I'm checking to see if anyone has purchased the brake rotors and pads from Topbrakes_net on eBay. There's a set of front and rear rotors with ceramic pads for $250 with free shipping. That's a deal, but only if they're decent. My 2000 Vanden Plas needs brakes and I thought that would be a good deal.

The rotors come in your choice of cross drilled only, slotted only, or both. Any recommendations? I hear-tell the slotted rotors can be noisy when they bite hard, but otherwise, what's the deal? I'm a pretty easy driver but like to stop and go with fervency once in a while.

Please advise.

 

slotted and drilled will have the consistent 'hum' as they are rotated, but its not annoying unless you want TOTAL silence when driving with the windows down.

as for the ebay rotors, not sure about that company, but check out brakeperformance.com for some good products. I and others have had good results with this company.

 

I've used the ones from R1 Concepts (on Ebay) on four of my own vehicles to replace warped factory rotors. They are:

2003 Lincoln Aviator
2003 Lincoln LS V8
2003 F150 Supercrew Harley
2001 Excursion 4X4

All of the rotors have performed perfectly. I towed trailers with all of the vehicles except the LS and have had a few panic stops while towing. The vehicles stop perfectly every time and none of the R1 Rotors have warped. To date the highest mileage (40,000) I've logged is in my Harley Truck. I run it hard and tow my boats with it. None of the trailers have brakes. The truck does all the work.

FWIW I use the Posi-Quiet Brake Pads and they were and are quiet on all of my vehicles.

In addition, I have recommended the R1 Rotors to my neighbor that has a 1999 Superduty after I watched him put on rotors every fall after towing his fifth wheel trailer during the summer. He put on the drilled-slotted rotors and Posi-Quiet pads and has gotten 2 years without a problem.

One thing to note is that because the holes and slots reduce the braking surface area, a slightly higher pedal effort is required. It's noticable on the first few stops but after that your leg gets used to it.

Sorry to sound like an info-mercial here but I'm really happy with this product. I'd already have them on my new to me 99 XJ8 but the pads/rotors are in good shape. I figure I've got a few months to go and then I'll switch over.

Ken

 

Forgot to mention....

The only time I've heard a hum is under hard braking.

 

98 XJ here, bought this package from Topbrakes EBAY seller in 2008 you're referring to.

2 of the 4 rotors were Warped straight from the seller, had to haggle with the guy (which is from indonesia btw) to get any amount of a refund. Finally gave me 75% of the price, had them for literally 2 days on the car for about 25 mins. STAY AWAY dude, my two cents.

Now the PADS that come with I kept, they worked fine. Ceramics you're speaking about, they're still on the front of my ride actually, still quiet and still very strong. This is my 3rd car so I drive it maybe 2 times a week now if that.

Get the real deal Brembo man they're just as cheap as those, $51 each front/ $75 back in the right place You dont need slotted rotors for a 4 door semi-sporty family car, which these are. Pads you choose will make the biggest difference in my opinion. Pads are cheap online as you know, you can get much better quality pads for the same price.

http://www.drivewire.com/search/?PN=...universal:0%29

http://www.partsgeek.com/catalog/200...ake_rotor.html

I learned with this car after 2yrs now, never buy anything cheap hah, they don't like it!

 

FWIW, I believe R1 gets the castings from Mexico and does the additional machining in house.

Noteworthy of the Posi-Quiet pads is that they do not leave a ton of dust on the wheels.

Also forgot to mention two other friends of mine have used the sets based on my recommendation without issue.

 

Why not try EBC Direct?

They offer good quality at decent prices....They should be able to offer the s;ptted / grooved rotors and maybe EBC Redstuff ot Yelllowstuff as another member has just posted recently on his ride

If it still works type in scooby58 at the checkout for a 15% discount

 

I bought some e-bay rotors/pads for my X-Type. I don't recall who they were through. But, I will tell you what, when I put on the brakes, things go flying inside my car. I am very impressed with them. I will admit that when doing a very hard brake, there is a "whirring" sound. But, how often are you doing a hard brake? I can deal with the whirring for the stopping power.

 

The reason I wasn't going with EBC was cost. EBC and most other aftermarket high performance manufacturers cost twice as much. It seemed like the deal at Topbrakes was you could get a set of rotors and they threw in the pads. For $250 its a deal if its good stuff, but I'm going to go with DriveWire, a place I hadn't found, they had pads and rotors at great prices over PartsGeeks and the local shop. Its amazing how the prices vary so greatly on the same Brembo rotors from shop to shop. My local guy said $80/side the Advance Auto quoted $135/side, PartsGeek wanted $57 and DriveWire had them for $51/side. Plus the same pads (Centric Posi-Quiet) were $15 less than PartsGeek. Thanks for the recomendation!

 

Well, I ordered the parts through Drivewire...never again. It's been a total hassle and I'm not sure its worth the savings over other sites like Partsgeek. The parts are shipped from different warehouses with no notice, no tracking information, and some parts were out of stock and it took them four days to tell me that and instead of shipping them when they came back in (in two weeks) they just cancelled my order. Since the customer service is located in another country (India I imagine) it is difficult to get the help you need and my credit card company locked out my account because they kept trying to bill me more than once.

When they finally processed my order, some of the items arrived from a local warehouse next day, but the others were missing from the order and I was never emailed or called to tell me why. I found out that the other parts were coming from a different warehouse and they would take additional time to arrive, but they could not confirm when they would be shipped nor could they give me a tracking number. I was told that I would receive a credit for the parts that were on backorder, but I was not told when. The CSR just kept saying "You are authorized to receive a credit from any time starting now into the future" and I couldn't explain to the guy that what he was saying just meant the same thing as not knowing when I would get the credit. There is a barrier to communication for sure.

Long story short. I was not comforted by any part of the process. The customer service is **** poor, the shipping is speculative and you have no way of knowing when your parts will come and if they will all be there when they do, and overall, I felt like at any time I could be being ripped off. Not a good feeling. I've ordered from Partsgeek before and their service is great and you actually know what's going on every step of the way. The parts might come from the same place, (USAAutoparts) but their user interface is so much better.

 

whats the difference between the red stuff and yellow stuff pads

 

red stuff is a high performance street use brake pad, yellowstuff is more of a racing brake pad