What's the tale of ceramic brakes?

Pretty much all pads have some "ceramic" elements in them. The ones that are advertised as "ceramic" are usually low dust and relatively noisy.

They don't have to last forever, they only have to last long enough for you to lose the paperwork that came with them. They don't last any longer than any other brakes on the whole. But the manufacturers have worked out that most people won't save the paperwork or for some other reason will never take them up on the warranty when they fail.

If you want long-lasting brakes, ask taxicab owners what they use.

--scott

No, this was the alternator from a used car. They had no way of knowing who had bought the thing unless it had a serial number (in which case it wouldn't have been me), but the guy didn't look it up -- he just recognized it by sight.

They used to consider ALL their parts as lifetime parts. Given that brake pads are pretty cheap and last at least 40K miles, it's probably good business to include even consumable parts.

I've always liked Pep Boys. They uses to claim 'coast to coast' because they had stores in California and ONE store somewhere on the east coast

-- maybe New York. I think they have more now.

Remember when everybody sold 'lifetime' batteries? Some time in the

Firestone guys then tried to convince us that it would be better to exchange our cheap 'lifetime' battery for one of their new super-duper

We haven't driven the van for a long time, but I still have the paperwork and Firestone is still in business...

What is your evidence for this?

Maybe a decade ago I needed to buy a 10mm socket. (Yes, it's true -- no matter how many you have, eventually they will all disappear.) Sears is close. I could peel off the chrome with my thumbnail. Not worth returning for what is essentially cosmetic failure, but I'd never buy another Craftsman product.

I also broke a Harbor Freight open-end on the 1988 Caddy oil pan drain plug. They took the set back, of course, and I bought a better one (still unused), but the one that broke was really PRETTY (sort of a gunmetal grey, nice design). I still don't understand how anybody could make such shoddy stuff.

HF makes some shoddy tools, I agree.

For example, I use their tire mounting tools at home all the time: o Bead breaker (roughly about $50) o Tire mounting & dismounting tool (roughly about $50) o Static wheel balancer (roughly about $75)

All of which, IMHO, suck ... but ... they work. o I need one more tool, the "bazooka tire blaster" (roughly about $60)

But AFAIK, Harbor Freight doesn't sell the bead blaster (seating) tool!

The beauty of the HF tools isn't the quality, but that you can get the job done, where, without any tools, you can't mount & balance tires at home.

Nor repair them properly (from the inside) with a patch & plug.

Total cost (so far) was roughly about $200 or, at $20 per tire, about ten tires, which I surpassed _long_ ago (dynamic balance test is always free, while dynamic balancing, if needed, is about $5 per tire at Costco - but it's almost never needed in my experience testing on the highway).

In the past, oh, I don't know, five or so years, I must have replaced something like 40 tires (at least), so the tools are free at this point.

I even have some of these P215/65R15 light truck tires in my home office at this very moment, waiting for the fourth tire to arrive so I can put them on a neighbor's truck (since our mountain eats tires like you can't believe). o

I really need though, to buy that bazooka blaster shot of air!