On Monday, 15 January 2018 14:19:46 UTC, Mad Roger wrote:
On Sun, 14 Jan 2018 18:05:29 -0800 (PST),
tabbypurr 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.


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.

not really. But cars generally seem to deal with it ok. Ultimately it comes down to enough force to create enough friction, and almost any friction material can do that.


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.

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.

I certainly bought bad pads in about 2000. The ones from the scrapyard OTOH I had no problem with. Those I got to see after they'd been used a bit, so I knew they weren't disintegrating, let alone badly, or oily.

You criticised buying pads off scrap vehicles before, but truth is every time you buy a used car you're getting used brake pads. It's not a problem really.


NT