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Showerthought: I picked cheap pads over OEM and ate the cost twice in 8 months
Last spring my daily, a 2013 Corolla, needed fronts at 62k miles. Dealer quoted me $310 for OEM pads and rotors turned, but the parts store had a budget set for $58 total, so I went cheap because I had a big insurance bill that month. They felt fine for about 4 months, then this low grinding hum started showing up around 25 mph. Pulled the wheels in my driveway off Grand Ave and the inner pad on the passenger side was down to the backing plate already. The slide pins were dry and the pad material was just soft junk, so it chewed itself up while the outer pad still had half its life left. Ordered the real OEM set for $180 and did it right with new pins and grease, and 9 months later the wear is dead even on both sides. Lesson is the $250 I saved up front turned into $300 in parts and two wasted Saturdays. So what is your cutoff where cheap pads make sense, or do you just pay up for OEM from the start?
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matthew_reed5021h ago
The dry slide pins are the part most people miss. Cheap pads get blamed but half the time it is the hardware kit nobody buys. On my 2011 Civic I started buying the $12 tube of Sil-Glyde and pulling the pins every oil change, and my $40 pads from RockAuto wore dead even to 50k. The pads were never the weak link, the install was.
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