The Place

AP Caliper brake pads

What brake pads do you use on the AP calipers that we use and where do you get them from?

Hi Simon, We use the green ones FA16S. Tried the HH but found them no good. If you want any let me know as I can get them for you.

Hi Simon we use the EBC DP4128 (yellow stuff) in the front and the green stuff (don't know the code no) ones in the rear and the sidecar brake. Don't know as it makes any difference but it sounds good and we get them from a local guy I know, just order them and he gets them for us.

phone wally at west performance on front of site

Simon Smith wrote:AP Caliper brake pads
What brake pads do you use on the AP calipers that we use and where do you get them from?

FERODO - DS3000 - good pads - not cheap though

We use FA16S (Green). Any bike shop should be able to get them in a day or two. Expect to pay around 25 quid a pair. If you're stuck I've got 2 0r 3 sets on the shelf. I'm happy to stick them in the post tomorrow.

Interesting point this, what grade of brake pads available? EBC have their range of colour coded pads and Ferodo have their part number coding, who knows what is equivalent to what and which is the best combination for front/rear/side?
Anyody care to summerise the options?

Ferodo vs EBC........... that's bound to cause friction

EBC list 3 types: Std - FA16, sintered - FA16HH and organic green - FA16S. The cross reference in the EBC book lists Ferodo FDB342R as their equivalent but no more. HTH We use the green all round as we found the HH took too long to get up to working temp. Guess it depends how you brake i.e long and hard (oooh er) or short and sweet?

It also depends on how much mass (or lard if you like) that you are trying to stop ( I do include myself in that 'lard' statement by the way)
My point is about what is available in the market and what works the best. We spend plenty of money trying to go quick and not so much on trying to slow down and as far as I can see a lot of incidents occur when we are all piling into a corner and the are differing decelaration speeds = shunting.
Now if we are all using the same calipers there must be a reasonable selection of pads available but what are they and where from, surely the last question to ask is how much?
There is a company in the states called Performance Friction and they make excellent pads for car applications. You only have to look through the demon tweeks catalogue to see the range of stuff available but in the end there are only so many places where this stuff is made.
EBC have a product that sells well because they have good distribution, availability and marketing but is it the best available?? I don't know but I would be intereted to know what is the best - anybody??

Mike, you ask what is best? What works for one crew and outfit may not work for another. Disc material must have some bearing on the pad effectiveness as well? And remember you can only go as fast as you can stop!

Ian - yes you are right the disc material will have an impact on performance but we can assume that the majority of machines use a cast iron disc wether its grey cast of SG (speroidal graphite ) so we can take that as fixed characteristic. I think it is safe to assume that we are running at maximum temperatures on braking and this subjects that pads to repeated high temperature applications which test a pad to its limit and its the ability of the pad to maintain its co-efficient of friction with these repeated high speed applications; with brake fade occurring as the pads loose this. I think i've seen these tables before when Wal Saunders was posting some info on pad performance.
I've posted this in the classic section as I'm trying to find out whats available for us in the classic scene but in the end brakes are brakes and they actually havent changed that much over years, discounting the move from drum brakes to disc.
Just as a note drum brakes are actual more efficient at braking because for their self servo action when operated but as we all know they suffer when they try to dissapate the heat which is where the disc brake is better.

Triplebrew wrote:And remember you can only go as fast as you can stop!

You should try passengering Ed into chicanes then Ian, that would be an eye opener

Whats all this technical talk re brake material,if one uses big words at least spell them correctly SPHEROIDAL. thick Brummie.

And for those who don't know what 'Spheroidal Graphite' is see here:

http://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/phasetrans/200 ... .iron.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;