Just replaced the rotors and front pads on my wifes 3.0 awd. She has the 355mm discs and I went with the Brembo ceramic pad over the TWR pad simply because it was less than1/2 the price and i figured it would likely be close. Well first the pads didn't quite fit right on the outer slider. Needed to grind off the paint or powdercoat to get them to fit right. Now about 2 weeks later after they have been bedded in properly they seem to be horribly dusty. Both sides are dusty and they aren't hanging up. Just curious if anyone else has experience with Brembo ceramic aftermarket. I have brembo semi metallic pads on my guzzi and they don't dust. These are worse then Jag oem rear pads. Drive it 30 miles and clean your whell kind of bad. I did check and no they aren't hanging up. Any thoughts out there on these pads?

 

Are you sure they are true ceramics?
From all my reading and research into brake pads (and I've done a heap!) and experience ceramics are meant to be very low dust, about as low as you can get and waaay less than semi-metallic.
A few years ago I bought a package deal of drilled and slotted rotors and ceramic pads for my XFR (still have the same rotors going strong on the F-Type) and it turned out that although the pads were advertised as ceramic they were the exact same Centric Posiquiet semi-metallics that I already had on the car.

 

I paid a hefty price for TWR ceramic pads for the front of my Range Rover Sport and they were heavy dusters. So annoying because of the cost and their claims of no dust, but sometimes these brake pad manufacturers flat out lie. I had to pull them out and replace them after only a few weeks of use.

That dust is mostly brake rotor and not brake pad as you might think. So a heavy dusting pad is really just eating up your rotors.

 

Yeah as best I could tell they looked the part, box said ceramic, directions said ceramic but they are dusting more than the pads jag pads I took off that I probably should have just left on for another 20k.

Funny lotus, I have had the exact opposite experience with TWR. Have them on my XF 5.0 s/c and they have been so much better than even my wife's akabonos she has in the rear.

 

I know that the focus of this discussion is Brembo brake pads, but it appears that the discussion has widened, somewhat. Based on that, I'll add that I've been using Powerstop ceramic pads on our '09 XF, for several years. I find that they perform well, and generate about 1/3 the dust of the OE pads.

 

Seems that the front of the awd 355mm diameter rotors is limited. In fact I had tried to replace 'em when I did the rear pads because of dust only to find the Akebonos that were supposed to fit didn't and at the time no one had any decent quality ceramic for sale that I could find so i gave up.

 

The powerstops are inexpensive and easy to get. You can get them on rock auto. Almost no dust on the powerstops for the 355mm on both my XF's. I always go akebono if those are available, and that's why I have them on the rears, but just glad they now have powerstops for the front.

 

Some thing I forgot about....while I'm not sure about fitment, for the larger rotor equipped XFs, but Porterfield Racing also sells quality pads with high friction co-efficient, low dusting compounds. I owned a 1996 Z/28 Camaro for a number of years, and while the car was pretty quick, the brakes, as delivered from the factory, left something to be desired. It was suggested that I try a set of Porterfield's HP street compound pads, which I did. I was very satisfied with their increase in stopping power, as well as their moderate dusting.