On Monday, January 15, 2018 at 9:19:48 AM UTC-5, Mad Roger wrote:
On Sun, 14 Jan 2018 18:05:29 -0800 (PST),
wrote:

Sigh. It's just sad.

if they all work ok it's not sad, it's a nonissue

I think you hit the reluctant nail on the head!

The only way this can make sense is if all brake pads work. Period.

Because if people were getting into accidents due to bad brake pads,
someone would step in and stop that (we hope).

Notice even the police report, which is the only scientific study we have,
never said any pad was better or worse - they just required more foot
pounds or fewer foot pounds of pedal force for the same deceleration value.

Bingo. Cops are supposed to be reasonably physically fit. We went
to anti-lock brakes because the regular drivers were locking the breaks.
I've never had a car with any brake pads where I could not very easily
with limited force, lock the brakes. So, why the obsession with the
coefficient of friction? For the typical driver, how much brake dust
they put out is more of an issue. I can see the coefficient of friction
affecting how they feel, whether you need to put X force that;s within
your ability to lock them, or X plus some force that's still well within
your ability to lock them, but that's all.





They never said anything about not being able to decelerate at the desired
deceleration value.

Bingo again.



So, I very belatedly am getting the lesson that, in terms of stopping a
typical passenger vehicle, all pads sold are just about the same in terms
of performance.

For a typical drive, I agree. If you're talking about a race track,
someone with big loads going down hill, etc, then other factors, like
fade performance could make a difference.



Another way of saying that is that no matter what the price is, you can't
get a bad pad (nor a good pad). All you get is a pad.

That depends on your criteria. If you hate dust for example, there are
pads that put out a lot of dust and pads that don't put out very much.
There are pads that last longer than others.




All this assumes that you can't afford to run your own scientific tests,
because the one scientific test we do have, concludes as much anyway in
that there's no way to tell unless you run the test yourself, which you
can't do.

For actual racing, those guys can spend the actual immense time comparing
two different pads, but the consumer is left to realize, as sad as this
conclusion is for me to state, that all consumer-available brake pads are
pretty much exactly the same in terms of stopping ability.

Sigh. It's sad. I didn't want to conclude that. I really didn't. But it is
what the science tells us it is. The rest is just marketing bull**** and
fear mongering from the butt-dynos that think if they paid $157 for a pad,
then it must be better than if they paid $20 for the same pad.

And that comes as a surprise to you? I see people online,
cheerfully running down to the stealership, to buy the dealers
oil at $9 a quart, or their antifreeze, or a part, etc when there are
equivalent products available on the market for a fraction of
the price. And it doesn't just apply to cars. Monster and similar
audio cables that are oxygen free, or pure, or whatever been an
excellent example.