[Huskymaniac]

After way too much research I have decided on Stoptech cryogenically treated and slotted rotors for the front and Stoptech standard slotted rotors for the rear. I got all four for $276 on autoanything.com. For the pads I ended up going with Akebono ProAct ceramics. I got the fronts and rears for $96 on rockauto.com. The rotors really have a great reputation and I went with cryo for the front because our front brakes take a serious beating due to, I believe, being underspecified.

The pads were much more complicated. There were lots of semi-metallic, ceramic and carbon-metallic options. The carbon-metallic options from Hawk and Performance Friction consistently got comments about less than optimal cold stopping power. Hawk claims their HPS pads are good when cold but that does not agree with the word on the street. It made me question Hawk which was made even worse by them not returning my email to answer my questions. EBC had a semi-metallic option in their black Ultimax line but I couldn't find much information about them to verify their claims of the pad being anti-judder and good in the cold. On top of that, they returned my email with the suggestion of going with greenstuff (semi-metallic) which is notorious on the street for causing judder. Why would they suggest a pad that causes the very thing I specifically asked to avoid in my email? And their redstuff ceramic also had comments about being less than great when cold. Many of the semi-metallic options were lower end pads which are the ones that are notorious for depositing crud on rotors and causing judder. I seriously considered the Bendix Titanium pads (semi-metallic), as well as their CT-3 ceramic pads. Again, there just wasn't enough data out there to make me comfortable with them as an option. The two names that almost universally got good reviews were the Centric posi-quiet ceramic and the Akebono ProAct ceramic. One guy directly swapped out one for the other and said the Akebonos had a little better cold stopping power. That plus my positive experience with them on the Tribeca made me lean that way.

Now I just need to get Nate or Tom to swap in stainless steel brake lines at some point.