Anyone have any experience with replacement pads for these calipers that stop well with low noise? I've got these on my 47 coupe and am looking to reduce the noise. I think the current pads (which were installed by the PO) may have a high metallic content, which is great for long pad life and heat rejection, but they tend to be noisy, and hard on rotors. I see NAPA has what they call SilentGAURD. A little pricey but I don't mind paying for good performance. Looking for advice from anyone who may have tried different pads. Thanks.
Looks like Speedway also sells a "Soft Street" pads for these calipers. Anybody try them? https://www.speedwaymotors.com/Spee...d5kHX762XK7-ZbtzW2YdkLgje5sy_XFkaAkG1EALw_wcB
Good pads, and replace all the hardware clips. If previous owner bought a "kit" it probably came with the cheapest pads available (basically casting slag and rocks bonded into a lump)
Whichever way you go high buck, low buck, take a tip from me. In the 80s and nineties, I was working in a shop that featured quick service brake work. Most of the clients and cars were 'upper crust' usually the brake linings were not. We had our share of hills, and the drivers were often abusive. ( it was the 80s ) Every install began with a thorough painting of all bracketry contact surfaces. The 'paint' was Permatex Anti-Seize compound. If they had service elsewhere first, there were complaints. After our 'special service' no.
Thinkin and Thinkin, when I last did the Mrs car I got Ceramic lining. She be tough on the pedal tho and seems like rotor hot spots are developing.
Back when I was doing brakes for a living the cheapest shoes or the cheapest pads were the quietest ones. They didn't last long but they were quiet. The Tire store I worked at would run ridiculous even for 1973 brake adds. That was counting on upgrading the brake job or selling more than a set of shoes. I don't remember a complaint from the guys who got those cheap brake jobs. Move up five years and I was working in a Pontiac dealership doing front end work and brakes. Top quality parts and shoes and pads all the time and there were more noise complaints than you could count. We have a lot of dirt roads in this county and the noise on a number of those cars came from the dirt.
I just ordered the pads from NAPA, should be available for pickup on Saturday. That works for me, I'm preet booked up and won't be able to work on it till Sunday at the earliest anyway. Besides, I tweaked my back and not moving too good right now, not really feeling up to working on it right now. But I want to get the pads changed before next Friday, I'm heading to a car show I'm registered for in Big Bear, lot's of mountain driving, about 10k ft elevation; steep hills with sharp corners.
My son alway bought the cheapest he could from Pep Boys. No metal in them, organic. Never any noise and he is/was ez on brakes. Metric GM’s
if noisy you mean squealing while stopping, try bevelling off leading edge of the pads at a 45 deg. angle and be sure to use anti-squeal grease between pad and caliper.
On the outer pad, I always crimped the ears tight against the caliper and used the Permatex spray to keep the pads stuck so they wouldn't rattle.
The cheapest “ organic” pads are the quietest. lube of your choosing between the piston and caliper ears helps ( anti seize, silglyde, the brake pad “glue”) chamfering the leading edge helps and hitting the ears on the outer pad so it’s tight helps new stiff spring on the inside pad also . like @Mr48chev said the high end pads while they last a long long time and don’t have a lot of brake dust to deal with , will be noisy. the cheap pads I’ve never had an issue with noise , but they do give off more dust .
Organic are the cheapest, and quietist. But they also leave the most brake dust on your wheels, so need to clean the dust off often. The squeal comes from the trailing edge of the pads whenever you apply brake pressure. Whenever I install new pads I bevel the trailing edge of each pad on my belt sander, and it keeps them from squealing until they wear down low enough for the bevel to be gone. It slightly reduces pad surface, but so little I can't tell any difference in braking.
On my old daily parts hauler I changed pads A LOT. Took the truck to almost 300K over 14 years. Lots of towing and trips to the HAMB Drags and Bonneville. Did a fun experiment at OReillys one time and we pulled EVERY option for pads off the shelf to compare. What @indyjps said was true about the bottom rung, $9.99 made in India. We had to go up to the third level or so at about 30 bucks to see any sort of quality. From there on out I ran the 30-40 dollar pads and got many miles out of them.
Thought I'd come back and complete this thread for anyone who pulls it up in the future looking for the same info I was. Here are the NAPA pads w/ the part # A couple of posts above recommended beveling the edges of the pads to reduce noise; I noted these pads came beveled. For comparison here are the old pads: I applied anti-seize to the calipers where the pads contacted them, as well as to the anchor bolts, as the calipers need to slide on the bolts. Just gave it a short test drive, but so far they seem to brake very well and are very quiet. I should probably burnish them for best performance. I'll give them a good workout this weekend with a run up the mountain for the show up there.
