If I could still get the assembly line “Blue Box” rotors, that would be my first choice. If not then the Motorcraft rotors since I know the specs the Motorcraft group required Federal-Mogul to manufacture to, although they are not the same as the TRW OE rotors. I would not buy drilled or slotted rotors.

Drilling rotors were done for lightening rotors for autocross acceleration, low speed work that doesn’t get the rotor vanes to pump air as in normal driving. Performance based OE vehicles that come from the assembly line with drilled rotors are designed incorporating the holes from design, so the rotor cooling vanes are designed for that change in air flow from the holes. Aftermarket companies never do that, they just drill and hopefully chamfer the holes to reduce stress concentrations. Of course they can’t chamfer the vane side of that hole through the rubbing discs can they. That’s done when the rotor are designed that holes are going to be done. So the only thing holes do is reduce the thermal absorption mass. Dyno testing by my old company showed the rotor temps for these aftermarket examples actually rose in grade fade testing sequences.

Grooves work for removing gas or water from the brake pad surfaces. In wet weather they improve braking for one revolution of the wheel, about 9 feet. They do remove organic component high temperature gassing, where the friction material is operating in a temperature range higher then it was designed for, or is just a poor choice for the application. For a good friction product, that’s over 1200°F, about what our trucks can achieve during a high speed mountain grade run at GVW, or in-city with a lot of stop and go traffic under 25mph, so the rotor vanes never have an opportunity to pump air. Grooves require a friction material that is very stiff, otherwise if the groove is sharp edged each passing of the groove slices a microscopic amount for friction material with every passing. But a still friction material has a tendency to hot spot rotors, which leads to developing hard spots in the rotor surface. So grooves lets a supplier use a less capable brake pad, not something I care for. Plus there are shops out there that do not care for turning rotors that are grooved since they can chip the bits they use.

So I prefer to use a full surface rotor with as much mass as possible with good cooling tendencies, ie the factory rotor.

As far as pads for the +’05 trucks I prefer the factory blue box assembly line pads. They are a better application then the OE pads used on the ‘99-04 platform. If you do out of the normal work with the truck, there are choices that could be made, but a friction material is a product of compromise. If you want a higher temperature capability you are going to loose cold temperature performance, temps under 200°F where we mostly stop unladen in normal driving conditions. And maybe some wear life or noise abatement. There’s no perfect friction material for all applications.

So the question becomes what are you trying to achieve?

I believe the last year of production was 2008, so adding three years of warranty 2012 was the end of pad production. So it depends if there is any stock sitting on a shelf. Parts guys tend to sell the Motorcraft as do service for cost competitiveness for post 3/36. However I can say with confidence the Motorcraft are pretty darn close to OE unless some damn fool in Smithville, TN came up with a better idea.

The reason for Federal-Mogul to get the Motorcraft contract in 2001 was it performed the same performance, durability and NVH vehicle tests that were done for the OE level. GM and Chrysler does not do that, and no other aftermarket supplier has done that for decades. It has been a selling point for Motorcraft.

Grinding can come from various sources, but a frozen piston, pin, or pad in bracket can cause a failure. Otherwise under normal light to moderate service the brakes on the Superduty can make it for 100k miles. I can do about 130 to 140. But a concrete guy hawking all the time may only get 30k. It really depends on energy dissipated per mile.

Bryan they better not. I’ve got OE blue box rotors for my truck purchased a dozen years ago when they were going out of production. I’ve even got some lightly used 500 mile rotors on the farm with a little rust. I've installed 10 year old rotors from storage that measured fine for runout.

You bring up a great point about rotor runout. It’s probably the least understood aspect of building up new brakes on a vehicle, and yet it’s been highly investigated since the early days of the ‘90’s, and caused a complete change in the hubs and rotors during the first year of Superduty production, and why the ‘99 hubs and rotors were changed. It’s also probably the biggest reason for turned rotors to have a poor result, other then hard spots in the rotor.

There are good performing products out there, depending on what you are trying to achieve. If you want a higher friction, depending on how it’s done you are going to sacrifice rotor or pad wear, or have a higher disparity in cold to hot friction. Or maybe noise. Even the center bullseye in your brake target is a compromise of all the aspects. But then I’m a detail guy, and what is a a concern for me is acceptable for someone else.

As an example, on my ‘99-04 brake system the OE material I thought was one of the best overall friction materials at the time. But it was not a good application on the Superdutys that were used as a consumer vehicle. It was a low abrasion material yet the early Superdutys had a high warranty for brake pulsation. This occurred because they were driven with a low brake application per 1000 miles. You always have some brake wear and you always have some runout. You never 100% clear one of the pads touching the rotor. A high enough runout, a fair amount of brake-off wear at that high runout, and not enough corrective on-brake rotor wear, you develop pulsation from brake disc thickness variation. But on pads that are more abrasive during stopping events and the rotors correct true. I run Hawk LTS pads although the cold brake performance isn’t as good as the OE. But they have a higher hot friction then OE, so they are good for trailering. Compromise. Everyone thinks they stop better then the OE, but since I had a test run to compare to the OE tests were already did, I know it feels that way, but stops the same. The deceleration comes in during the stop, but you loose a lot of distance at the beginning of the stop.