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so the wifey and I are taking a vacation to the mountains in less than two weeks. Between us and the kids and their boyfriends/girlfriends (mainly my high maintenance wifey) we will have lots of luggage. So the wifey is wanting me to take my 04 crew cab for all the bed space to fit the luggage instead of her new car.
The truck is in good shape mechanically although when towing heavy loads up steep inclines I have noticed the delta temps push towards 20 a time or two. Normally, the delta always stays below 10 when unloaded. So I’m worrying a little bit that all the long grades traveling through the mountains may cause my deltas to reach extremes and cause problems.
So should I be worried?
Nope, don't worry. If your Delta is under 15 crusing at 60mph unloaded, your oil cooler is working fine. It will get higher temporarily pulling a grade, but that's no reason for concern.
You should be fine. As mentioned, temps will go up on long steep grades, when it does not cool down is the warning you need to check the cooler. A plugged cooler will sky rocket with normal driving and stay there.
With a new brake job it’s important to season the brakes before going into a high energy situation, especially with aftermarket pads as they don’t see the same post brake cycle that OE pads see. I’ve got a scary family vacation story, but I’ll not make this worrysome.
From a new car dealer perspective, it’s extremely important during the test drive brake performance is excellent, you can’t tell the customer the brakes need burnishing in without losing the sale. Aftermarket service situations are more forgiving.
Friction material isn’t what you see when opening the box of replacement pads, it’s the carbonization of the composite at a microscopic level at the pads rubbing surface as well as the microscopic transfer layer of brown or gray friction material on the rotors. After the turning/grinding high points are worn down on both the pads and rotors. How smooth the surface finish is determines how fast the burnishing occurs, aftermarket is rougher then OE, as well as the treatment of the friction material before being boxed.
The burnishing is variable due to the finishing, but a good baseline is 50 normal brake application at typical speeds and decelerations.
Editing in ......
An example of the OE material on a F550. It took about 50 brake application to settle in on pressures, to get the pads and rotors to wear in, and the friction material to carbonize properly. The spike up around the 300 application point is after the vehicle sat overnight, cold brakes are not as effective as warm brakes when the transfer layer has re-established. While the pressures are up, they come back rapidly as the temperature is established, not like the wearing in at the start of the burnish.
But overall, the friction coefficient is well maintained during the burnish and after the fade sections (mountain pass simulations) later on.
An aftermarket material on the same vehicle. It took about 150 applications before the pedal effort and hydraulic pressures settled out. Not all aftermarket materials will take this long, these competitors were a lower priced product, it costs money to bake friction material overnight. Overall the friction coefficient kept changing depending on what the pads were put through. Spikes are usually breaks, lunch, or overnight. You often can tell the difference based on ambient temp data.
FPSPS if the deceleration rate, feet per second per second. Not a typo.
Yeah, way from me overboard again, but just saying to drive it around some before heading at grades.
TMT, thank you for taking the time to share all of this info with me. I didn’t realize this about the brakes and had you not said something, I probably woulda done the brakes a day or two before we left. Now I know to get them done asap and have some burn time on them. May do them today even.
My father in law is following us to the mountains and transporting our daughter, her BF, and their newborn with him. I had to do the brakes on his explorer three days ago. I need to inform him about this because he never drives the explorer since he always drives his truck. So you saved multiple people here with your info. Much appreciated!
It's not an unusual event to do, I'm heading to the mountains and I need brakes.
The better companies try to achieve as close to OE as possible. Our business was 50% OE, 50% aftermarket, so I'd be running both characteristics of materials at the same time. Our company was the only one who ran aftermarket development and prove out the same manner, except for the aftermarket you couldn't do the expense of remote site testing.
Still, the pricing on aftermarket products require some compromise. In the materials used, the processing in both manufacture and finishing. A wider tolerance for aftermarket. But we never produced products in the lowest price range. Most of the lower price materials in the industry are targeted towards the used car dealer market, but the public can still acquire those. Brakes are just not an area where pricing for the lowest cost should be taken. One of the test driver/mechanics I hired used to be the service manager for the largest Chevy dealership in our area, he just got burned out and I was lucky he wanted a change in career. About two years in while we were driving to a test location he said when he took the job he thought there wouldn't be that much involved, it's just brakes. He said he never knew all the complexities despite being 30 years in the service industry. So for someone who is that involved to have that awakening, in the consumer view there's a lot to understand. It's why got started on-line decades ago, just to clarify and inform.
2005 Explorer. OE is pretty stable in effectiveness, as the pass car light truck demands are more severe then medium truck. Even the cold restart doesn't require the warm up of the more semi-metallic pads of the F550, and the initial burnishing in if any takes only about 10 applications. It's what the manufacturer (Ford) wants in performance. In this test the newer driver is more variable then the brakes. Pass car / light truck want stable effectiveness and why he move away from semi-metallics of the 90's.
Same vehicle, aftermarket pads on OE rotors. 100 to 125 brake applications to settle in on pedal effort / hydraulic pressure. Poor surface finish on the pads, not perfectly flat, and maybe not as long of a post bake cycle. Our aftermarket performed like the OE, it should. We supplied the OE pads to Ford. OE development expense is about 4-5 times that of aftermarket, and we did more then other companies. But if you know the vehicle from suppling the OE product, you can nail the different aftermarket formula quite well.
my FIL bought ceramics for his 2011 explorer so that’s what I installed.
