Shortly I will be doing a brake job on a 2003 Blazer. There seems to be a lot of expertise in this group so I am hoping that I can make the correct choice on my rotor purchase.
Who makes a durable rotor? I do not need performance, just durability. There seems to be many Chinese made rotors that are inferior. Or is this just a myth?
I bought the last ones from Autozone and they worked ok with one caveat. I took them out of the box and checked them at the store and found one of them had a crack at the edge and had them pull a different one. They were about $40 each. Genuine Ford were about three times that much. And the original genuine ford ones were badly warped in only 5000 miles.
I don't think it is a myth, but I think the Chinese ones are better than they used to be. Your best chance of getting a good rotor is to buy one from your dealer, but even that may not guarantee that you get a rotor made in north america. If you want a rotor from an aftermarket source that is made in the USA or Canada, good luck. About year ago I got to talking to a parts man from an aftermarket chain parts store about rotors and I bet him that I would not find a single rotor in his store that was American made. We walked back to to the section where the rotors were stored and they were all from Mexico. There wasn't a single one made USA or Canada. Any discount chain store employees here who wish to comment on that fact?
I bought a pair of rotors a while back from Checker Auto. They were Raybestos, made in Canada.
Most of the factory OEM rotors are cast in either Mexico or Canada. About the only U.S. made brake parts are the high performance aftermarket stuff.
I've been buying brembo rotors. I found their standard replacement rotors to be reasonably priced at tirerack.com.
snipped-for-privacy@mucks.net wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
I've seen the Chinese stuff actually flake apart, or spall. And not on just one rotor, either.
Large sections of the friction surface had peeled off to a depth of about
1/16", almost as though the friction surface was a separate layer of metal applied to a substrate of some sort.
And I've seen factory original parts from Ford,GM, Toyota and Chrysler do the same. There was a recall for many of them.
Also, be extremely careful when torquing them. These newer rotors are thinner and tend to warp very easily.
I bought a new rotor by Wearever / Raybestos. Made in China. Installed it about 3 years ago, 20,000 miles ago, on my V8 Chevy. No probs so far. 100 % CNC. Non-directional finish.
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