Brake rotor and pads recommendation for '98 Civic HX

[cems70]

My wife's '98 Civic HX (95,000 miles) needs new rotors and pads.

Choices:

1) Slotted/drilled rotors: $135 w/ POSI quiet premium performance brake pads.

Any advantage to using slotted/drilled brake rotors besides the purported advantage of heat dissipation/better breaking? Any weight savings advantage versus stock rotors?

2) Genuine Honda rotors and pads: $150 shipped. I assume the genuine pads are semi-metallic.

3) Aftermarket from Autozone: $75 for the least expensive rotors and semi-metallic pads.

Any recommendations for the rotors or pads? My friend, a former Honda mechanic, recommended buying the Genuine Honda pads. He had no recommendation on the rotors.

Thanks for any insight.

[SVOboy]

Brembro blanks for the discs, I'm not sure about the pads though.

[thisisntjared]

cross drilled and slotted are crap. its all for bling. just go for blank rotors. metalic pads are trouble, they heat up and eat up the rotor. if you can stay away from those 2 things you will be in good shape.

[cfg83]

Hello -

Another vote for Brembo!

For my Saturn, I will want Brembo + Hawk HPS pads based on the same question I asked :

http://www.saturnfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93089

CarloSW2

[VetteOwner]

do not get the valuecraft autozone pads... the duralast are good enough. vented rotors are vented rotors... most aftermarket companies have equal performace/durability/fit as genuine parts so just get the autozone rotors. if you trust thier employees ask what thier opinion is. (alot of car shops get thier parts delivered from autoparts stores so they can give u the heads up of what they typically get)

why spend crazy ammounts of money on brakes that worked excelent from the factory if your not going to "race" anyone or use the brakes much at all(coasting good)

[GasSavers_Ryland]

why are you replacing the rotors? are they warped, or worn thin? unless there is something horbly wrong with them the most you should need to do is have them turned on a laith to creat a new surfice, if it turns out that you need new rotors I say that going with ones not made in china is the way to go, most of the auto parts stores are going to sell you ones that were made in china... so the honda ones might not be a bad deal.
as for brake pads, I have never had a problem with part store brake pads.

[Hockey4mnhs]

i think i need to replace mine it shakes the crap out of my steering weel when i slow down fast

[Bill in Houston]

No need to do anything fancy, in my opinion. Unless you run it on the track on weekends or something. I would just buy the part store plain rotors and the $38 pads.

[cems70]

I ended up buying Brembo blanks and genuine Honda pads.

The reason for needing new rotors is th car failed the RI state inspection. The Honda dealership where I had it inspected said the rotors had deep grooves that were beyond resurfacing specs, and they had "hot spots" that would render them useless even if they could be resurfaced. When I asked them why my wife did not hear the noise from the metal wear indicator (not sure of the exact name), they said it's a thin piece of metal that may have fallen off, therefore wearing the pads down to nothing without making a noise.

I didn't check the pads myself because it was heavy rain all weekend (no garage), and this particular Honda dealer has a good reputation, so I figured they weren't yanking my chain about the brakes just to get some business. But it struck me that if the rotors have such deep grooves as they described, shouldn't I be hearing the sound of worn pads (down to bare metal base) on the rotors? The car brakes great - no pulsing pedal, no noise.

In either case, they wouldn't have failed the brakes if there wasn't something to fail. If they did so, they would risk losing their inspection license. Anyway, I'll pull a wheel tonight and inspect them.

Thanks for everyone's input.