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Vinsil's avatar
Vinsil
Explorer
Oct 18, 2015

Time for brakes

My front pads are sitting about 30%, time to replace.

I know a few have gone to aftermarket (EBC) and have had good results. I've been pretty happy with my stock brake performance...but open to some advice. I don't want to touch the rears as they are 85% or so.

Towing 16k combined and that goes to 17.5k at times, mostly mountains. I use my manual gear selector and exhaust brake without issues now. BUT my last truck I was involved in two different panic stops 1995 F350, and led me to this Ram. Brakes are better but I did just add a BUNCH of unsprung weight with the 19.5's and 285 tires. They are at least 50-60 lbs more than my last setup and I can feel the braking difference..I lost some for sure.
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  • ISBRAM's avatar
    ISBRAM
    Explorer
    Oct 19, 2015
    I worked as a mechanic for a large county fleet for the last 20 years, we tried many different pads over the years. We ended up using a pad from NAPA advertised as a heavy duty fleet pad on all our light and medium duty trucks with hydraulic brakes.
    It gave us good stopping power and fade resistance with long life.
  • cmeade's avatar
    cmeade
    Explorer
    Oct 19, 2015
    X3 for the EBC green pads. Mine are a little dusty but only have about 7k miles on them. 5600 miles of that pulling 13k 5ver. Stopping power is awesome and had to increase volts to trailer to counter the increased braking of my Ram 3500. I replaced front and rear pads at 49 k miles. Still had over 50% on OEMs but wanted extra safety factor.
  • Grit_dog's avatar
    Grit_dog
    Navigator III
    Oct 19, 2015
    I put EBC green on the rear, super? Greenstuff on the front of my 07 recently. Orig rotors not turned.
    I'm very happy with them. No noise which I get frequently with OE pads. Almost no dust on black wheels.....awesome!
    Only thing I would reccomend is not bedding the brakes in as hard as reccomended. I think the break in surface does fine. They worked better than ever after a break in period and then I did the bedding procedure and 4 hard stops got them stinking pretty good hauling down that big truck.

    Placeforbrakes.com had the best prices I've found for the last 2 sets.
  • fitznj's avatar
    fitznj
    Explorer
    Oct 19, 2015
    I've been using EBC Green for 20? years - I almost always buy them form
    TireRack - been 100% happy with them

    Gerry
  • Kayteg1's avatar
    Kayteg1
    Explorer II
    Oct 18, 2015
    Had them on couple of my Mercedeses and after 80,000 miles still had 80% of pad left. No noise.
    On Mercedes forum they get 90+ % of votes as they keep the wheels clean v/s black dust from OEM pads.
    Fact is that did not use them on my trucks yet.
    Ceramic pads offer cleaner wheels, long lasting for slightly less braking.
    Good balance IMHO and Akebono found the formula that is not destroying rotors.
  • Vinsil's avatar
    Vinsil
    Explorer
    Oct 18, 2015
    Found them for $56 bucks shipped. Hard pad destroy rotors and are noisy. Is this going to happen?
  • Kayteg1's avatar
    Kayteg1
    Explorer II
    Oct 18, 2015
    Don't know if you can find them for your truck, but Akebono in performance pads beat the competition hands down.

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