someotherguy
Truly Awesome
It's not that our trucks have crummy brakes, it's that many people drive around with their brakes not working properly and think it's somehow normal for these trucks to have bad brakes. When working properly, they're just fine. One big problem is the auto-adjusters in the rears don't always work, so as the rears wear they get out of adjustment, causing a mushy pedal and poor stopping performance because now the fronts are overloaded. Occasional manual adjustment helps a lot. Another problem is the RWAL system used on the 88-94 pickups sometimes goes bad and causes problems. Some people remove it from the system entirely including plumbing it out to get rid of the dump valve; I can't tell you to do it or not as obviously you'd be tampering with "safety" equipment.
Pad choice is a huge subject because there are so many options. The bummer is, the more aggressive the pad, the more it's going to dust up your nice new wheels. Ceramics work well and won't dust the wheels but you give up some stopping power vs. the more hardcore semi-metallics. If all-out stopping power is what you want then look into the EBC and Hawk lines of pads and read their info to see what suits you. If you want good stopping power without dusting, go ceramic, and I'd suggest a quality name brand like Wagner. I've got their ThermoQuiet pads on my SRT8 and my truck.
Richard
Pad choice is a huge subject because there are so many options. The bummer is, the more aggressive the pad, the more it's going to dust up your nice new wheels. Ceramics work well and won't dust the wheels but you give up some stopping power vs. the more hardcore semi-metallics. If all-out stopping power is what you want then look into the EBC and Hawk lines of pads and read their info to see what suits you. If you want good stopping power without dusting, go ceramic, and I'd suggest a quality name brand like Wagner. I've got their ThermoQuiet pads on my SRT8 and my truck.
Richard