Brake Fade

Hi all,
I have been driving my Meg RS 265 for a while now and I keep felling the braking isn't what is should be. lately it was getting worse, anyway I checked pads and they looked low but not past the wear strip, so decided to change the rear pads and problem not fixed, then decided to change the front pads, I went with EBC yellow stuff performance pads, followed the 100m light braking, then next 200 was slightly heavier braking, i'm now on 360+miles and decided to give the brakes a good stop, and now if brakes are warmed up with a slight amount of spirited driving I find the initial brake feels softer and then if I'm still holding the brake pedal down, then the ABS kicked in, although it was kicking in quite softly.
I have looked at the discs and the feel ok, ie no major scratches of cracks...

I'm leaning towards either a warped disc, or boiled brake fluid... Is there anybody here who knows is stuff and can say, yep I had same and its def this????
PS car is 2014 model.
Braking is ok when driving normal urban, if I give a hard quick stop it seams to be ok, it tends to happen after a bit of prolonged heavier driving, and where due to the higher speed and shorter stopping distance I am holding the pedal down slightly longer than standard.

Any help would be massively appreciate :-)

 

Thanks for all the feedback guys, correct with regards to budget, the ebc get good reviews in South Africa, and cheaper than oem, did ferodos before and endless squealing, anyway, as also highlighted I don’t do track, so considered full track day pads as a no no, the tyres are in good condition, and the oem pads were doing same brake fade, with eventual abs kicking in, I then changed rear pads to new oem pads, and then oem pads on the front changed to the ebc yellow stuff, so far they aren’t squealing and brake ok with general braking... it’s only as soon as I start driving a bit heavy footed (braking heavy footed) I did note the brake fluid is pretty dark brown, I turkey basted the reservoir earlier, and will do full bleed through nipples tomorrow, praying this works! But also taking note of the other suggestions for future pads, also need money for remap

 

Hi peeps, heres a progress report, I managed to do a full brake fluid flush, used dot 5.1 motul, and the brakes are now working like brakes Havnt gunned the hell out of it, but they stopping properly when pushed, which it wasn’t doing before. Nb brake fluid was darkish brown and couple bits of black also came out, on the front I bled the inners first then outers in case anyone is curious. Thanks again for all the feedback, next pads will be the track ferodos, and agree I wouldn’t do map if brakes weren’t sorted first

 

Exactly xp8’s

 

Thanks guys it’s all good advice, and it’s standard practice for people to highlight their product as being a good option, when they have had positive experiences, Gives me good feedback to base my next purchase on.. some feedback on the EBC they been stopping well and no fade, however I don’t do track days, and I live close to work, so they havnt been given much of a workout, just a bit of spirited driving to work and back when safe to do so

 

Additional feedback I decided to run a bit more brake fluid through the front brakes, just to make sure the fluid is much cleaner, the prior flush was around 90% clearer, and I decided I’d like to get that last 10% clean, anyway the extra clean made a nice bit of difference, brakes don’t just feel like brakes, they feel like good brakes, can’t believe boiled / old brake fluid can have such an impact, even when there is only a tiny bit of it left in the system!

 

