Std. or performance brakes

[Eric_Phillips]

I use a Toyota Sienna to pull a small pop up camper. We only go camping for about 1-2 weeks per year. When I had the van in for inspection they said the brakes pass inspection but are getting low. So I looked on RockAuto.com and they have daily driver brakes and performance brakes. The performance brakes are drilled and slotted and cost ~$150 more. I don't have a brake controller so the van is doing all the braking. I have not noticed any problems with the original brakes. Would moving up to the performance brakes really give me any advantage or would they just wear faster and cost more?

 

[mjw357]

Just get quality stock type. You mentioned not having a brake controller, does the camper have electric brakes? if so, i would strongly encourage you to spend the money for one. Prodigy is a good line.

 

[Travelover]

Just get quality stock type. You mentioned not having a brake controller, does the camper have electric brakes? if so, i would strongly encourage you to spend the money for one. Prodigy is a good line.

+1 . You can pick up a Prodigy Primus controller for less than a hundred bucks - this is an excellent proportional controller. By manually applying trailer brakes, you can stop sway almost instantly, not to mention the additional stopping power.

 

[Diamondpilot]

If it were me I would get drilled and slotted from Brake Motive. I've bought over 20 full sets and never a problem. Been using them for years.

Best place to get them through is Ebay

 

[TractorGuy]

Beware of drilled rotors. Guys I do track days with with avoid them like the plague. Dangerous cross drilled rotors - EBC Brakes

The cross drilled rotors are not at all like the high dollar rotors you may see on a Porsche. Those are cast with the vent holes in them. Even those will crack under high stress.

I only run stock type replacement rotors on my trucks and cars. I did upgrade to Cobra spec calipers and rotors on my old Mustang but still stayed with solid rotors. Never had one crack and it's seen many 140 mph to 40 mph cycles going into turn 10B at Road Atlanta.

For my truck I use the budget level pads sold at NAPA and they work fine even towing a trailer with a 5,000 lb payload. The trailer does have brakes on both axles though. On the Mustang I use a Lomandi brand Kevlar/Metallic street/performance pad made by a Canadian company.

X2 on the Prodigy controller. If your camper has brakes on it you should invest in a good controller and use them.

 

[Renze]

Spend your money on trailer brakes. Often your tires just dont have the grip to utilise the stopping power of performance brakes. Put braking power to the trailer wheels to utilise this grip as well...

 

[clemsonfor]

Don't buy performance pads, I doubt you will see a difference. I would buy daily driver or extreme use versions if you do a lot of mountain driving.

I like ceramic and am a fan of it cause it leaves no or I should say very little brake dust on your wheels, you can go 10x longer before they look even somewhat bad like the economy brakes.

 

[EddieWalker]

I just went through buying the wrong pads for my truck and dealing with a worse case scenario. They where the most expensive pads they sold and since I'm heading to the mountains in CO real soon, I felt it was a good idea to get the best pads out there. They went on very tight, but I figured they would just wear off and be fine. They had five sections, all a different size. They got so hot that when I went through a puddle of water, it turned to steam. A buddy of mine owns an auto repair shop, so I went to him and had him look at them. He said that this was very common with those pads and that they sand them down to get them to fit bitter. They make them bigger then factory stock pads so they can claim a longer life out of them.

All was good until one of my tires picked up a screw a couple days later. I went to my buddies shop to have him fix my tire and the brakes where to tight that they couldn't turn the tire. He told me that he had dealt with this problem previously and after months of being lied to by the rep from the company, finally got them to admit to the problem. Turns out that the City of Dallas returned 140 sets of pads for this same issue recently.

What happens is the pad is divided into 5 sections, that are all different sizes. The smallest section gets hot faster then the others and then expands, which causes it to get hotter. The sections next to this one then get hot and they expand too, so that quickly, all of the pads are hot and dragging on the rotor. Three days of this warped and ruined my rotors, pistons and other parts that had to be replaced. My friend said to stick with factory parts and he had all new, Ford, parts deliverd to his shop. The store that I bought the pads from admitted to the problem with the pads, including the story about the City of Dallas. They supplied every part for free, and refunded the original purchase for the bad pads.

I lost a day of work dealing with this and my buddy charged me $200 for labor to fix everything. The auto parts store filed a claim with the manufacturer of those pads to reimburse me for the labor, which the manager said they will probably agree to. If they only pay part of it, he said that they will make up the difference.

I'm intentionally not naming names here, but if somebody really needs to know who I'm talking about, just send me a PM and I'll reply. Until this is all worked out, I'm not going to go public with any names. Just stick with factory parts and you will avoid all this.