Has anyone "gone that extra mile" on their US version 2nd Gen and upgraded their brake pads with ceramic replacements as shown on: http://www.autoanything.com/brakes/61A2911A0A0.aspx? If so what improvements did you notice ie. dust, stopping distance, feel etc.?
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BMcGraw @ Mar 29 2006, 05:52 PM) [snapback]232028[/snapback]</div> WHY? 100,000 mile brake pad life is good enough for me. Most of us have a hard time keeping the rust off of the rotors, maybe the ceramic would help with that.
With the computer controlling braking and regen braking, I would hesitate to change the frictional characteristics of the brakes.
The U.S. DOJ has done instrumented studies of typical police cars and different brake pads, starting in the early 1990's. With the now-defunct Caprice Classic and the Crown Vic, ceramic pads resulted in such hard brake pedals that the average driver couldn't exert enough force to engage the ABS. I'll dig up the link later for the current test, which I downloaded last year. Overall, unless you *really* abuse the brakes the ceramic pads are not worth it.
Ok the National Institute of Justice did the study: http://www.justnet.org/pdffiles/brakepads_epr2000.pdf The 2000 test is the most recent I could find. Long story short: the ceramic pads may give a "harder" brake pedal (More effort), have little if any benefit to repeated hot application, and little to any benefit to panic stop distance.
I haven't switched to the ceramic pads yet, but I can tell you that I did switch to the ceramic pads available at Autozone for my GMC Sonoma (which I traded in for a Prius) and wow what a difference! Very smooth, noticeably quieter and less dust. I felt that braking was improved. Also, the dust is a much lighter color than traditional pads. I was quite impressed! I hope to try them on the Prius next week.
apriusfan put those Hawk Performance Ceramic Pads on his Touring Prius. I think he likes them a lot. If he doesn't reply in this thread, maybe you should PM him directly. TireRack.com seems to rank the Hawk pads higher than other manufacturers' ceramic pads in stopping ability. As you already know, they cost around $78 online from autoanything.com: http://www.autoanything.com/brakes/61A2911A0A0A1903751.aspx
isn't the stock pads ceramic? i was thinking of replacing with some cheap organics.. i'm still running on my first set at 107k miles. anyway.. when i was in kragens.. the oem replacement said ceramic.. so.. *Shrug*...
I met a salesman recently whose Prius has 230,000+ miles and never changed the brake pads. Said he didn't need to.
I don't know either. When I go to the kragen website it shows various brake pads as Prius OE - some are semi-metallic, others are ceramic. I do know that my Prius stock pads generate a lot less dust than my prior cars, so maybe they are a ceramic compound?
less dust is due to regenerative braking. drive mountain roads all day long, you'll eventually see dusty front wheels. ( not a lot but noticeable)
I put ceramic pads on the front of my Camaro. A lot less dust. Braking was already outstanding, so it's hard to tell if they made it better. But there was much less brake dust...
