Thread: NAPA, Auto Zone, O'Reillys and Advanced Brake Pads

For a Dodge Caravan, do the auto parts stores sell brake pads as good as OEM?

I don't want performance pads, by any stretch... I just don't want garbage.. This is for my gf's Caravan.

Napa the blue safety stop are retty good for the price. The adaptive one are great but a bit pricey. Carquest has ceramic pads for about 28 bucks, the cxd line.

Pricey like how? $80 for a set??

Depends on the counterguy. Anywhere from 60-80

Duralast Gold's are a factory spec pad. Usually had for $35 or so. I've had them on the wife's car for 6 years. Been through 1 set, but lifetime warranty replaces them free. I get about 40k miles on them. Not bad.

Only thing is they are factory spec. If the factory pads were semi-metallic then it might be worth upgrading.

I'm also running DLG pads on the Super Sentra's Brembos. SAME exact pad the dealer sells for $200 a set. I tried running a brakebest select from oreilly and a wagner from carquest and they sucked balls tbh. Even though they were expensive at about $80/set.

I tried the CMAX ceramics from AZ too and they are ok. They are a bit softer, so they are really quiet but they wear faster. Really good bite with those too. But the accelerated wear rates kept me with the Golds.

keep in mind you may do that pads, but if you don't at a minimum get the rotor turned you are just going to be throwing money away. Make sure you do the job right the first time. In other words if the dealer would throw away the rotors you should too.

I will be getting new rotors. the reason I asked about the pads is I've only bought pads from autozone once, and they were horrible. for my car I usually get carbotech or other performance pads...

Any of the higher priced pads are good. Advanced's "golds" and thermo-quiet are great. Any bargain priced pads are to be avoided like the plague. Iv had pads from parts stores with amazing bite, comparable to the ultimates.

I only sell Napa ADO pads at the shop here, I get a good discount on them, should I price out a set?

Stay away from most of the in house ceramics. Almost all of them are noisy as fuck.