The front wheels usually will have a higher proportion of dust; there's more volume of friction material at the front. But that also depends on the operating conditions and, more so, the friction material compounds.

Chris uses Hawk LTS, a high metallic compound that creates a lot of friction material and rotor iron dust. OE truck materials are a low-met, low-abrasion formulation with a friendly pH balance.

OE friction material on a '06 dually is not the best example with the dual rear wheels, but the one I have in front of me. We would measure the amount of brake dust created during durability/wear/NVH tests with an expensive Spectrophotometer, which was great for adjusting the colors on a big-screen TV.

 

My trucks are in this. It doesn't have to be a 6.0 either.
Different pads do make a difference, but the frontal are never clean.

it shocked me when Jack said the front/ rear ratio was a big variance. I have multiple scenarios where my fronts were locked up and the rears were still driving. I didnt read the entirety of this thread, but I wonder if there's a prop valve or maybe something in the master that is wearing out and changing the ratio?

 

Skid or the ABS functioning? There is no prop valve as in the 80s; the ABS controller reduces the rear line pressures through the ABS valves if the skid control or deceleration rate hits a predetermined value. The ABS was more likely functioning as a dynamic proportion or true ABS.

I was going to continue this but got hung up on more urgent matters. I'll show FMVSS data for the 1st Gen Superduty brakes later.

But, with aftermarket brake pads, all bets are off. There is no way to tell how much metallic is in the friction material, and one way for the aftermarket to cheat, making an inexpensive formulation "feel" better, is to use abrasives in the formulation, which develops high rotor wear and iron dust. Chris is wearing out front rotors; they are a high-friction material and highly metallic, which is also kicked up in friction as it gets hotter. Chris' traffic pattern and driving style are making the situation worse. I run the same pads and do not have these issues.

If you are running PowersStop or Centric pads, it's highly abrasive.

The caliper clamping forces are designed to be a 60/40 split.

 

Maybe we should start a poll? FWIW my front wheels get far more dusted than my rear wheels - all OEM parts and it doesn't matter what I'm using the truck for...

 

............................

 

Gone in 60.

 

Jack, some of the information you have is amazing.
Winter or summer, loaded or unloaded I dont recall ever feeling the ABS work in my trucks. Not in the same was as I never felt in a GM. I would call it front skidding, rears with very light pressure.

Each spring I do a full service on my brakes. Annual safety inspection and all that. I rarely ever have any frozen parts. Pins always pull by hand, rotors always tap off. My 05 does have better brakes than the 04. That being said..... both trucks have the original brake fluid in there...

 

It's normal brake development work.

Take it on a gravel road empty, at 20-25mph with a high pedal effort; the ABS should be firing off like crazy.

The '05 has a lower pedal effort and a higher coefficient of friction pad formulation, and the fronts work harder. And as weird as this will sound, the clamping force proportion is 55/45, higher to the rear. However, the rear rotor swept radius is smaller, and there are the effects of the pad surface area changes.

 

FWIW I got new Power Stop calipers on my Ex along with Hawk LTS and Power Slot Cryo rotors and it's a 100% better brake feel than my truck with stock calipers. I can't comment on dusting because honestly I never paid attention one way or the other on the Ex, but the truck front wheels get a lot dirtier than the rears with stock brakes. I have all the parts to do my truck now because I like this set up so much.

Brand new calipers, brackets, pins, boots, rotors, pads, pretty much did it all and I'm very happy with it.

 

Thank you for the suggestion. Considering Power Stop uses stock calipers, I'm guessing it's the pad/rotor combo you're using that is making most of the difference. Though I'm sure having new calipers doesn't hurt performance either.

Are these the cryo rotors of which you speak?




https://puredieselpower.com/ford/bra...6.65086csl-csr

 

This thread morphed into dusting. It didn't start that way; it was about extreme wear of the front rotors, which included thermal stress checking.

And again, I'm running Hawk LTS on both ends, too, for over 100k and do not have the rotor wear issue or heat checking Chris is seeing.

 

I too was suffering with heavy wear, but I also had random caliper lock-ups. To date my ‘05 only has one stock caliper left on the front drivers side at 155k mi. All others were changed, (a few twice) on the other corners, using NAPA calipers, rotors, and pads. I changed all the flex lines and parking brake backer assys. I started carrying a temperature gun to read all the rotor temps when I would park so I could get ahead of the lockups, and sticky calipers. My lock-ups were more sudden than yours it appears so not a direct correlation. Just thought I’d pass along the temperature gun idea for documentation purposes.

There for a time, my truck was eating pads and rotors like I was eating Tums. The smell of hot brakes on the highway was giving me night sweats. I started pulling every caliper and rotor, thoroughly cleaning, and lubing every spring. I push fresh fluid through the system as well. Several years now with zero issues. Corrosion was definitely part of my issue. Anecdotally, I still think there is a defect in this brake system since so many folks have documented issues. Is it the dual plastic pistons in the cast iron cylinders pressing against ferrous steal backers? Be nice to get to the bottom of it some day.

 

What if my plan to bypass the ABS controller yields no difference in wear or stopping power? What then?

Are you suggesting I use a low abrasive pads? Is that the best I'm going to get for wear?

 

Baylinerchuck, I agree the '05+ TRW calipers have an issue. I only had four years with them until '08, so I could never pinpoint why.

Chris, did you see the test data that I temporarily had up? The wear on the '99-03 trucks under those tests all showed relatively equal wear front to rear. And we never saw thermal checks in all of our tests, which went much higher in temperature than you should be seeing. You could do thermal shots of the rotor temps, but I thought you had already done that.

The '97 F350 had thermal checks all the time, but the rear drums on that vehicle never did that much.

Not being there, I'm tending that your situation is either mechanical/hydraulic, or the Hawk pads are no good under your driving situation. I've known several other people who have run them without issue.

Have you ever tried the Ford Motorcraft "Super Duty" pads?

 

I didn't get a chance to digest the test data before you pulled it, but I understand why you did. Thanks for the summary.

I haven't tried the super duty pads.