OK, I thought my previous post would be the last on this thread, but I'm gonna add one more to review the brakes after the trip up to the mountains (elevation ~ 6700 ft) this weekend. The brakes performed great; great feel, great stopping power, no noise at all. At one point coming down the hill this morning the wife said she could smell the brakes getting hot, I didn't smell them at all, but we have the extreme opposite sense of smell; she could smell a fly fart from 20 paces, I can't hardly smell anything at all. So, I don't know, she said she smelled them, I believe her. I didn't notice any fading at all, but I did slow the pace a little and used the transmission more to hold the car back instead of braking as much. It may have just been coatings on the pads since they were brand new, or even the anti-seize I applied to the calipers, I don't know. But, I call the pad swap an upgrade and a success and would highly recommend the NAPA pads. We'll see how they wear, and if they are hard on the rotors, so maybe there will be another update here sometime in the future.
Just ran across this article on disc brake pad friction codes that I thought would be a good addition to this thread for anyone looking for pads for any application, not just GM Metric calipers. https://www.motortrend.com/how-to/d...lOvqRfsUCGoLl2CYErFQRUua83ovWWKdwpohdqGvX9p9I
Quietest pads are usually the softest. Softest usually have the most brake dust and will have you constantly cleaning brake dust off the wheels. Something in between is the best choice for all around good braking, minimum noise, and less brake dust.
I have and will continue to use wagners, they used to call them "thermo-quiet", they changed the name of them but I don't recall. Probably just ask the counter guy for wagner theemo-quiet pads and he probably will know exactly what your talking about. We use them on about 80% of every brake job we do. Excellent in every aspect, no noise, no wheel dust and Excellent stopping power, what's really amazing is these things will go alot of miles. In all the time we have used them (many many yrs) we've never had one problem. .
Are those NAPA pads still holding up? I've never seen those as an option. I have the Bosch QuietCast ceramic pads on both of my daily drivers. I had a big problem with brake dust on both previously in addition to braking noise. These pads completely solved both problems. I usually buy my brake parts through RockAuto now and they are quite inexpensive from there. The attached part numbers are for GM metric calipers.
At work I recommend the ceramic pads for low noise and low dust. Any of the ceramic pads we sell come with new hardware which the cheaper pads don't. This will make a big difference in the chance of pads squealing. make sure to use brake grease on any metal to metal surface. When replacing pads you should also replace the rotors or have them turned so you have a clean surface. Pad material will actually transfer to the surface of the rotor and the old material will contaminate the new pads which can cause noise. Finally you should break in the new pads with a series of stops of gradually increasing speed and force.
Might be a lil late to the party here, but........ Metallics/Semi Metallics/Organics= Part people terms, Best, Semi,Cheap.......... BUT- and I mean BUT, there are differences in pad thickness believe it or not. I have learned this through trial and error........Same application too. Not all size "whatever shoe" will fit your feet...... Pads are the same. Some are way to fat , although they fit in the calliper, they won't fit over a rotor....... Unfortunate to have to figure it out, but, it's a real deal..........
Years of doing brake jobs for a living confirm that. The cheapest softest pads or lining are usually the quietest with the least complaints about noise or other issues. Best for whiny customers who never drove the car on the freeway enough to write home about. They don't last long and are messy but you don't get complaints that you do with metallic Ceramic or other high performance pads.
Since someone else bumped this old thread, I’ll chime in with a few thoughts. I don’t have metric calipers, but I don’t think that matters here. I do have GM disks up front and drums in the rear. I upgraded the fronts using Hawk (street) pads. I have these on my pickup as well, and they offer a lot more grip than the stock pads. So, I’m happy there. They do dust a bit, but that’s the nature of disk brake pads and open shiny wheels (Torq Thrust, polished). With smaller front wheels and tires up front, larger in the back, this threw off the balance. Locking the fronts up was easy, long before the backs. So, most recently, I’ve been working on the rear brakes to get them more involved in the braking.
Almost a year later, still quite happy with the NAPA brake pads, still performing well, good stopping power with little to no noise. Thanks to everyone for their input.
I thought that was the nature of some disc pads, so I've put up with horrible brake dust on some of mine. But some of mine don't collect brake dust at all. I found the ceramics I'm using now on my dailies just don't do that. My daily pickup has aluminum 20's that are a magnet for brake dust. I've put over 8,000 kms on these new pads and there is no dust to be seen. It's a huge improvement. My 46 has powder coated wheels and they're terrible for dust too. I'm going to switch pads on it, maybe I can get that problem to disappear as well.
one other thing on the choice of pads is the use of the vehicle. If you're doing something that puts a lot of heat in the pads like towing semi metallic will dissipate the heat better than organic or ceramic.
The Jalopy Journal
