The buck stops here?

skyhighZJ

Thanks for your taxes
Joined
May 31, 2012
Location
Aberdeen, NC.
I need to spend dollars on brake pads for my 2011 ram 3500. I’m not rich but I will spend it where it counts. Do the upper level parts house pads provide good stopping power and service life or should I take out a second mortgage to mail order the fancy power stop or the like? What say you? Semi metallic? Carbon metallic?

FWIW I have the factory Alcoa’s and don’t want them to get overly fuct up with small rust spots so what are my options?
 
I just use the higher level pads from Advance, you'll have to run a ceramic to get no dust and most towing specific pads are a organic or semi-metallic pad.
 
Get on Rock Auto and get you some PowerStop rotors and pads. I run the Z17s, I think and I never see any brake dust, which is awesome. They're also not very expensive and that's always a plus.

For your truck they list a full set with rotors and pads for 525 bucks with their Z36 severe duty pads. Those are also a carbon ceramic pad...so the brake dust should be minimal to nonexistent.

I've noticed that the PowerStop rotors don't glaze over anywhere near as quickly as the ones from the parts store.
 
My rotors are factory and I can get them turned cause they are still well within spec. Will the power stop pads work (as effective) on factory discs?
I have heard aftermarket discs aren’t the same metal quality as the parts house options. Is this true?
 
Probably true...if anything, they're better quality. The last set of rotors I put on my HD were glazed in a few thousand miles with a noticeable decrease in stopping power.

I'm sure the pads would still do fine with stock rotors. They have Z17, Z23, and Z36. They're all 45ish a set or less.
 
Probably true...if anything, they're better quality. The last set of rotors I put on my HD were glazed in a few thousand miles with a noticeable decrease in stopping power.

I'm sure the pads would still do fine with stock rotors. They have Z17, Z23, and Z36. They're all 45ish a set or less.
Guess I’ll look into them and pick some up. I’m gonna do it at the skills center on post and I’ll turn the rotors (all 4 corners) so I’m just looking at replacing the pads.
 
The wearever gold pads in ceramic don't generate much dust. I usually run gold in or material. As far as I know the Platinum pads are mostly semi-met for most applications. Not sure on how much dust they generate but I would think they don't generate much. I dunt often install the platinum pads but there is a performance difference. There is a remarkable difference between the silver and gold pads. They also sell Frontline pads & rotors which are supposed to be even better than Platinum for pursuit/hd towing. Pm inbound.
 
The last two sets of Wearever pads I had wore grooves in my rotors. Both sets of pads had a large, hard chunk of whatever is in the ceramic compound sticking out. I've just about given up on brake parts from the local places.

Anything semi metallic is going to make an assload of dust.
 
I run power stop got them off amazon for my tundra but the rear pads wore crazy fast for some reason like 10k miles fast so I out weaver golds on the rear seams fine


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I put power stop rotors and pads on my duramax last year. They are junk, going to pull them off and go back with OEM GM stuff. They lasted 125k and worked well. Went with power stop because at the time GM could not get pads for my truck for some reason. I did the break in for them and after about 10k the rotors must be warped, steering wheel shakes like hell and the stopping is not as good as the OEM were. I wish I had read some more reviews. Most people are not happy with them.
 
:rolleyes: Not sure what reviews you read, but almost all of the ones on Amazon are 4 or 5 stars. Where did you find that MOST people aren't happy with them?
 
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