Good brake pads
 

Which brake pads besides OEM are good? I've had bad experiences on other cars with non OEM pads, but I've blown to much dough on the X and need a good brake pad cheap!

-Stuart

Have you looked at www.rockauto.com? Prices are not bad for high end brakes.
Power Stop has been good to me on lots of cars and SUVs. My X5 had brakes done before I bought it so I have no idea what are on. I need to take the wheels off and check.

Textar, Akebono, TRW, Pagid

Those are all "OEM" German pads I've ran and couldn't tell the difference between one brand and the other.

I've also tried Centric and Raybestos semi metallic which are cheap and stop great, but the brake dust is HEAVY.

This is one of those which oil is the best type posts that will surely generate a lot of different answers.

I like Textars, personally.

I do NOT like Jurid, or Akebono.

Edit: As a general matter, avoid any "ceramic" pad, unless you're willing to trade shitty braking performance and feel for low dust. There are a few tolerable ceramic pads, but they are expensive and still worse than the equivalent. (Hawk Performance Ceramic is a good example. OK performance, but $1-200 per axle, and worse in almost every way than the HPS 5.0.)

I stick with the abovementioned OEMs for all my BMWs. Currently have Textar on the 4.6iS and no complaints.

Ate is also one of the OEM suppliers. I've generally used their discs and pads.

What are you looking for? Best performance? Low dust? Quiet? Like everything, there are compromises for different characteristics.

Below is what I put in the E70 section for a similar question.

I'm an outlier when it comes to pads/rotors. I replace all 4 corners at the same time and use a cheap aftermarket brand. Brakemotive. They use ceramic pads and drilled/slotted rotors. Have installed at least 20 full sets across different manufacturers. Never had a full set cost more than $300. They come with new sensors too.

As with all ceramic pads, initial bite/feel suffers a little bit, but nothing crazy. The anchors still drop plenty hard when necessary. Very low dusting. Been using them for 15 years and came to them after reading about them on the Corvette forums. Sometimes they use PowerStop pads, sometimes StopTech, sometimes housebrand pads (all ceramic). Never had a problem or difference in performance with any of them. If I were tracking my X I might go with a set of blanks and organic pads from Textar, Zimmerman, or Pagid but for everyday use have had no issues.

But as with anything, do your research and make your decision.

I've been running Akebono ceramic pads. Very little dust. They bite fine. No black dust. Zimmerman rotors.

I hate cleaning rims, and so ceramic was my choice. They're the best in terms of low dust, low noise, and longevity. I have no problems with them.

The pad composition to stay away from is organics. Those things suck--especially for a +5kLbs rig like an X5.

Eh. Akebonos still dust. And the pedal feel is dramatically worse. Textars have excellent pedal feel within the limits of the shitty slider calipers. I'll happily take more dust, albeit less than Genuine BMW, for making the X5 feel better.

I live in a cold climate, so ceramics was a HORRIBLE choice for me. I tried the Cool Carbon but they were just not what I wanted as the initial bite, during daily stop and go traffic was very bad adn left me pushing the pedal to floor harder and sweating a bit. I stuck with factory (Jurid pads) and ATE (I believe) rotors and will just wash the wheels more (Sonax wheel cleaner is a dream). nothing has made me feel confident in stopping power, like the dusty factory pads/rotors.

My main concern is warped rotors. I've found that bad pads will warp any rotor.

All of the pads in this thread, even the ones I don't like, are adequate enough that they won't crap all over your rotors unless you are seriously abusing them. Even the shitty Akebonos.

Sorry, but I differ on the Akebonos. They're not "shitty". They work fine for me, even when doing spirited driving. What dusting they do is minimal and not black, so what there is of it, doesn't show.

StopTech has worked great for me, but I'm on the surface of the sun here.

Sent from my SM-A730F using Tapatalk

I agree. I've tried some cheaper ceramic pads that didn't work as well. Anymore, I don't even think about other choices and just order Akebono's any time I need brakes.

Also, I've never had a problem of them not working in the cold. I don't live in Calgary-level cold, but we get moderately cold temps at times where I live.

AM.

