A few weeks ago I replaced the front rotors on the truck and the pads I chose where ceramic. My thought process at the time was not to go with metalic pads and thus avoid any squealing. The rotors I got were steel, nothing special, so it was the metal to metal I wanted to stay away from. Needless to say ceramic was not the route to go. After the rotors warmed up any low speed stop would cause squeaking. I lived with it for a while but Friday I needed to do something. I picked up some cheaper semi-metalic pads for about a third less and put them on this morning and wouldn’t you know it, no squeal. Lesson learned high quality is always the best choice.

I’m sure ceramic is good for the right application just not for what I was doing. So for me and regular old steel rotors don’t use ceramic pads go with semi-metalic. I’ll try to remember that next time.