anyone who has to do a brake job on their car....ever

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.

the point of my post was to say that you would be hard pressed to find a difference between the after market "premium" rotors and the factory stock ones at a higher cost

EDIT::but who is to say ford actually makes their own rotors and does not buy them from somebody? is brembo a good example. if they buy top line equipment, they could buy their stock stuff from somebody

once again...i have to say its not that the economy rotors are made of cardboard.. they just are not built to the same standard of quality that an o.e. or "premium" rotor is. they still work and many people drive with them and never have a problem. its just that the quality or the rotor is not as good therefore it is more prone to warping faster than the other ones would. i was just trying to make a point. in fact my girlfriends v6 stang has the economy rotors in them and she has not had a problem with them at all and she has had hers for a good 6 months now, and most people dont have problems with them, they are just not recomended for people who drive their cars hard like me or a number of people on this entire website.

i just want to make sure people dont take my post the wrong way. i was mearly giving information and saying that the foregin cheap rotors are not built to the same standards that the premium american rotors are.

sorry about the double post i forgot to hit the edit button instead