Front Brakes.......

[alpinecrick]

97 K1500 ECSB 147K
96 K1500 ECSB 248K

What brand(s) of caliper, rotor, pads are you guys liking these days?

My 97 I bought a few years ago from the original owner and have less than 20 on it. I'm pretty sure it has AC Delco front brakes on it because the owner was a retired Caddy/Olds tech and service shop employee.

The 96 I drive a lot more, and I've bought the parts stores "premium rotors" but they seem to warp sooner than they should.

Is the Power Stop Sport or Tow rotor/caliper/pad kits any good? I seem to recall some guys using the Power Stop rotors but different calipers and pads. Any other recommendations?

These are trucks, they are used as trucks (not my daily drivers though) and see a fair amount of mountain highway driving and gravel roads.........skiing, backcountry skiing, hunting, scouting, and occasional Sunday-Go-To-Meeting trucks......

 

[alpinecrick]

Oh come on.....somebody has got to have a undiluted, unbiased, semi-humble opinion...........

 

[454cid]

When I did my front brakes last summer, I bought calipers locally at Oreilly, just in case they seized I could replace them right away. I bought two sets of pads, and they're still mismatched as I haven't gone back to swap the first side.... el-cheapo Centric on the first side and Performance Friction on the other side. Rotors are Raybestos R-line.

I don't drive big hills or mountains.

 

[GarrettGmc]

I have the power stop caliper, rotor and pad kit, drilled an slotted on my 99 burb an I like em. I use it for offroad and towing multiple trailers - 20ft car hauler 20ft enclosed and a 20ft 4 horse trailer & I never feel uneasy when braking.

 

[Schurkey]

1. Gotta be really careful with rotors. Virtually all of them are cheap Communist junk. The best of them are "adequate" Communist junk. You're looking for rotors that have minimal air fins, meaning thicker iron on either side of the vents in the middle.

2. "Drilled" and/or "Slotted" is a marketing gimmick that pulls additional money out of your pocket for cheap-junk "white-box" rotors that someone threw on an automated milling machine, then put them in an expensive four-color box, and moved the decimal point on the price. All the metal that got carved away during the "drilling" or "slotting" is just less surface area for the pads to work against. RACE CARS get the pads hot enough to out-gas. This isn't something that street-driven vehicles need.

3. The last few sets of pads I've purchased came from Performance Friction, their "Carbon Metallic" pads seem to work well for me. Made in USA. Last I checked with NAPA, every pad set they had--no matter the price or the warranty--was imported from China or India. I've gotten Performance Friction from Amazon, but I'm sure there's dozens of retailers.

4. Don't forget to flush the brake fluid when you replace the brake linings.