Brake dust

[nu11eaf]

Originally Posted by Lexman8

Washing the car today, I was very surprised by the amount of brake dust on the wheels, see pic. I don't brake hard and I've never had a car that produces so much of the stuff.

Anyone else noticed this?

(btw, the 10-spoke wheels are a pain to clean properly but I resisted my OCD telling me to remove the wheel nut covers to properly clean around them.)
_

The excessive brake dust is the second thing I noticed with my new XC90, the first was the really excessive road/tyre noise inside the car which is ridiculously noisy for a so called premium car costing £59K, the very nice man in my Volvo garage informed me that the reason why there is so much brake dust is that the brake calipers are 6 piston calipers providing much better braking than 2 and 4 pot brake calipers, mine has 10 spoke wheels, what a pain to clean but using high pressure washer does a good job and a lot easier.

[nu11eaf]

Originally Posted by bod

Mine are the same , lots of dust but on 19", I think it could be the Adaptive cruise control, obviously breaks alot to keep distance, when you are in control you tend to slow down by easing off and using the brakes less as the gap is not fixed.

I think the same as you, the adaptive cruise control is reactive and uses the brakes a great deal resulting in lots of brake dust, but this is excessive due to the calipers having 6 pistons and high brake force. Where as we anticipate and decelerate to slow down without braking too much.
I dont use the ACC much to avoid the constant wheel cleaning.

[nu11eaf]

Originally Posted by nu11eaf

I think the same as you, the adaptive cruise control is reactive and uses the brakes a great deal resulting in lots of brake dust, but this is excessive due to the calipers having 6 pistons and high brake force. Where as we anticipate and decelerate to slow down without braking too much.
I dont use the ACC much to avoid the constant wheel cleaning.

Update, since I stopped using ACC the wheels have stayed a lot cleaner.

[Deman77]

On cosmetics.
The 20in black wheels on momentum imop look better with break dust on them as they have lots of grey which looks better covered in matte black break dust - the car being black. They also only have a little of cut metal exposed so they don't look dirty. On r designs black wheels there is quite a bit more cut metal exposed - I think they look dirty when not cleaned. But their black is more black than grey so they do look nice cleaned. Having cleaned mine after winter I really don't like them in natural. I am waiting on mine to get all dusted up and will not be cleaning it off going forward.
Regarding excessive dust.
There is a TJ to replace both fronts and backs on my16 because of squeaking - possibly excess wear - mine started squeaking 2k in. There is also talk of calliper rattling on swedespeed which could be causing excessive wear - not sure if that one was confirmed.