I am approaching 10,000 miles on my 1970 Cutlass, and while my brake pads still have life on them I am getting tired of cleaning brake dust off my wheels and white walls. They squeal too.


I am thinking of putting on ceramic pads for next year and was wondering if anyone has had good experiences with a particular brand.


My brake setup is a reproduction kit sold by Inline Tube, and is faithful to the original design.

 

I don't have ceramic pads on my older Olds' but I do have a set on my 02 Impala daily driver. I've been very happy with them- no brake dust clean up and they went very many miles. I finally replaced them last year with another set which were replaced for free under warrantee. I remember when this car was newer I went thru front pads and rotors frequently. Since I changed to ceramic and higher quality aftermarket rotors I get very long life. I am not sure exactly but I bet I got 80,000 miles out of those first ceramic pads. Car now has 260,000 on it.

 

My newer sport car has Brembo calipers with 13" rotors and I recently installed Akebono ceramic pads and they work well. Great bite and very little dust.

On my Cutlass I have used Raybestos semi metallic pads since the 80s when I worked at a couple auto parts stores in school. Never had any real dusting issues with them (unlike the factory pads on the Brembo brakes that blackened the wheels within a week).

 

I changed over to Raybestos ceramic pads on my '68. much,much cleaner! The repro disc brake kit I bought,while all new parts came with crappy bonded metallic pads that really put out the brake dust! They're all over ebay. shop around you should be able to get them for around $30

 

I have been using these




Everyone I install them for says they are the best they have had. I think the same, best I have used. AND look at the price!!


Mike

 

I, too, can attest to the fact that the Wagner ThermoQuiets are superb! Actually, I've never had any dust problems with their ThermoQuiet Semi-Metallics, either. My personal experience with ceramics is they will chew your rotors long before the pads are gone...unless, you buy high quality (read...NOT Chinese) rotors.

 

The pads that came with the Inline Tube kit on my car were very dusty. Swapped a set of semi metallics (Duralast Gold I think) for very little time & money and no more issues.

 

I put ceramic pads on my 2000 Chevy truck and they warped the rotors. Never again will I use ceramic pads. You can believe this or not but I have a buddy who has a 05 Yukon with over 300K on the original pads. If I didn't know him as well as I do I wouldn't believe it either.

 

I have heard many times that ceramic pads are hard on rotors - it totally makes sense. Also, many folks say that good brake pads are prone to generating dust, and it's a fact of life that you just deal with. The brakes on my wife's BMW Z4 are fantastic, but they dust like crazy.

So which would you prefer: brakes that stop on a dime but make your wheels dirty, or brakes that keep you wheels purty but may not stop so well and will chew up your rotors.

 

My daily driver is running Toyota original pads OEM on it with 174k on it. I do road miles, and it's a stick, which helps. Performance pads are like performance tires, they will wear out faster. If a vehicle has good OEM pads, I believe in sticking with them. I think high quality original style brake pads should work well and not dust badly.

 

GM OE pads/shoes outwear anything I have tried and they don't dust up either. It's been years since I have tried anything other than OE on my vehicles and the same same goes for Toyota OE pads on my cars.

 

Thanks for all your input guys!

 

X3, I have them on my Bravada. No brake dust or squeal. Ceramics is too hard for my drilled rotors. It actually put grooves into it so I replaced the rotors and ceramic pads for Wagner.

 

Last year on my daily driver I put quality rotors front and back, and name brand full metallic pads. After another harsh NY State winter and 11,000 miles my brake system was junk. The surfaces of all the rotors looked like asphalt. I've experienced this prior, using metallic pads, but not as pronounced as this last time.

Replaced everything again, this time used Wagner Thermoquiet in the front and Delco ceramic in the rear. We'll see what this looks like in the Spring but I'm optimistic I won't have the same experience with the ceramics.

Probably not an issue with hobby vehicles or in mild climates like PA and NJ

 

I am not really too worried about my rotors since I am probably only going to put another 10,000 miles on the car. If I am able to exceed that I will gladly put on a new set. It is kind of like complaining about the weather.
I found a very interesting aid in thinking about brake pads: http://www.essexparts.com/learning-c...ose-brake-pads

 

I put ceramics on the front of my 72 Cutlass S. Original style rotors, still with the groove milled into it.

They are much better than whatever I took off. As far as dust, well I dunno, the car is black, the wheels are black, they get dirty no matter what.

They were only like $45 wholesale. I turned the rotors at the same time, no problems yet. But I don't drive it all that much. 1000 miles a year?

My DD sport coupe has ceramics and 13.5" front rotors, they work well. Pads warrantied for life, rotors for 2 years. Whether they need it or not, I'll swap the rotors next summer and warranty them.