Difference Between Brake Pad Materials What Are Brake Pads Made Of Car Brake Pads and Rotors

Hey, everyone. Sue from 1A Auto, and I wanna talk to you about brake pads, different types of brake pads, metallic, semi-metallic, ceramic, organic, and rotors. Let's just get right to it. Let's do it.

So seriously, let's talk around the campfire. Let's talk about brake pads and shoes and what they used to have in the old days. Yep, I remember I was there, worked on it. They had asbestos. Asbestos in the shoes for the rear drums and brake pads for the front. They realized it was bad for the environment and our health, so they took it off and out of the pads. Other than that, now they have what we call semi-metallic, ceramic, and organic brake pads. Now, I don't have any organic ones here. I'm sure they're made of some earth tone tree cup and I'm joking. They're made of wood, rubber, glass, and some fiber, and then a resin combines them together. But we don't have any of that here, but what we do have is ceramic and semi-metallic. And I want to talk to you about the differences and why. Why are ceramic pads so much more expensive than semi-metallic? And why are they better for my car? And why do I need them or if I don't need them?

So, this is a ceramic pad. Quick way to find out is get a magnet. That was nothing. Now, this is a semi-metallic pad, and it lifts it up because it's got metal in it. Same with this one, but it's kind of worn so it won't grab it. It grabs. So, what's in these that's not in this? This has iron in it, steel. Probably 30% to 70% of metals all weaved together.

What is it good for? Why is it better than ceramic? Or is it less better than ceramic? Well, personally, I don't think it's any less or better, they're pretty much equal when it comes to a lot of things. Difference is ceramic is made of 90% ceramic, and it causes no dust. So, you'll find this on a higher-end vehicle. You'll find these own cars that have very expensive rims because there's no brake dust. And you could put them on your car aftermarket, you can purchase them for your car, whether your car came with them or not, and put these on.

But what you can't do, pay attention, is if your car comes with an aluminum caliper, aluminum, this is aluminum, magnet none. Steel. Aluminum caliper must have ceramic brake pads every time. You can't change it. You can change it if you like a lot of noise because when I put these metal brake pads, semi-metallic in there, wow, it's a megaphone through my car. Every time I apply the brakes, you hear this noise it just like what is happening. It's because the aluminum can't deafen down the sound of the semi-metallic. It'll work. Your car is gonna stop, but you're not gonna like the results.

So, now let's talk about what I was saying earlier with, can I or can I not use ceramic or semi-metallic. So, if your car has an aluminum caliper, that's one way to check. Like I showed you with the magnet, tap it. If it's aluminum, there's no magnet there. You have to have ceramic. If it's steel, you can use both ceramic or semi-metallic. No difference. The difference in performance though is a lot of your performance vehicles like race cars or car that has good size tires to them, 17/22s and it has a little bit of horsepower behind it, doesn't have to be fancy, even a sports car or a fancy European car might have slotted rotors and it's gonna have ceramic pads more than likely only because lack of dust lowers the dust in these. I'll get to why they probably have these on it. But if you're towing and you tow with a truck, obviously, you have a truck that tows, you're more than likely gonna go with semi-metallic. Only because they both have about the same kind of heat ratio, they can handle the heat because, boy, do they get hot in that job. That's a hot job.

But if you're towing, you want something that's going to grab 100% even though this will but it will make a lot of noise. Ceramic makes a lot of high pitch noise, but these can handle the temperatures that you're gonna have when you're towing something because you're not just driving the vehicle, you're driving two vehicles. Because whatever you're towing, whether it's a small camper or trailer loaded with stuff or a camper that sleeps five people, there's a lot of weight behind that and that is actually pushing the vehicle, especially in a panic stop. When you have a fast time stop, you want to make sure the pad while it's getting hot, can perform under that temperature. So, an organic pad would not be the best to have in a vehicle that's towing because it's not gonna reach the high temperatures it needs to get hot and then do a quick stop and perform. It could break down a lot faster and you're gonna go through brakes a lot faster with organic. And that's fine if you're for it, but I would not wanna know that you're towing a vehicle with a road that I'm on or someone else I love with an organic pad. Just what I'm saying.

Rotors. Bongos. Let's talk about rotors, not bongos. But if we could find some drumsticks we make some music. This is a slotted, drilled and slotted rotor and vented. Now, there's three different types you can get from this. You can get just the drilled with a solid rotor, which this is solid, or you can have a slotted and drilled rotor that's solid, or you can have the vented, drilled, and slotted. A whole bunch of things. This is always gonna be on a performance vehicle. And the reason for it is like your Porsches, BMWs, they cool down extra fast. So, there's no fading when you apply the brakes real quick. Cornering, race tracking, all that kind of stuff. Usually, a racetrack car will have the slotted and the drilled together. And that's because it's a racetrack, but you can get the combination of all three together. So, your brakes should last longer, cool down sooner, less material breaking down, and it's kind of the all-around. It's nice and coated to so it won't get rusted in the states that have a lot of rust problems.

Then you have your solid rotor. This is 99% gonna be in the rear of a passenger vehicle. You'll have a rear solid rim rotor just because there's no weight back there. And it's just gonna stop and cause no problems. Just does its job, no big deal. And then you have your vented. Now, this one's rotted pretty bad. This is in probably 80% to 90% of every vehicle out there, passenger or truck. This is what you're gonna find. Different sizes, of course, but what this does is these vents dissipate the heat that comes out. So, the heat comes out from going down the road and braking, traffic, highway, city, constant braking. This takes the heat out because if it doesn't and this gets really hot, you're gonna get a brake, what we call brake fade. You apply the brakes and it won't stop within the time you need it to. It actually travels further and then it will break down the pads and cause a real mess and it's havoc.

What happens though, is these vents get rusted as you can see inside here. That all swells up. The middle gets rotted, swells up and now it's not dispersing the heat properly. So, you could get a pulsation. And I'm sure you felt that once or twice in your car or truck, a brake pulsation. And that's what it's due to. You really can't turn a brake pulsation out, no matter what anyone tells you. You can turn that surface all the time, but I just showed you what I know and it's rotted from the inside out. I might make a nice clean surface, but it's gonna come back. So, just replace the rotor. Do yourself a favor. So, I took my marker board and I brought it out. You know how much I love marker boards. Well, I wrote down what types of brake pads and what they have in them. So, basically, an organic material is full of rubber, carbon, glass, and fiberglass.

Semi-metallic is 30% to 70% metals like copper, iron, steel. And ceramic is ceramic. There is sometimes a little bit of copper in there to help disperse the heat, but pretty much it's ceramic and that came about around federal law around 2015. They had ceramic prior to that, but they have a little bit too many metals in it I think and they said, "You're gonna call it ceramic, it's gotta be ceramic." So, that pretty much breaks it down, so you can use that for a train of thought.

So, I hope you enjoyed the video. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. Don't forget to ring that bell it turns up all the notifications. Like I said before, write a comment, tell me what you think. I could talk about this subject forever, so ask questions. Tell me if you want more videos in-depth, tell me you don't want any. I don't know. Tell me something.

Hi, everyone. It's Sue from 1A Auto, and I wanna talk to you like Lenny. No, I'm just joking. Andy, vacuuming? Was he in there cleaning his bay? Seriously? We can't talk until he's done. So, we'll just stand here. Okay. Here we go.