When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
I put these ceramic pads on my 2004 Sedan a couple years ago. Now my rotors are toast, while the pads aren't even worn out. They wore the rotors out instead of the pads.
Unless I did something wrong, but not sure what that could be?
I'm about to buy new rotors.
The car has non-Brembo brakes. What rotors should I buy, and what to do to prevent this again?
I started spending more money on rotors so they wouldn't rust so badly and look so crappy so fast. So if the local parts store has good/better/best Centric rotors, I get the best and they should be electrocoated or whatever so the hats don't rust so badly so quickly. I used to buy slotted/drilled rotors and pads from Powerstop and they were fine. But these days I just get plain old auto store best variety and call it good. There was a time way back when I got new calipers and rotors and bought the standard stuff and spent almost as much money as it would have cost to buy reman brembo parts to put on my X which would have looked really cool. There is a thread on here where somebody did that to show it works and it didn't cost that much more than replacing everything with standard parts.
No idea why your rotors wore out after installing those pads. The only time I get abnormal wear is when a caliper freezes up and doesn't retract properly and wears one of the pads completely out and runs the backing plate into the rotor. But doesn't look like that happened to you.
I don’t know if I would say that they destroyed your rotors. Sure, it looks like they are wore, but not destroyed. How big of a lip was there when you installed the pads? It looks like one pad may be wore more than the other, did you properly clean and lube the slide pins and bores when you put new pads in? They may be hanging up, and just throwing new rotors and pads on won’t fix that. And there’s no need to go buy new rotors, you can have those ones turned and save some money.
Regardless, doing a brake job is not just a matter of slapping on new rotors and pads and calling it done. The calipers need to be inspected, slide pins cleaned and greased with the proper high-temp grease, all surfaces cleaned of rust and junk to make sure the rotors run true, and then install the rotors after thoroughly cleaning them and the pads after using the same high-temp grease on contact points. Follow that up with a proper brake fluid flush.
