I'm always looking for ways to combat pad taper. My brakes feel great right after a pad change, and then progressively as the pads taper the pedal gets longer and less consistent. Was surprised to see Essex, who know what they're talking about, recommend rotating the pads (swapping inside to outside) to even out the wear: https://www.essexparts.com/news-blog...d-owners-guide

Obviously that would work, but intuitively I would expect it to degrade the performance, at least for a bit after the initial swap. You'd basically just be braking with that thick leading edge, I would think. Has anyone tried doing this?

What I was thinking before coming across this was that it would be nice to have some kind of sanding jig where you could hold the pad (backing plate) parallel to sand paper to sand off any existing taper before reinstalling. It'd be too much of a pain to do after every track day, but I could see doing it maybe once in a pad's life to bring back that solid brake feel. Perhaps it could even be done by hand to some extent. Or sand off the worst of the thick edge and then rotate them?

 

Was a Silly idea please delete

 

I think the taper would wear pretty fast on track pads given that you are relying on much less of the pad after rotating them and they wear fast anyways. I bet if you rotated them before the taper got too bad and then bedded them in good most of the taper would be gone. I do notice some taper on mine too but have just lived with it and have noticed it a ton when on track.

 

I think my biggest issue with turning them around is you'd be braking on a tiny area when they self servo, wearing the taper off to get it flat and then going the other way - you don't really achieve anything bar maybe overheating the pad material till it beds back the other way.

 

I think what you'd achieve is that on average the pad would be flatter, and so the pedal travel shorter. Normally with a lot of track driving the taper just gets greater and greater until you replace the pad.

But yes, I too would be concerned about overheating that leading edge after flipping.

 

But every time you flip it the travel is going to be even worse and your brakes will feel like shit till they bed back in.
Better off just coping with the taper, it's inherent in the system really without changing calipers, or just file/sand them back flat when they get excessive.