Bedding-in new Galfer pads & discs.

[Space Cadet]

Fitting some Galfer discs & pads at the weekend, the shop told me to bed them in ‘gently’ with 150 miles normal riding.

Is this correct? I only have experience with bedding in car discs & pads (sports cars with decent Brembo's and the like) and the done thing is to remove the surface coating with say 20 miles of normal driving then give them 3 or 4 full-on heat cycles i.e. 100-10 mph and then accelerate back up and do it again a few more times in quick succession (obviously on your private road!!). You then let them cool down gradually with gentle driving for say 20 miles.

Would presume the Galfers would be made of racy materials and would need the heat cycles??

Thanks

[cairojay]

I would have thought that it is better to do it gradually. I've always been told for cars and bikes to do this to avoid causing uneven wear on the pads causing thermal judder or brake squeal due to uneven wear from harsh braking especially going from cold to hot temperatures quickly: It also depends on the type of pads, I believe they have about 4 different kinds from organic to the sintered metal kind but I'm guessing a Galfer dealer would know best!

[slob]

Car discs are much thicker than bike disc(and often vented) and will probably handle the heat better as a result,
personally I'd just use them gently for a couple of hundred miles, as the guy suggested.
I think the savage braking approach you describe for car discs is more likely to warp a 6mm disc.
I think it's more about the volume of metal than the material itself.

[jimbo696]

We used to bed in racing pads on the cars like you described.. Wouldn't think it was a good idea on a bike, gentle gradual braking to bed them in is what is needed...IMO

[Nickj]

The get them hot method was always the quoted one, the idea being to drive the pad material up to annealing temperature. You could feel the 'slump' and adfter that you knew the pads were fully good to go.
If the discs aren't able to cope with pulling the bike down from 100 reasonably quickly then they are grossly underspecced, you certainly wouldn't want to be using them for fast riding or track days if they get hot enough to warp so easily.
Take it easy for x hundered miles, sheesh I want the suckers working 'now' because I don't know when I will need all the braking I can drag together. The extra feet that brand new pads add to a stop distance might be the difference between using the brakes or someones engine block to stop yourself with and I know which I'd prefer.
I'll stick with a few high temperature runs myself.

[slob]

I'm sure Galfer discs are just fine for hauling bikes down from waaaaay in excess of a ton, I just wouldn't do it to brand new ones until they'd been through a few heat cycles. Obviously if I find myself in peril, I'm going to give it a huge handfull, regardless of my new discs/pads.

[Space Cadet]

The discs and pads arrived this morning and I had to speak to the shop again on something else, but he recommended again the gentle bedding-in approach. It also says this in the literature that came with the discs so will bed them in this way as apposed to the heat-cycle route.

Obviously then different discs and pads have different bedding-in processes.