auto zone brake wearout poor workmanship

Did you install new rotors or have them turned/re-surfaced? If not, old rotors, especially after 51,000 miles will be conformed to the old pads. Putting new pads on old rotors will wear out the pads quickly as the the new pads are flat, and the old surface of the rotor will be curved, warped, grooved, etc.

What "backyard guys" don't understand when working on there vehicles is the proper parts to complete a brake job. Like stated on here before, YOU NEED the brake lubricant for the guide pins/sleeves. YOU NEED brake clean/parts wash to clean the machining oil off the rotors. ETC. See, all of these steps play a major roll in the life of your brake pads. Getting by with JUST pads does not cut it. The braking system is very intricate. Everything needs to be free moving. Calipers/Brake Hose's and driving habits are also a key factor in the life of your pads. People....stop doing hack jobs and complete the job right the first time. I can guarantee you 90% of the customers I deal with have never mic'ed out rotors EVER. This is all stuff you need to do before completing a brake job or YOU WILL run into problems later on down the road. Granted some brake pads will wear out faster then others. For example: Organic Pads Vs. Ceramic. Yes the ceramic pads will outlast the organics, but you are going to consume more of your rotor life being that it is a more coarse pad. If you use the organic pads which are a softer pads you are going to go through pads more often. Even more often if the braking system is not free flowing. I have used Organics, Semi-Metallics, Performance Carbon Metallics, Ceramics and have never had problems with any of them at all. My parents all have Duralast ceramics or Duralast semi metallic's on their vehicles and never had any problems also. I hope this informs some customers/individuals.

i have a 1993 grand prix and i have had this car for 10 years i have put 11 set of breaks
on this car.GM had proublems with the breaks when this car was new auto zone has given me 4 pairs of breaks for my car with out eney lip inculeding the clapers and rooters /so i dont know what your proublem is just buy the life time breaks .and you will never have to buy eney more of them and get a book so you can install them in your car because you will have 2 change them before long agine.

Typically brake pads shouldn't wear out in a year, but when you spend $20 dollars for pads what do you expect? If they do wear prematurely, you get a new set for free and if your dissatisfied with them you have the ability to put the old pads as a credit towards an upgraded set... Since you got a lifetime warranty I take it you didn't get the Valucraft pads, which I usually tell customers has about a 6 month life expectancy (pretty much everything valucraft will fail within a year, its cheap stuff what do you expect). I highly suggest to all my customers to use the Duralast Gold Pads, The Morse Ceramics, or the Carbon metallics, with lifetime warranties as they are manufactured using better quality materials. For cars that need rotors I suggest the Duralast specifically for the two year warranty, or the Bears for quality. However I must say I have sold thousands of Duralast brake pads (literally I have been with Autozone for more than two years now part time) and realitvly few complaints. If your looking for rotors I typically suggest Duralast for the cost effective 2 year warranty or the special order Bear rotors for the quality.

Auto Zone has a great many quality auto parts, but brake pads are not one of them. I have purchased many parts from the Zone thru the years with great satisfaction. for some reason they WILL NOT handle a Quality brake pad, and for the life of me I cannot understand why...I believe that the gentleman with the limo with Auto Zone pads is misrepesenting himself, as it is IMPOSSIBLE to achieve what he claims. Why he would claim this, I do not know...Anyone who has used these pads and kept their car knows I am Right......

The Duralast Brake pads is what I use on my Lincoln Town Car Limo. These are exceptional brake pads with a great warranty. If you are not getting more than 2000 miles on your pads, regardless of brand, I would strongly consider trading. The personal that are trashing these pads are former employees and it reflects the reasons they were seperated from the company. The pads gives me great mileage and no problems. I have these pads on all of my cars. I run at least a thousand miles a day on these pads with no problem.

Moreover, I would like to see a Duralast Brake Pad that is evenly worn down in just 2 months or 2000 miles. Whoever buys this story has bought the Sanfrancisco Bridge in the past. Most of my co-workers drive with the same Duralast Pads. So if you dont like them, Don't grab a limo in Georgia, because they are everywhere.. Keep on bringing good products AutoZone.

I am a former Autozone Parts Sales Manager. I wish I could count the extraodrdinarily HUGE number of premature brake pad-wear returns that I handled while working there. I myself have installed the low price, lifetime warranty pads and have had problems (after 800 miles!). I DID use the lubricant, DID clean my rotors, and my brake parts have been inspected and are fine! I suggest if you are going to buy "lifetime" pads (which as the previous poster commented on as being "unrealistic"), buy from a REAL parts dealer, such as NAPA or Standard.....Duralast, Albany, Valucraft.....what a joke! I got tired of having to disallow warranties for bulls**t reasons.

I don't get this thinking that brakes are a lifetime thing. Braking is a friction system. With friction you get wear. Either the pads wear or the rotor wears. In physics, theres no such thing as wear free friction. Something has to give. With these newer harder pads ( pads that are so hard, they can now shatter as mentioned ) I have noticed the rotors do wear down rather quickly but, then again, something has to give with all the friction braking produces. Manufacturers have really done themselves a disservice by attepting to sell their products as indestructible items. They are attempting to defy the laws of physics in the process. People, just replace the pads as needed and stop expecting miracle lifespans.

They don't seem to sell the "Albany" brand any more. They have Valucraft and two or three grades of Duralast. It's likely the Valucraft ones are just Albanys in a different box though.

Cheap really knows no bounds. I bet they get people asking why they have to buy a set of 4 brake pads when only one of theirs is worn out.