Im undecided what is best to put on my 04 f250 for daily towing of around 10k pounds - Ceramics or semi-metallic. Any advice? My FIL said he only puts brakes on my f250 one time since he bought it new 89k miles ago. The rotors are shot so they’re getting replaced, too.
edit: a quick search here on ceramics told me all I need to know. Looks like I’ll be going with semi metallic
"Ceramics" means that it's an organic compound reinforced with Potassium Titanate fibers, the ceramic fiber. That's a fiber developed to replace asbestos fibers and get back the market that semi-mets took over. Some of us believe cautions with the fiber should be held as though it's asbestos. Within my company when we got PT pads shipped in the EHS instructions were "Open the box, if the pads wee loose allowing for loose particles to be visible, tape the top back up and throw the packaging in the waste". I had enough asbestos exposure in my life, we followed the rules.
In the home environment you can follow the same procedures outlined by the EPA for DIY asbestos brake changeout. Look it up, it's not a severe as you may think.
Ceramics along with the newer classes of phenolic binders made it up to the 7k GVW range when I left, but it was a hard ceiling. They did fine with the F-150. Higher in vehicle weight the Semi-Mets are still hard to beat. The OE grade of pads are a low metallic, not semi. A distinction more for my crowd then yours. Many of the benefits of high thermal integrity with a flatter coefficient of friction then semi-met. Most of the aftermarket semi-mets kick up the friction coefficient a little to be more in line with cooler brakes, and customers tend to like the higher aggressiveness when weight, speed and grades are envolved. And there are some aftermarket "ceramic" pads that contain a pinch of the expensive PT fiber, but are really a low met. A magnet taken to the auto parts store tells the tale.
For the rotors think what price you are willing to pay, then get that price level of rotor as a solid rotor, no holes, no slots. Most of the specialized rotors are paired with a more aggressive friction material. It the friction material that gives the benefits, the rotors get the credit.
Thanks @TooManyToys. Everything is going great on our trip here in the mountains. I got the new rotors and brakes installed about a week before we left. The truck is doing fantastic on the steep mountain roads. With Tow/haul mode on I’m not having to hardly even use the brakes much. My ECT did rise to 214 once going up a long and winding mountain but my deltas never once went higher than 9. So far so good (knock on wood)!!
With a new brake job it’s important to season the brakes before going into a high energy situation, especially with aftermarket pads as they don’t see the same post brake cycle that OE pads see. I’ve got a scary family vacation story, but I’ll not make this worrysome.
Been thinking about this lately Jack. 6.0 #2 got a surprise brake job in Kentucky last week. Dad was parking the trailer at a KOA when the pedal went all the way down to the floor. Pads and rotors on four corners, two new calipers, new lines to match those (I think), and a new master cylinder. At ~110k miles, still had 3-5mm on several pads, but the two corners that got new calipers were obviously suffering from Super-Duty-Brake-itis with frozen slide pins so the pad wear was uneven.
Anywho, the Ford dealer gave them a fast turnaround since they were several states away from home and seemed to have done a good job. So a small blip in an otherwise good trip, except for them having to drive on brand new brakes pulling their camper. Fortunately they've downsized and they're down to about 4000# for a trailer now, so nothing bad on the return trip, including some decent hills in TN and NC around the Smokies.
Originally Posted by Yoteman
The truck is doing fantastic on the steep mountain roads. ... My ECT did rise to 214 once going up a long and winding mountain
You're obviously not pushing it hard enough Where abouts is the vacation?
He probably got the Motorcraft pads then. They get a post bake cycle just like the OE pads do, so they should be pretty good. The Motorcraft rotor will have an OE finish on them too, an Ra about 50-60, again a good match. Better then the majority of aftermarket out there. A 4K trailer with working brakes is easy.
Recently I had posted in the Superduty chapter on a question about pads for a guy running new trailers around the country. For his particular situation I recommended the Hawk LTS. They, like Performance Friction and others have the new installs going through a series of stops to cook the pads. Both companies make some good products depending on goals, but they need to send the pads through the pizza oven overnight. PF does a searing treatment with a lase on the rubbing surface, and that does help.
Where was the hydraulic failure? Calipers, M/C, .......
Not sure, I wasn't there and haven't seen the paperwork. He told me they were in start/stop traffic getting into the campground so I don't know if he overheated one of the stuck calipers, or if the MC really did fail. He did say he didn't see fluid on the wheels, so my best guess from 1,000 miles away is that the MC was probably the root cause, and the calipers were changed because the pins were stuck and the dealer had parts on the shelf for a time-sensitive job.
Other than the FICM/alternator, this is really the first big repair on his truck. Had a rear pinion seal leak and a TFT sensor, but for 10 years/110k miles, not a bad deal.
You're obviously not pushing it hard enough Where abouts is the vacation?
Lol no I’ve been taking it easy on the truck. I let my 20 year old son and the other three teens take my truck out running around yesterday so I’m sure he pushed the snot out of it.
We’re in Gatlinburg TN. This is my wife’s favorite place to vacation so we come here a few times a year. We rented a beautiful cabin with a spectacular view. But with 5 kids and so much to do, I’m about to go broke lol. I think the two week Mediterranean cruise we took them on last summer was cheaper. Lol
Where abouts is the vacation?