frankie@work

A friend who works for ZF sent me the following info:

"The stock Audi pads are from Federal Mogul's sister company, Jurid. The black dust is the result of a burnishing process they put on all the German OE pads. The burnishing turns the material black and allows the pads to break in within 50 kms. This is extremely important on the Autobahns of Germany, but not anywhere else in the world. So we (Mintex) receive the same formulation without the burnishing process, and this makes Mintex pads cleaner, but they have a longer break in period. Once broken in they perform the same."

JAA 4.2

I have found dusting with the stock pads to be totally acceptable with good performance. The EBCs had horrendous dust with comparable performance on the street.