For the last 3 years, my GL-10 sparted standard brakes...with the NAPA united pads...those Application engineered things taht are lifetime warrenty. It stopped on a dime, I made the pads smoke heavily on several occasions and it still stoped on a dime. No rotor warpage in all that time either...which is quite suprising.

 

The dragon run a few months ago pretty well took the last life out of the pads...when i was installing the RX body kit, i had the wheels off and noticed there was a paper thin layer of pad left on either side...so, having a spare set of AE's laying around (originally purchased for the RX) and a long drive to Asheville that same day...I changed the pads. New AE's on, and the old ones turned in for warrenty. Now im just waiting for those new AE's to come in....

 

This morning...a first for this brake system....fade!! I strongly believe that on the Dragon i was braking later and way more heavier that this situation this morning, and I never experienced this on the dragon....anyhow, under some moderate-heavy braking under spirited driving this morning, towards the end of the "run" which lasted about 2 minutes...the pedal started to get soft and needed increased effort to come to a stop...its never done this before. This is the dreaded "brake fade", correct?

 

If so...what do i need to do to kep this from happening....is it the heat buildup? Causes the fluid to boil? It does have DOT3 in it that is about 3 years old att his point...I would guess right off, that I should bleed the system and flush it out with DOT 4 and keep 4 in as perminent a resident...what else can I do?

 

Any ideas?

A copy of my reply to your post about this on the NASIOC board:

 

Well, regardless of what caused it, a flush-fill-bleed to get rid of your 3-year-old fluid would definitely be advisable... I run Motul RBF600 in my 2.5RS, but will probably just use Valvoline Synth DOT 3/4 on the RX (which I used on the RS for a while before switching to Motul and it worked great).

 

If that doesn't fix it, then I'd say your pads are possibly glazed...try roughing the surface up with some sandpaper and see if they bite any better then.

A copy of my reply to your post about this on the NASIOC board

 

Copy? Shane is lazy. :-p

 

I will probably get some DOT4 and see what happens...and ruff up the surfaces...

If so...what do i need to do to kep this from happening....is it the heat buildup? Causes the fluid to boil? It does have DOT3 in it that is about 3 years old att his point...I would guess right off, that I should bleed the system and flush it out with DOT 4 and keep 4 in as perminent a resident...what else can I do?

 

Any ideas?

I believe the brake fade is caused by gases that build up between the pad and rotor when heavy braking heats the whole system up.

 

Cross drilled or slotted rotors give the gases a way to escape from between the rotor and pad.

 

But that would not explain why your brakes worked before. I bought after market pads that are high temp organic.Brake pad compound make a huge difference in performance. My guess is your new pads were a different compound and were putting off more gas. Or it could be you just need to brake in the new pads especially if you didn't resurface your rotors.

your old pads may be worn in a different way and they arent sitting squarely on the rotor...I second the idea of roughing up the pads and rotors...also once when I was changing brakes, from pushing the pistons into the calipers for clearance, my brake fluid overflowed and I had to add some...I assume you checked the brake fluid level, if not check it out. It might only be that