Who has followed this procedure to the letter and did you see improved stopping power? Also anyone bed the new semi-ceramic pads this way?

http://www.pmbperformance.com/bedin.html

We do this at our Porsche shop on all our cars before the customer touches the car. You have to or new pads and rotors will just slide to a stop. With the coated rotors you might have to do the whole routine more than once.

This is the procedure that I've been using since the early seventies. Was taught this at the Chrysler factory brake and front end school. We did this on all cars that got new pads or rotors, or even shoes and drums turned.

Do you do it on public roads or do you have some place out of the way?

We are in an industrial park but we also have quiet farmland roads nearby once we get a couple hard stops down.

When I got my pads/shoes for our 88 Westy from PMB I did this procedure on the 91 Freeway at 3-4 am to avoid traffic, & this was with new rotors up front, & drums in back.

My guess is that the P4S Porterfields improved the notoriously under-braked Vanagon braking performance by 10-20%, but they still squeal on the front discs (rear are drums on these), & they are very dusty, so the wheels are always getting mucked up.

I got a set of P4S pads for my 85 BMW 325e too, but it's not ready for new pads/discs yet, so no experience there yet, nor on my 73 914-2.0 as it's not even close to done with the resto.

Would I use them again? .... not really sure on the Westy, the others I cannot say.

That procedure is meant to bed & mate the pads to a new set (or freshly turned & trued) set of discs, as Curt & others said above.


Tom
///////

Non-914 content, but topic-related. This weekend I replaced disk brake pads (all four wheels) and one rotor on my Nissan Frontier and used this procedure to bed the brake pads.

Never having done this before, I was surprised at the amount of smoke emanating from each wheel and the wheel temperature. I may not have "cooled" them down enough after the procedure because after I parked it, I kept hearing the tinging of metal dropping and noticed that the glue holding the balancing weights on the wheel with the new rotor melted and the weights were falling off.

Do you all think I "overdid it" or is that normal? I was worried that maybe I overheated and warped the rotor, but I've driven it several times since and I didn't notice any "wavy" action when applying the brakes.

I’m no brake expert but I would only do half as much next time.

I agree on a heavy SUV maybe hammer it only half as many times. Smoke/smell is OK you're trying to get them hot, but fire is bad.
I've sort of done Eric's procedure forever, new install, warm up, then hammer the brakes several times on the test drive. I also do this because I'm trying to pop a line and making sure the pads release.

Thanks for your input guys, just needed to be re-assured I didn't screw something up.

Some smoke emanating from new rotors is normal. That's the oil that's sprayed on it to inhibit rust as it ships across the sea from China burning off.

Your Frontier should have the pad release springs so they don't rest on the rotor.

The noises are likely from the expansion differences between the iron hub & rotors and aluminum wheels.

Eric does stipulate that you drive the vehicle for 30 min immediately after the last burn in w/o touching the brakes. This allows them to cool a bit.