Ceramic brake pads

I put ceramic pads on an E30 M3 and they worked fine once seated to the rotors.

Any new pads will need bedding in. However, ceramic pads are an overkill for your vehicle because they usually need heat before they start working to their full potential.

The question is, why would they choose to use ceramic pads on a E30 318?

Is your pedal hard, but no braking performance? Or is the pedal spongy?

Your disks will be worn, but not perfectly smoothly, so new pads will only contact a proportion of the disk surface. Once they bed in after a few days the performance should be similar, although ceramic pads are designed to keep operating at higher temperatures under extreme load - e.g. racing, long alpine descent. Whilst you are unlikely to experience fade (which has only ever happened to me once in a non BMW, with unventilated front disks after a long descent), when cold you might still have to press a little harder.

Ceramic probably overkill on a 318, or indeed any road BMW driven normally (enthusiastically, but not silly)

Do they work very much better when hot? I've got some on my 'other' car which are poor when cold but normal after a couple of applications. It's only really noticeable when braking gently from low speed - if going fast they obviously heat up very quickly. ;-)

I have never heard that before. Do you have a reference to this?

the only other problem is, boiling braking fluid..had that many times and its friggin scary. if you can keep the heat down on the disks all the better

google..i would think

Actually, I'm pretty google saavy.

I was trying to (gently) say that I did not believe Mr. Ali's assertion that ceramic brake pads need a whole lot of warming up before the "bite". A part of my skepticism is based on first hand knowledge gained through actual first hand experience.

Silly as that is, I know...

From my experience and as far as I know ... the reason bmw puts soft brakes on their cars is because they perform better at slower speeds (highway driving, city driving) ... and so far they have always worked out for me.... u might wanna go back and put bmw brakes on

Unless there has been a recent development, ceramic brakes were used for their capabilities on dealing with heat. However, this meant that the compound was pretty hard. Therefore, due to the hard compound, the amount of friction they provided at the same temperature as softer compound pads was less and so needed heating up to get the same braking force.

Forgot to mention that he replaced the front rotors too. I'll have a better idea about the performance in another day or two. Ceramic pads are definitely overkill for my car. If I'd known he might use 'em, I would have said No Way! Ron

Thanks for your *feelings* on this. But as I asked earlier "Do you have a reference to this?"

Perhaps Ali is confusing ceramic *PADS* with *ROTORS*, which are quite a different kettle of fish.

FloydR

I took the car back after 1 1/2 weeks and had them put metallic pads in. Now the brake feel is back to what I consider normal. The ceramic pads never really grabbed under hard braking.

Ron