J&S Automotive recently held a training day focusing on its Mintex brake range. Expert technical staff from Mintex UK were in attendance to provide a practical insight into various aspects of brake disc pad fitting best practice. This covered areas such as inspection rules, the correct use of tools, common faults, service and cleaning, re-assembly and bedding in.

Particular attention was played to bedding in. This is because when new brake pads and new brake discs are fitted to a vehicle the performance of the brakes may initially be lower than prior to the change. Pads need time to be conditioned something that can take up to 200 miles of normal driving.

The importance of any conditioning or “bedding in” procedure is to allow the resins and oils that are part of the friction material formulation to cure and gas off normally.

Excessive early braking can cause the material to overheat too quickly, the pad surface to glaze over and the brake to seriously underperform or possibly fail. For this reason brakes should be bedded in without agreesive braking behaviour.