Tapered front pads wear

[ABenLauda]

All 4 of my front pads have quite noticeable tapered wear. These pads were brand new and this is after 8 x 25 min sessions. Could something be wrong with my calipers? Maybe one piston isn't fully releasing? Any advise is greatly appreciated. TIA.

[NYG]

No sir. Normal.

You can rotate them if you want more life.

[sc_tr0jan_m3]

What ^ said

[elite53]

This is copied and pasted from AP Racing…..

Pad Taper
You're always going to have some taper, and a few millimeters of taper is quite low and completely normal. In racing situations, we see as much as 10mm of taper, and the taper is not equal from pad to pad. Again, pad taper is completely unavoidable. We see it on every car, with every brake kit, from every manufacturer. We see it both radially (top-to-bottom) or longitudinally (end-to-end). We almost always see slightly different wear characteristics on the left and right side of the car based on track configuration. We see it all levels of racing, including NASCAR Sprint Cup. One reason it occurs is because of uneven temperatures at the leading edge of the pad and the trailing end. The leading edge will always run hotter and wear faster than the trailing edge. The trailing edge floats a bit on pad material that is torn from the leading edge and pulled back towards the trailing edge. The longer the pad is, the more pronounced the taper tends be. If you look at a short four piston pad vs. a longer six piston pad, the six piston pad will always have more taper all else held equal. The pistons in our AP Racing calipers have differential bores (pistons are different sizes) designed to combat this issue. The piston on the leading edge is smaller to apply less pressure, while the trailing piston is larger to apply more pressure, which helps even out the wear. It's pretty much impossible to completely eliminate all taper however. The solution to get more even wear out your pads is to occasionally flip the pads in the calipers from inner to outer, so that the edges that were leading last time are now trailing, and vice versa. Doing so occasionally also gives you a chance to inspect the pads and make sure they aren't getting too thin.

[SYT_Shadow]

Are you running stock calipers/rotors?

[ABenLauda]

Originally Posted by SYT_Shadow

Are you running stock calipers/rotors?

OEM calipers and rotors, yes.

[SYT_Shadow]

Originally Posted by ABenChod

OEM calipers and rotors, yes.

That's odd. I haven't seen this on stock brakes. It isn't the end of the world, it makes it easy to only check one pad to know when they need a swap

[bimmerboyE92]

Pretty normal. What pads are you running? Softer pads like Hawk DTCs will taper on the stock brakes. My AP Racing BBK on DTC-70s still taper but acceptable considering the thickness of the pad.

[ABenLauda]

Originally Posted by bimmerboyE92

Pretty normal. What pads are you running? Softer pads like Hawk DTCs will taper on the stock brakes. My AP Racing BBK on DTC-70s still taper but acceptable considering the thickness of the pad.

PFC11

[bimmerboyE92]

Originally Posted by ABenChod

PFC11

I've never ran those pads before. But on my e36 I "rotate" my pads after every 2 track days to mitigate taper.

[paffinity]

I get this same behavior too. I just rotate after events now to even it out.