The brakes on my 2002 S-Type need to be replaced. It needs more effort than it shoudl to come ot a stop and the parking brake is useless. I suspect that glazed pads are rotors are part of the problem along with possible frozen rear calipers. I'm trying to decide whether to purchase a brake kit from either R1 Concepts or PowerStop, and whether to go with drilled and slotted rotors or just slotted. I've read numerous posts that recommend either brand equally, and some that say that the drilled rotors are prone to making noise and cracking. I have a 2005 X-Type Sport with drilled rotors and have expirenced no noise or problems, but don't unfortunately know the brand. Notwithstanding the fact that both brands use Centric rotors as a base, has anyone had dealings with either brand or their customer service (or lack of it)? Rather than buying direct from either company, I plan to purchase the kit from Amazon so there shoudn't be any hassles if it needs to be returned for an reason. I'm leaning toward PowerStop which seems to get a slightly better overall rating than R1 Concepts. I',m concerned about noise and dust, so should I buy the pads from a third-party ro stick with the company's pads?.

To the extent that these questions have been covered in previous posts on the forum,, please except my apologies.for wasting anyone's time.

Max

 

You could use rockauto for comparing brands. They have a nice info tab for each part. I bought rotors and pads from them for my str and have been very happy

 

Great idea, thanks. Trying to figure conflicting customer reviews is crazy. All I'm looking for is a set of pads and rotors that will improve braking, not make noise with a minimal amount of brake dust. The Holy Grail, LOL!

 

upgrade to the bigger 320 rotors. any rotor will work fine or get a nice coated one don’t bother with drilled or slotted lol. my 350 stops on a dime with the cheapest rotors on rockauto

you need the brackets from the sport or 04-05 x350.

 

2002 model means pre-2002.5 facelift, so with the manual parking brake?

It is possible that the parking brake just needs adjusting. Check that the calipers are free first as you planned and the cables are good. When you have replaced discs and pads, repeatedly pull and release the leaver. The auto adjust clutch should take up the slack in the cable and the brakes should hold.

Any disc from a known manufacture should be fine. I tend to use ATE or Zimmermann. I didn't have good experiences with ceramic pads. They aren't as good cold and make the lightly servoed brakes feel weaker than they are. Look for pads with the best edge codes you can. GG-rated pads are noticable grippier than the more common FF ones. Jaguar used to do a Jurid-sourced pad (GG with compound code 233) which is excellent (highly recommended if still available). But will be usual dusty.

New brake fluid if over two years old - DOT 4 Class 6 - the thinner stuff, remember.

 

Great suggestions all. Seems like the drilled and/or slotted rotors are more for cosmetics than they are for actual real-world performance (not that I'm immune from cosmetic appeal!). I know that you can increase the rotor size using MY2003 and up rotors, but that would entail changing over the brackets. If I were looking for 9/10ths braking performance I wouldn't hesitate, but this is reasonably-driven daily driver, and probably not worth the extra work. The car has a manual parking brake which, when applied, seems to slip accompanied by a rubbing noise leading me to believe that the problem, combined with the extra effort needed to stop the car, could be glazed pads and rotors. I will be checking the rear calipers before I do anything else to help further determine the problem. Beyond that, a set of good quality blank rotors paired with similar quality pads (I'll avoid the ceramic ones since it appears to be widely known that their don't have a good initial bite) should restore overall braking ability to an acceptable level. Probably will flush the brake system when I'm done in any case.

Thanks for everyone's suggestion in navigating this mine field.