I bought a set of the Albany pads for my wife's Dodge, when they first opened in Jax, NC.

The meat came clean off the backing plates after about 2 weeks. Nothing was wrong with any other part of the braking system. The resulting damage cost me $300. AutoZone offered me another set of the pads. No thanks.

I've had 4 customers bring me them to install on their cars. Every one of them has failed. One of them came apart in 5 stoplights. I wouldn't install them for him, so he did the job himself. Nothing was wrong with his system either, nor in the others. Luckily, he managed to put his car in a ditch instead of another vehicle.

I don't bother putting them on anymore. I tell them to either get the good ones(yes, they cost at least double), or go away.

My life, and those of my customers, are worth far more than the price of the CHEAPest pads ever put on the market.

I have worked for Autozone for over ten years. I have had several people complain about brake wearing out in as little time as two weeks. I have come to learn that it is usually from improper installation and or there are other under lying problems that the customer fails to understand. If brakes are wearing out before at least a year or less they have other problem. They either have a bad caliper (which is easly checks) but more often that not they have a bad brake hose. get real people contray to popular belief you here at AutoZone are hear to help you fix your problem.

I have worked for Autozone for over ten years. I have had several people complain about brake wearing out in as little time as two weeks. I have come to learn that it is usually from improper installation and or there are other under lying problems that the customer fails to understand. If brakes are wearing out before at least a year or less they have other problem. They either have a bad caliper (which is easly checks) but more often that not they have a bad brake hose. get real people contray to popular belief you here at AutoZone are hear to help you fix your problem.

I have worked for Autozone for over ten years. I have had several people complain about brake wearing out in as little time as two weeks. I have come to learn that it is usually from improper installation and or there are other under lying problems that the customer fails to understand. If brakes are wearing out before at least a year or less they have other problem. They either have a bad caliper (which is easly checks) but more often that not they have a bad brake hose. get real people contray to popular belief you here at AutoZone are hear to help you fix your problem.

I have worked for Autozone for over ten years. I have had several people complain about brake wearing out in as little time as two weeks. I have come to learn that it is usually from improper installation and or there are other under lying problems that the customer fails to understand. If brakes are wearing out before at least a year or less they have other problem. They either have a bad caliper (which is easly checks) but more often that not they have a bad brake hose. get real people contray to popular belief you here at AutoZone are hear to help you fix your problem.

I replaced the front brake pads (Duralast part MKD791)and rotors on my wifes 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee about two monthes ago. Yesterday I replaced the rears (Duralast part MKD945) and rotors. I've been doing my own repairs for 40 years and I have never had a brake problem before until now.

After installing the rear brake components and test driving the vehicle, the rear pads and rotors got so hot they were smoking. I took it apart again assuming the calipers must have been sticking but they were fine. I checked the front brakes just for giggles and after only two monthes the rotors were horribly ground and worn as if the brake pads had way too much hard metal in the metalic mixture.

All the other brake components check fine with nothing sticking or rubbing anywhere. Although Autozone will replace these parts under warranty, am I supposed to get used to doing a brake job every two months? I'd have to call this a rip-off since I'd rather have a full refund on these junk parts so I can buy something that works the first time.

For the former mechanic/ex-Autozone employee, he is talking about brakes that are manufactured by different companies in different places having the same problems.

The only common link in them is him. I have a Mustang that I bought from a friend of mine almost 6 years ago. He put Albany brakes on it from Autozone (which are just an ordinary middle line product, nothing fancy) a year before he sold it to me and they are still on there!

It is a known fact, some shops and most DIY individuals do not do a proper brake job! They don't clean the rotors and calipers thoroughly and don't use the brake lubricant which allows the calipers to move freely and also helps prevent brake squeal. And very rarely is any hardware replaced or rotors/drums turned unless absolutely necessary.

This is stuff that MUST be done with every brake job! It just seems most people don't want to either take the time or spend the few extra dollars to do it right.

Most people do not relize that the parts they buy are not manufactured by the people that sell them. Autozone does not make brakes, but try to help people to get thier cars going agian. I am not an auto zone fan, in fact most of their counter help has probubly never workered on a car. But if you have done your reserch you will find that there is only A hand full of aftermarket parts manufacturers. So what I am basicly saying is don't think that if your paying more you are getting more. I'ts more tham likely in your head.

I was a Commercial Specialist for Auto Zone (BONE). I was fired because I wouldn't sell the brake pad's to any of my account's. I was a mechanic for 20 year's. And wanted something different and sold part's. I have tried there brake pad's even there perfomance pad's. I would go throu a set of pad's (Regular) in about 6 month's. And that was driving from home to work. Which was only 6 mile's one way. And I didn't buy the cheap organic pad's either. So I wanted to see how these so-called Performance pad's would work on my Mustang 5.0.

Guess what they did worse. It state's it would would prevent fade out from over heating the brake's. After a couple of run's with my car I couldn't stop like I should have. I wouldn't recommend any of the brake pad's to anyone, no matter how desprit you are.

i worked for auto zone for 5 years, and i have listened to many complaints about brakes, and many of the other products at auto zone. autozone sells good parts, you may find better at a dealer ship but you get what you pay for. there are so many things that can cause brakes to fall apart, from bad workman ship to driving habits. i have had auto zone life time brakes on my car for over two years and have had no problems. most after market auto part stores sell alot of cheep parts. every one wants cheep!!!! i can't count how many times a customer said to me " do you have anything cheeper". when i was a manager i tried to take care of problems in the store before it got to the corprate level. working with the public isn't easy. maybe thats why i left retail sales.