Personally, I find it difficult to properly bed race pads in on the street, and I've never followed any company's instructions to a T. Street bedding works best with street pads, because they don't need to be at race temp in order to lay down the transfer layer. Our track organizations in the PNW do the first few laps of the day under caution, so I use those laps to apply medium to medium-hard brake pressure and exaggerate my braking zones in order to build heat up in the system. Keep in mind that the pads will get hot quicker than the rotors just because of the difference in mass. If there's a long straight, I check my mirrors and brake a few times to make sure the system doesn't get too cold. After a while, you're essentially "painting" a layer of the pad material onto the rotor surface, which is what provides the friction against the pad when you stop.
Here's a photo from my car of the before rotor. This is a new rotor surface and used pad, and the car had been washed the night before. As you can see, the uneven surface of the used pad was abrasive at cold temperatures and it "cleaned" the corrosion off the swept area during the street driving to the track. This photo was taken in the paddock before the first session of the day.
Here it is after the first session where I did what I described above. Note the change in the color of the rotor surface, which shows the system has gotten up to temp and laid down a proper transfer layer. Once again, this is really hard to do with a race pad on the street because of the high temperatures a race compound is designed to work at.
I promise we're not trying to gaslight you... just want to work and find a solution to the issue at hand. Keep me posted on how it goes.

Leave a comment: