I'm doing my 1st track day in June at Sebring. I just got in my Cobalt pards and Motul fluid. Who can tell me how to bed these pads in?

F1DNA

Sebring/Black

T.D.

 

Some excellent info on pad and rotor bed-in from Stoptech:
http://www.stoptech.com/whitepapers/bedincontents.htm

 

Which Cobalt pads? I got the GT-Sports, and they have similar directions to street pad bedding, but with much higher speeds to brake from (versus OEM pads, or EBC Green Stuff, where you brake from progressively faster speeds only up to about 40 mph) 55-60mph....

-Justin

 

Basically, the idea behind the break-in process is the same for all pads. Progressively brake harder and harder (without coming to a full stop) in a short period of time until you get the pads up to their peak operating temperature. Then immediately stop using the brakes and drive around or park until the brakes are all the way back to ambient temperature.

The details of how fast you should be driving and how hard to brake and such vary from car to car and pad to pad because different pads have different peak temperatures and different cars have different ratios of vehicle mass to brake rotor mass.

 

Mike, that is probably a more clear explanation then mine! Don't forget though...when finished performing that bed-in process...DO NOT finally park the car with the parking brake on! That will improperly transfer heat to the rotors which could cause some problems.

-Justin

 

As justin said race pads have higher operating temp..so need higher speed to bed them in..
and if you switch to other pads, need to bed them in again... since it involves to transfer pad matrial to the rotor surface as well..
Stay safe and have fun!

 

I know that this (or have dedicated track and street rotors) is the advice given by the experts but I haven't found any lesser braking when switching pads (already bedded or used pads) on the same rotor. In fact, when you switch from race pads back to OEM, the bite of the OEM is significantly stronger than usual. Going from street to race pads I haven't felt any weakness either, and I would guess that after a few brakings in the first lap or two the OEM material would be readily replaced by the Race material (assuming they are significantly different in the first place in terms of the actual material transferred at high temp). Has anyone found differently?

 

Nope. I swap street and track pads all the time, and generally don't have any issues. I usually don't bother "bedding" in the pads when I swap, either. I'll just casually heat the brakes up a few times on my commute in to work or on my first laps.

I have been using similar types of pads, though. Carbotech Panther+ for track and Bobcat for street. If you had completely different types of pads, maybe there would be more of an issue.

The first time out on brand new pads, though, I do a careful bedding process to heat up the new pads and drive out the resins.

 

Thanks guys for all the advice.

It really helps to find out what others have done so you don't have to learn the hard way

They are the GT-Sports pads and I plan to switch back to OEM after my track day as I understand the more aggressive pads squeal during street use.

F1DNA

Sebring/Black

T.D.

 

I read that too about the Cobalt GT Sports supposedly squealing...I've only had mine on for about 4 weeks, and as the outside times got out of the 40s, the squeaks and squeals went away...I hope they stay gone! At this time, I rather like the perceived increase bite over the 2004 OEM pads, and will probably leave the GT Sports on for a while longer. Oh...I forgot to mention that I did two other brake upgrades...stainless steel lines, and ATE Super Blue fluid (so when I do some HPDEs like I just did at Road America, I should not have any problems)...as my skill progresses, I forsee my next needs to be for dedicated tires/pads/rotors, as the car is a dailydriver except for Winter.

-Justin