And here’s some info on the actual bleeding: I’ve no idea how to do it, and followed a utube vid, I actually started with front left as per vid, although all other vids said start with furtherest away from reservoir, the reason for front left was because it’s close you can pump out the main bulk of the fluid quicker, no idea if that’s true, but end of day my brakes work anyway I would advise starting rear right then rear left, then front right then front left. Nb the front calipers have two nipples on the top of each caliper, you must bleed both, I first tried with a 1 man bleed kit, piece of crap, then used the wife to crack open the nipple, id advise against that basically you want to pull the little rubber hat of the nipple and put your brake bleed pipe onto the nipple, then the other end of pipe can sit in a jam jar or any small container, I put my small container onto a can of paint so as to lift the jam jar up higher, and closer, then I removed the brake fluid reservoir cap, it sits to the right of the turbo, then pumped brakes around 10times just to prime them (probably not necessary) then I go and loosen the bleed nipple, and when I say loosen, I mean loosen and slowly tighten back till you feel it tighten, then loosen the screw just slightly, so it’s barely open, go pump brakes all the way down, three times, go check if fluid came out, if not then loosen slightly more, and try again, until you feel the pedal now starts to slowly go down under pressure from your foot, after the three pushes and you see brake fluid in the pipe, I suggest you top up the reservoir, use a funnel if you have one, nb brake fluid will eat paint if you spill it, so be very careful, I had hose pipe on standby if you spill any on the body, nb do not get water in the reservoir! Anyway, top it up and push pedal, I found three times is safe and reservoir doesn’t empty, now as you pump the brake fluid into a jam jar you need to watch where the fluid is in the pipe, more specifically you will see the fluid go through the pipe and start filling your container, and you may see an air bubble in the line, as long as you toped up every third pedal then the reservoir has fluid, So solid fluid should come out, as u push and top up the color will get clearer until your happy that it looks like what your putting into reservoir, then you can tighten nipple and pump pedal around 15 times and quickly go and slightly unscrew the nipple a fraction and re-tighten, this should be a very quick open close, less than a second, if bubbles came out then go pump 15 times and do same again till no bubbles come out, if you followed what I been saying, no bubbles should come out, that nipple is now bled. Do the same for the rest Nb my mistake was that I opened nipple to much and air was coming in, I also pushed pedal to many times before topping brake fluid reservoir and air came through, hence why I say 3 pedals and top up about 3mm of fluid, takes longer but Its safe and end of day my brakes are bled and they working strong Sorry I’m sure someone can say how to do it in fewer words and with less messing about but I can only post as per how I did it, if someone is unsure then this should give them an extensive step by step... in addition, the nipple size takes an 11 spanner, if you do get brake fluid on something, hose it down ASAP, also try to make sure your pipe sits comfortably in its jam jar or whatever, and isn’t stretched. Nb when doing the bleeding you need the handbrake down for the rear ones (I think) put a jack stand under car for safety, or a brick behind front and back wheel, make sure car is in flat ground so it can’t roll, and of course this was done with the wheel removed. I imagine u can do it with wheel on, but I’d be scared of messing brake fluid on wheel. When you all done, don’t forget to ensure reservoir cap is clean, and put it back on the reservoir, start engine and pump the brakes a few times, now go for a drive, go slowly for first few brakes to ensure all is ok, if you did it wrong you may still have air in system and braking will be bad. If so then re-do the bleed, get help this time lol nb if all good then test brakes going a bit faster, ABS may kick in early but should sort itself out as you test the brakes some more... hope that helps, feel free to ask if you got question... sorry it’s so long but I like to give step by step so that even my mother could follow

 

Hi Bobsan, I did inner then outer. As per the right up I just had a bleed pipe, no push system, although I would have used one if there was one in my local shop! Getting air go back into the caliper is where you can have issues, when you put the other end into a jam jar, some people add brake fluid to stop air going back up the pipe, however there will be air in pipe right from the start when you attach it, as you pump fluid out the fluid will fill the pipe and fill the container, what I did was lift the container higher, so that the pipe is higher than the caliper, so any air in the pipe will want to go to the top and away from bleed nipple, as long as your nipple is barely cracked open, you will be able to push fluid out using the brake pedal, and when you stop pumping the pipe should have fluid in it next to the nipple, so if anything goes back in before you can tighten the nipple, it will be brake fluid and not air. If you just attach a pipe and let the pipe hang down and fluid pump down into eg a tray, you possibly run a risk of air travelling back up the pipe as soon as you stop pumping, this why u normally have second person to tighten the nipple as you pushing pedal down But as long as your pipe is in small container, the fluid you push out will stop air coming back in, having the middle of the pipe higher than the nipple allows any air to collect there and not hang around the nipple area, so you can control what’s going on, ie close the nipple before air can come back in It sounds harder than it is

 

That sounds like a trip to the brake specialists! I don’t know much about brake systems tbh I know on my mk2 when changing the clutch they battled for hours, wouldn’t prime, same story, got hard then engine on and pedal goes soft... they resolved it by trying something else, I think they reverse bled the system from the caliper nipple or something like that, Doesn’t the ABS work on a vacume, have you tried googling ABS bleeding etc, may yield some help...

 

Was just reading that it’s possible to get the ABS to activate whilst driving ie look for road that you sometimes get ABS on if you brake hard, and try stomping your mushy brakes there just remember u would need plenty stopping distance in case your brakes are that bad... it’s not a safe option but it’s an option. Possibly a gravel road with plenty braking distance

 

Also apparently easier on grass also, just drive to nearest field and steady compression till ABS comes on, then re-bleed, may take a third bleed...