[Boxer]

Would apprecaite advise on Ceramic vs Steel brakes on the 430.

How are the ceramics on the road and when cold? Life expectancy?

Can the steel brakes hold up when driven hard or do they fade?

[StefVan]

On my F430, I had initially the steel rotors and upgraded them later to the Ferrari stock CCB’s. The difference is night and day in terms of endurance. My steel brakes tended to heat very fast and after a couple of U Turns on mountains roads (downhill), I could feel them fading and losing friction quite fast. Since I made the update, the more I brake, the stronger they brake. I never experienced fading even after very long downhill roads with many turns. Together with the Capristo exhaust headers, it’s one of the best upgrades I made on my car. I have a technical document that explains that these CCB’s have an friction improvement of 7:1 compared to the steel brakes.

Some owners complain that CCB’s are very expensive and eventually wear quite fast. Well, my pads, after 25.000 km/15500 miles are still at 95% and have no traces of wear on the rotors. Even cold, CCB’s do brake at least at the same level as steel brakes. But the hotter, the better they will brake and they’ll start making a very specific noise which informs me that they are at the right temperature to allow some hard brakes in turns. When they cool off, this noise disappears then.

And also, it do appreciate not having any brake dust at all any more J !

I found out that the most important thing with CCB’s is to change the brake fluid as often as possible and at least once per year. With Motul RBF 600, I have excellent results as this fluid works well for the CCB’s as well as the hydraulic clutch.

If you have to remove the wheels, make sure you always use wheel hangers. There is very little space between the rotor and the rim and it is easy to hit the rotor when removing the wheel. Hill Engineering is making a nice set of them : http://www.hillengineering.co.uk/catalog/wh02-without-knurl-p-63.html. It’s better to take those without knurl.


Having said this, I do not track my car. If your goal is to track, CCB's can get very expensive while for street driving, they will last forever.

[Boxer]

Originally Posted by StefVan

On my F430, I had initially the steel rotors and upgraded them later to the Ferrari stock CCB’s. The difference is night and day in terms of endurance. My steel brakes tended to heat very fast and after a couple of U Turns on mountains roads (downhill), I could feel them fading and losing friction quite fast. Since I made the update, the more I brake, the stronger they brake. I never experienced fading even after very long downhill roads with many turns. Together with the Capristo exhaust headers, it’s one of the best upgrades I made on my car. I have a technical document that explains that these CCB’s have an friction improvement of 7:1 compared to the steel brakes.

Some owners complain that CCB’s are very expensive and eventually wear quite fast. Well, my pads, after 25.000 km/15500 miles are still at 95% and have no traces of wear on the rotors. Even cold, CCB’s do brake at least at the same level as steel brakes. But the hotter, the better they will brake and they’ll start making a very specific noise which informs me that they are at the right temperature to allow some hard brakes in turns. When they cool off, this noise disappears then.

And also, it do appreciate not having any brake dust at all any more J !

I found out that the most important thing with CCB’s is to change the brake fluid as often as possible and at least once per year. With Motul RBF 600, I have excellent results as this fluid works well for the CCB’s as well as the hydraulic clutch.

If you have to remove the wheels, make sure you always use wheel hangers. There is very little space between the rotor and the rim and it is easy to hit the rotor when removing the wheel. Hill Engineering is making a nice set of them : http://www.hillengineering.co.uk/catalog/wh02-without-knurl-p-63.html. It’s better to take those without knurl.


Having said this, I do not track my car. If your goal is to track, CCB's can get very expensive while for street driving, they will last forever.

Many thanks. Great insights. I would not plan on tracking this car.

[Granucci]

Sounds also majority of your 15k is not in the twisties or requiring much in braking: so what % is braking. IICA.

[StefVan]

Originally Posted by Granucci

Sounds also majority of your 15k is not in the twisties or requiring much in braking: so what % is braking. IICA.

Difficult to evaluate the % of braking but I'm going on these mountains roads at least once per week as long as the snow is not appearing.

[StefVan]

Originally Posted by Boxer

Many thanks. Great insights. I would not plan on tracking this car.

Thanks Boxer. If you don't track your car, I believe that CCB's are a good investment. Another thing that sometime isn't said enough, never put any kind of cleaning products on the rotors. Wheel cleaning products or even simple soap can damage irremediably the rotors. I allow only plain fresh water if I really need to clean them.

Also, the only way to check the wear of the rotors is to weight them which is obviously isn't an easy job. That's why, when you upgrade the F430 from steel to CCB's, they will also reflash the brake node ECU which will contain a new algorithm that calculates the brake wear and updates also the ABS/ASR. This ECU update will track the % of wear depending on how the car is driven, as well as keeping track of the number of brake pad changes. Every 2x pad changes, the rotors must also be changed. But if you don't track your car, you will maybe not even changing once the pads

[Granucci]

Originally Posted by StefVan

Difficult to evaluate the % of braking but I'm going on these mountains roads at least once per week as long as the snow is not appearing.

Ok, so I'm assuming a fair amount of braking if not using gearing to take most corners makes the percentage more than not.

As we all can know, driving it a bit on a familiar road breeds a better polished performance .
So, on that, I'm hearing the CCBs are lasting better than some have admonished. GREAT.

SO, performance over cost over time, may in fact be worth it!?!?

still difficult to see all this over the interwebs

[Boxer]

Originally Posted by StefVan

Thanks Boxer. If you don't track your car, I believe that CCB's are a good investment. Another thing that sometime isn't said enough, never put any kind of cleaning products on the rotors. Wheel cleaning products or even simple soap can damage irremediably the rotors. I allow only plain fresh water if I really need to clean them.

That I was not aware of. Thanks

[tazandjan]

Boxer- Stef is correct. For street use, the only disadvantage of CCMs is initial cost. On used F430s, there is no cost premium for the CCMs that I have seen. They were standard from around Sep 07.

[Boxer]

Originally Posted by tazandjan

Boxer- Stef is correct. For street use, the only disadvantage of CCMs is initial cost. On used F430s, there is no cost premium for the CCMs that I have seen. They were standard from around Sep 07.

Actually it sounds like CCM would be less expensive in the longer term on a 430 Spider if you were not tracking it.