My 06 G, completely stock, has 12000 miles. The dealer said today that the rear pads have 2 mm left, while the front pads have 7 mm and recommended a rear brake job ($395 for replacement pads, turn the rotors, plus $139 for brake fluid flush.)

Should I just buy OEM pads and take it to an independent shop or do people recommend other brands? I've searched and seemed like people liked the Hawk brand pads. I thought about purchasing Akebono ceramic pads. Which leades me to the 2nd question- is it ok to use ceramic pads on stock rotors?

 

buy the Hawks and look for the DIY on brake jobs.

 

The stock pads are ceramic

 

Ceramic on stock rotors will be okay. They will bite harder so they will wear quicker but not a drastic swing in wear. I also recommend Hawk pads and stock rears. Our cars have a lot of front brake bias so the rears don't get pushed as much, creating little dust. Buy the parts and do it yourself. It's always great to learn something new.

 

What the other posters said. Go with Hawk pads and change them yourself. Your local auto parts store should be able to turn the rotors for about $10 each. Rear pads and turned rotors should cost right around $100.

As far as ceramic goes, I've always heard that your braking performance will decrease, but so will your dust. I have no personal experience with them though.

 

I vote OEM pads.


I've run hawks on other cars. They don't wow me, and sometimes i'd had them be noisy or even dust more than OEM. Those were not worth the sacrifice to stop 3 feet shorter on a daily driver.

My '06's brakes have worked fine and don't dust really, so when it came time for a brake job, i went OEM. Ran me $250 for new OEM front rotors and OEM front pads. I could have turned the rotors, but i wanted new stuff

Rear pads are $45 + $10s/h

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/INFIN...3867QQtcZphoto

Fronts were around $60ish IIRC

 

Hawks give up cold braking dist performance for less dust on the early 03-04 Gs. They actually probably brake worse when cold and maybe marginally better when very hot.

For early Gs, go oem and put up with the dust unless you accept the loss in performance

On the 05+, no other reason to go aftermarket when these oem pads maintain the world class brake performance and dust very little.

 

Hawk are great!!! i have 03-04 no dust...

 

Didn't say they didn't reduce dust. I said they give up performance to do so.

 

I didnt say you said anything,lol Just lettting OP know what I stated. since I have them on with Rotora Rotors.

 

+1 on the DIY. I'm planning on doing that this weekend. My rear pads lasted 3 years and 33.5k miles though. I talked to Paul @ US Autotek (on the boards here, send him a PM) and he hooked me up with pads + rotors.

 

Like Mustang5L5 said, I'm not impressed with Hawk HPS pads either. The cold biting power is very weak. Try Project Mu or others.

 

My OEM fronts on my 05 dust quite a bit. I think the X brakes may have been different than the RWD's in 05 though.

 

05 X have the older/smaller brakes that the 03/04 RWD Gs have. Your X model didn't get the bigger brakes until 06.

 

I do believe sir, that this is indeed false.

anybody back me on this?