I've bought four sets of Akebonos spaced years apart. The only set that didn't go in the trash after a month was used on a car where I needed to adjust the rear brake bias (and they've impacted brake feel enough there that I'm changing out calipers to let me use a better pad mix).

Are they better than Axxis Deluxe Plus? A little. If you care more about brake dust than how your brakes feel, the Akebonos are good. But if you hate soggy brake feel, you will hate the Akebonos. And if you like the Akebonos, the Deluxe Plus produces even less dust and doesn't feel that much worse.

It's all subjective. I've even noted in this thread that the Akebonos *work fine*. They just feel soggy.

Mine turned 18 last month. Still on the original pads & rotors! About 20% left on the front pads, 25% rears.

Brake dust doesn't show on my gunmetal rims, it shows a bit on the chromed outer edges.

https://i.imgur.com/DfDADbf.png

I'm not sure what's going on with your brakes, but I certainly don't have that "soggy" feel on mine. I was running Axxis Deluxe Plus prior to swapping to Akebonos because I could no longer find those Axxis Deluxe pads. Like Fifty150hs, I also have Akebonos ceramic paired with Zimmermann rotors. I like the Axxis Deluxe/Akebonos ceramic linear feel much better than the overly aggressive initial bite of the OE pads.


Wow - You must have some pixie dust pads and rotors! :wow: I'm on my 4th sets of pads and 3rd sets of rotors. 1st set of pads/rotors were replaced under the "free" factory maintenance at about 30k miles. I then replaced those with Axxis/Zimmermann combo at about 60k miles. My last replacement of the pads were at about 125k miles with Akebonos and those still plenty of meat left on them at my current 150k miles mark.

I'm still within the 48k miles, or was it 50k, "free" maintenance. Unfortunately, the 48 months has long passed.

You got some good life out of the Axxis/Zimmerman combo!

I think highway miles, especially the first 20k, and having driven manuals before getting the e53 automatic has helped me be on track to get about 55k miles out of the first set. That may not ever happen at the rate I'm putting on the miles now :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

Like you said, it's subjective. Akebonos don't feel soggy to me.

I understand not liking the bite profile of the stock BMW pads. But I don't understand how people don't even notice the soggy feel of the Akebonos. I've tested the Akebonos in multiple cars. Sliding calipers, fixed Brembo calipers... They sucked everywhere.

I get not caring. I don't understand not noticing. Maybe I have too much race track time, and too much time in cars with brakes that don't suck? (Because let's be honest - all variants of stock E53 X5 brakes suck.)

If your comparison is track brakes, then all brakes will suck.

All sliding caliper brakes suck and have terrible pedal feel. (Which is why the G80 M3's brakes are such a joke.)

IMO, the X5's brakes are tolerable with cheap textar pads. They provide among the best brake feel possible, short of using an aggressive pad with major other compromises. (The Hawk HP+ feels like a track pad, but works at street temperatures. If they figured out a way to make them not shriek like banshees, I'd run them in everything.)

So yeah, nothing is ever going to make some shitty sliders feel good. But you absolutely can make them feel worse. Akebonos feel worse.

I think that's the issue right there.

Compared to most cars on public roads, the X5 has excellent brakes with virtually any pad. But compared to any car on a track... they'll feel downright dangerous I'm sure.

Compromises are made with a pad selection. Dust vs. bite vs. feel, etc. It sounds like you expect a certain level of braking that most of us have probably never even experienced.

It's NOT brake torque that is the issue. Brake torque is limited by tires more than anything else, even on the X5.

What I expect is to not feel a squishy brake pedal. Akebonos always produce a squishy brake pedal. If you push through the squish, Akebonos will stop an X5 just fine. Almost no one is running enough tire on an E53 to be brake torque limited.

The thing that people rarely seem to understand about BBKs is that they do NOT stop cars meaningfully faster. In a street car, the benefit is almost entirely pedal feel (OK, and looks). There are lots of benefits for race cars that don't apply.

Anyway, I think we're pretty far off in the weeds here.

My point remains pretty simple: In my opinion, the Textar pads are tolerable. You can also get them on all four corners under $100. In my opinion, the Akebonos are horrible, and I've wasted hundreds of dollars over the years buying them and then throwing them out.

That's ok. I learned something. :thumbup: