so one of my good friends is a mechanic, and he is a good mechanic (for example he graduated in the top 2% of his class at UTI, and he is a certified master technician and he is only 21. just so you guys know im not feeding you a line of bull on this) and he went to this bake system seminar, and he learned all about different rotors, the process of pouring and ingredients of different companies pad (i.e. napa, car quest, autozone....) and he told me that when you buy the low cost rotors from any of those places you get imported crap. and since they are imported there are no certifations (sp?) for any of it, as long as the thickness of the entire rotor meets oe. specs it gets shipped to the stores. the fin desgin of the rotors has no real special desgin it just separates the two platters i guess you could say. and he did see rotors cut in half so he knows what he is talking about. so basicly the cheap rotors could be a couple pieces of cardboard glued together with a layer of aluminum foil covering it and as long as it is thick enough they could ship it and sell it.
now if you get the "premium rotors" from a retailer like napa thoes are made in america
and the fin desgin is made to o.e. spec. and the metal of the rotor is made to o.e. specs and the only difference between the napa premium rotor and the o.e. rotor is that the napa one is a few buck cheaper. otherwise they probably roll off the same production line....literally.
another thing i learned is that with pads if you do alot of highway driving where you dont hit the brakes very often, the worst pad to get is a ceramic pad, they warp your rotors much much faster than the normal semi-metalic pad. this is because the ceramic pad was desgined to be used in a stop go environment where it is heated up and kept warm. it actually works better while warm or hot. when doing highway driving it heats up then cools off, heats up and cools off cause you dont hit your brakes very often, and the ceramic was not desgined to do constant heat cycles like that.
sorry for the long post i just though i would pass on some knowledge that i learned this weekend that i though was very interesting. if i didnt explain something just let me know and i will try to clear it up.
now if you get the "premium rotors" from a retailer like napa thoes are made in america
and the fin desgin is made to o.e. spec. and the metal of the rotor is made to o.e. specs and the only difference between the napa premium rotor and the o.e. rotor is that the napa one is a few buck cheaper. otherwise they probably roll off the same production line....literally.another thing i learned is that with pads if you do alot of highway driving where you dont hit the brakes very often, the worst pad to get is a ceramic pad, they warp your rotors much much faster than the normal semi-metalic pad. this is because the ceramic pad was desgined to be used in a stop go environment where it is heated up and kept warm. it actually works better while warm or hot. when doing highway driving it heats up then cools off, heats up and cools off cause you dont hit your brakes very often, and the ceramic was not desgined to do constant heat cycles like that.
sorry for the long post i just though i would pass on some knowledge that i learned this weekend that i though was very interesting. if i didnt explain something just let me know and i will try to clear it up.
