Re: Warning - Ferodo 'Target' brake pads

Ahhh bollox. That's another one off the list, need new pads / discs for the S60 and was going to go Ferodo as the mintex ones seem to be pretty crap for mine - did 50k on the original pads/disks, which I replaced with OE disks Mintex pads - mintex pads have lasted

Why would you be so mean as to buy cheap brake pads. The genuine ones are reasonable money. Brakes are not a save money item. This is possibly MY family's life we are talking about here.

mrcheerful

Ford are unlikely to make their own, or use just one maker, and Ferodo is (or was) a respected maker of OEM parts.

Wonder how many times I've seen this written. Perhaps you'd extend it to cars not fitted with ABS, and any that can't exceed 1G on a good surface?

There is a world of difference between the way a modern car with good brakes is driven and the way you drive an older car with less good brakes. Since the OP knew that Ford brakes worked ok, why change to another make? I used to fit Ferodo pads, because they were what the car shop stocked, but I found that they caused noisy braking compared to genuine, so since then I have bought genuine if available or Mintex. The car shop were not interested in even telling their suppliers of my problems with Ferodo pads.

My point about my family is to raise awareness that the OP is endangering OTHERS as well as himself by fitting pads which are quite clearly substandard, he has also not followed the common instructions, which include try the brakes on a quiet road, before he has expected them to work really well, although I applaud that he has run them in, albeit for too short a time. Fading brakes are nearly as frightening as losing touch with the road on ice.

mrcheerful

Is there? Does an emergency take account of the age of the car?

Didn't you read what I wrote? Most car makers don't make the brakes, and will source parts from different makers. Then put their name on the box and charge extra - although this isn't always so.

If buying a reputable make - like Ferodo is or was - I'd expect their parts to perform at least as well as the ones from the makers box.

Well, by your reckoning, you should only be using Ford parts.

Err, do you think he *asked* for substandard parts?

I think you're reading things into his post. Where does it say the road was busy?

Also, the idea of running in brakes making much difference to the fade performance is nonsense on newly machined discs.

Haven't experienced serious brake fade since I had an early Mini.

How the f*ck was he supposed they were 'substandard'? They're Ferodo, they probably make OE stuff, they came from a reputable dealer.

What a s**te argument.

John

Various answers/questions: To the OP: you said that you nearly overshot a turning, or words to that effect, that implies you didn't try them out hard on a quiet bit of road.

I seem to remember you asked about pads a while ago, didn't anyone recommend genuine?

To dave P: I understood that the pad material needed to 'cook' to some extent and that bedding in was not just to bed them to an old disk?

To dave B: Is it possible that you did not finish the disc surface to a suitable degree, thus promoting brake fade?

To dave P: I agree that an emergency stop is the same on any vehicle, but the way the brakes are used between times is very different on old and new cars, a

2litre focus is probably as quick as an older ferrari through the gears and is likely to be driven quite hard compared to an older car, so the brakes will get more of a workout and need to be of better quality, especially fade resistance.

Certainly some late fords have different pad material for inner and outer pads, so quite clearly there are technical complications that the average mechanic will not even imagine, so again, why try to imagine that a cheapo set of pads will work as well as a genuine set? Can you envisage the law suits if standard original eqipment pads failed as the OP has described?

Since I came to the realisation that most non genuine stuff is rubbish, I have tried to always buy genuine. My bill at the car shop (all pattern stuff) used to be in the l000 and a bit range per month. Now, my bill there is usually less than a hundred a month. However my bills at vauxhall and ford are now nearly a thousand each. This is mainly because of bad experiences with pattern stuff and my unwillingness to inflict their effects on others.

mrcheerful

The message from "mrcheerful" contains these words:

Thing is - he's bought pads from a firm which has at least some sort of reputation and has discovered them to be not very good. He's doing something about it.

Cost does not always equate to safety or quality.

I assume that these pads are of different construction so it's impossible to mix them up, given the skills of the average main dealer mechanic?

No difference from buying spares from a reputable maker. You simply sue a different party.

Once again you seem to have missed the point that Ford don't make all the parts they supply in their boxes, nor will they test each individual item for quality control.

No-one is saying that all pattern stuff is as good as original - but experience should tell you which makers to trust.

It's also possible to buy 'pattern' parts made to a much higher standard than the maker's originals - tyres and batteries for example.

I had some Ferodos that were pretty poor to. Not sure if they were Targets or not, but they faded more than the "Apec" pads that I replaced them with. That said, the Ka's got solid disks when it really ought to have vented.

No, the pads could be mixed, as I recall the difference is a paint spot on the outer one, there is also an instruction leaflet, but who reads those?

If the discs were incorrectly surfaced, then might that generate localised hot spots on the pad, which would overheat and fade?

My point about genuine is that it is generally to a high enough standard for normal use, pattern is usually just cheap, and no-one cares about quality. A case in point is the rubber used for balljoint seals, a pattern metro balljoint of several different brands usually only lasts a few months before cracking and splitting, whereas genuine last till the joint wears out.

mrcheerful

I've got the normal Ferodo pads, the ones above Targets as far as i can see. They're not /bad/ per say. Not as good as the EBC Green's I had before, but they were pretty cheap, they fade after a bit of abuse, a few stops from around a tonne usually does it, but i do have s**te solid disks as well.

Apec pads arn't bad to be honest. Fine for a pootling about car

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "mrcheerful" saying something like:

OH, for f*ck's sake, get off your high horse, will you?

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "mrcheerful" saying something like:

Great! Let us know which roads you use, so we can lie in wait with our badly-braked cars.

Well, I just hope it's you that the tightwad runs into when his brakes fail. You obviously won't mind that, will you?

mrcheerful

You have been too gentle and taken too long bedding them in.

That would be the bonding resins which must be burned off relatively slowly to avoid both fade and uneven deposits. You haven't even started bedding them in and then you trash them, so next time do it right. Take it up to 60mph, brake down to 5mph, don't stop, accelerate up to 60mph and brake back down to 5mph, repeat 10 times. Don't stop after this keep driving until brakes have cooled off.

You need a nice stretch of traffic free road.

-- Peter Hill Spamtrap reply domain as per NNTP-Posting-Host in header Can of worms - what every fisherman wants. Can of worms - what every PC owner gets!

Not entirely true. I checked the rubbers on my balls joints when I had the hub off the other day. Bottom one is definitely split, and looking grim. And they certainly look like the original ones, if not then they're def Stanpart/ Triumph OEM.

Same went for the upper joints on one of my other cars.

Of course, the youngest is 29 years old, but still :)

The message from snipped-for-privacy@aol.comma (Dave Baker) contains these words:

For all that, counterfeit parts have found their way into Ford's distribution chain before now.