Well, here I am, out of town, bit of a time crunch, expenses piling up, parts for my truck were delivered to my hotel yesterday. This morning I get to the shop doing my Hawk brake pads, rotor turning, and Bilstein shocks install, all the way around.

They get to work while I peruse the FTE forums. I keep reading all of the brake threads and how rotors are junk.. blah blah blah..... Knowing as I do that this particular truck has gone through at least 3 sets of front rotors, I wonder what the tech will see when he goes to turn mine.

After bit.. here they come, wanting to show me my cracked rotors. The left front is cracking, directionally it looks like the rays of the sun, radiating outwards. The right front is similar (sitting in the lathe) AND the tech says hes been fighting the thing, trying to get it to turn correctly. He explains that the rotor surface is tilted. Imagine laying the rotor flat on the workbench, the outside edge of the rotor is higher than the inside. He says he cannot get it to turn correctly, and that he didnt think it would really do any good because the thing will probably warp in short order anyway.

The rears look scorched to me, so I told them to replace all four. They said they sell rotors at cost.... $45ish for fronts and $55ish for rears. The rotors are from CarQuest, and are the "premium" line. I cant really find anything about them on the CarQuest website so I dont know what the heck they are or who makes them.

Does anyone have solid info on these rotors? On the side, they do have cryo rotors for about $130 each, but they are in Kansas City, and that automatically puts them out of my time frame.

 

Ben,

Sorry to hear about your surprise.

FWIW...I put on a set of Bendix OEM style rotors and paid ~$40 each for the fronts. I'll bet near ALL OEM style rotors are of the same Chinese built heritage...so CarQuest vs Bendix vs NAPA vs etc...are likely going to be very similar.

My logic is that you could spend $130 each for a cryo set but you could also buy one OEM style and have it turned once (maybe twice) and get many years out of them or even buy another set and turn them and still have less in them than a set of cryos...of course I do all my own work...so someone else would have labor costs...

The PADS are IMO the important part of this equation...and it sounds like you've gone with premium Hawk pads...

I'd say you should be fine with the OEM style rotors for this go round.

Just make sure they are properly cleaning and lubing the slide pins on all calipers...

A bigger question is why are the rears scorched?...did he say that the pins were hung up or something?...if there is an underlying issue with the rears...you could end up simply scorching them too...make sure he is looking into why. Rears only stop a low percentage of the trucks weight...so this sounds odd...make him check it out.

Good luck and keep us posted!

Joe.

 

Hey, thanks for the heads up about the pins hanging up, I hadnt thought about that. I know the cracking in the fronts is caused from excessive heat, so I just figured it was the same for scorching the rears.

My sister-in-law used to drive this truck through the mountains, and shes not... highly skilled in saving the brakes... or having maintenance done for that matter.

I have read some of your posts about your brakes, and so Im not really WORRIED about the new rotors, I was more curious than anything. Even if they were going to be junk and not last too long, I dont have much of a choice anyway lol.

Also, I walked back there a bit ago and they were discussing my leaking rear axle seals. I looked at em and sure enough.... leaking. The left was much worse than the right, but both were bad. So add that to the list of things they are doing.

I also told them to flush the brake fluid while they were in there. Right now Im looking at nearly $900 for this bill. These things are not really unexpected, because I know how my sister-in-law is about vehicle maintenance.

On the upside, I have taken my SureFire flashlight and inspected most of the undercarriage while its up in the air. Found a couple of loose bolts under there and they are tightening them up for me.

 

Whew.. heckuva day I have had. About 3 1/2 hours at the shop, but after I left and bedded the brakes as per Hawk, and drove around a while today... I would say that my money has been very well spent.

The brakes are night and day from what they were, and my ride quality had increased dramatically. Thanks for the recommendations guys!