a quick statement about the brakes that your brand-new vehicle comes with from the dealership.

About 75% to 80% of working North Americans used their cars to commute to and from work (based on Census results of 2012 and 2013). Now consider that as of 2016, there were over 300 million registered vehicles. That’s a lot of people using their cars for commuting to and from work!

Because of this, almost all vehicle manufacturers install brake pads that meet safety standards for commuting and that are economic (i.e. lower in cost). This means their focus is on reducing noise, vibrations, and harshness and dust levels. This is what any commuter really needs from the brake pads with the addition of reduced dust. So, if you’re thinking of commuting a lot then these pads are great. However, if you’re thinking of autocross, or driving through canyons and consistent turns, you’ll need better pads.

Defining the Criteria

Now let’s consider what you will be looking for in the brake pads. To keep things simple we’ve reduced the criteria to a few main items that help define how a brake pad will operate. They are:

• Noise, Vibration, Harshness (NVH) Levels: A measure of how much noise and vibrations the brake pad exerts once brake pressure is applied. Harshness is how rough or unpleasing the brake application and pedal feel is.
• Dust Levels: How much of the brake pad’s dust clings to your wheel making it look a few shades darker than normal.
• All Weather Performance: How the brake pad performs in dry, wet, muddy, hot, or cold environments. Basically, anything mother nature throws at it.
• Friction Profile: How the brake pad friction exerted changes with respect to temperature. It’s also a measure of how much force you need to exert on the pedal to maintain the same level of friction during high energy braking conditions.
• Cold Bite: How good the friction level is when the brake pad is cold
• Hot Bite: How good the friction level is when the brake pad is hot
• Maximum Operating Temperature (MOT): How high of a temperature can the brake pad operate at before degrading and becoming unsafe to use.
• Pad Lifetime: How long the pad lasts before you’ll need to change it
• Rotor Lifetime: How long the rotor lasts when using the brake pad.

What Your Driving Style Really Needs

You can’t have the best of everything in one pad. Technology and material science gets us close to it but for the most part, trade-offs are present. For example, if you want a pad that offers minimum dust then it may have a very high operating temperature. If you want a pad with great bite at hot temperatures, it may have high NVH levels at low temperatures.

This being the case, we’ll need to understand what characteristics you should be looking for your type of driving.