2004 camry le 4 banger - how do I find the right front brake pads

Generally, a pad with a higher friction component will wear more quickly. Basically, braking capacity is a tradeoff between pad life and braking ability. OEM pads on most cars are way better nowadays since they no longer use asbestos. Asbestos pads had long reached their limits as a friction material.

Xeno snipped-for-privacy@optusnet.com.au> suggested:\

Thanks for the advice where if OEM pads were really bad in terms of friction, people would be having accidents left and right, considering how critical friction is to braking (it's clearly the number one role of a brake pad).

So OE pads can't be all that bad in terms of friction ratings.

I wish I knew what friction rating the OE pads had, because I can't even say how much wear they got in miles as this is a used car's first brake job by me.

All I can say is GG friction is damn good.

If that GG friction quickly wears the rotors, I'll know after a couple of years, since I'm going to replace the rotors at the same time as the pads (the vehicle is lent out at the moment but will return in two weeks for the repair).

I'll mic the old roters, but that won't really tell me much, but if they're still within spec, we can assume they went on with the pads also.

But I repeat with astonishment that GG friction is damn good friction.

I don't think in my entire life I've ever had pads with GG friction, where I wonder if any of you ever had pads with friction that good?

The best I've ever had was FF before (which was fine).

Have any of you ever had GG friction pads or better?

What did you think of them?

Thanks for that lookup because the number 1 job of pads is friction.

EE CF is 0.25 to 0.35 @250F, 0.25 to 0.35 @600F, 0-25% fade @600F possible FE CF is 0.25 to 0.35 @250F, 0.35 to 0.45 @600F, 2% to 44% fade @600F possible FF CF is 0.35 to 0.45 @250F, 0.35 to 0.45 @600F, 0-22% fade @600F possible GG CF is 0.45 to 0.55, very rare HH CF is 0.55 to 0.65, Carbon/Carbon only, ok up to 3000F where it glows

"Steel has a C.F. of 0.25!! So EE pads have only marginally more torque than no pads at all! Therefore FF pads are usually considered the minimum for a high-performance pad."

They're not. The worst pads made today are better than anything you could buy in the fifties.

But you can also buy high performance pads that have much better stopping power than the OEM pads, at the expense of higher cost and shorter lifetime.

Go take it out on the Tail of the Dragon and see if you can still say that. The thing is, average driving really is not very demanding on brakes. Most people today have never experienced brake fade and never will.

I have had pads with much higher ratings, on sports cars where there is actually some benefit to it. They are combined with very sticky tires, because the best brakes won't help you if your tires are slipping. However, I would not bother with any of this on the family sedan where you are unlikely to break 75 mph even on the straightaway.

--scott

From what I recall of cars of the 50's, disc pads were a rare beast. Riveted linings on brake shoes with drum brakes were de rigueur. It was the late 60s, even the 70s, before disc brakes became the norm.

Very true. Depending on the friction material used, the disc can wear out in no time at all. Some GM products of the 90s had OEM pads that were so hard on discs that disc replacement with pad replacement was the norm. The mileage wasn't all that great either, 20,000 - 40,000 kilometres only.

In all my time in the trade, I have experienced it only once - and that was enough. I was lucky on that occasion as I had a run off I could take as an alternative because there was no way I was going round that right angle bend at the speed I was traveling. That was when I was very young and, as a consequence, I used engine braking religiously ever since in an effort to reduce the possibility of brake overheating - even with autos. Taught my wife to drive the same way.

There are some areas around here where good braking is essential - mountainous winding roads for instance. But you are 100% correct, improving the brakes is of no benefit if you don't similarly uprate the grip of the tyres. Then you only get to exercise your ABS - if fitted.