3 Great Options When Replacing Brake Pads On Your Toyota Prius

They make thousands at a time when they make them. You really think they are going to stop somewhere along the line and say hey joe, we are gonna grind the name off these castings. Start using cheaper parts. Logically they make all the pumps to the same standard then they grind the name off the amount they keep under their own name. It silly to think they would use cheaper parts in pumps under their own name when the Toyota is so much more they can make more money selling under the Asin name than selling them to Toyota.

 

Apparently you didn't own a 1988 Volvo. The OEM water pumps on those were crap (weak bearings). Put the OEM part back in and 40K miles later, you are doing it again. An aftermarket company made a good replacement with a much sturdier bearing. Install it once, problem solved.

Just because it has a manufacturer's name on it is no voucher for better quality. However, it's a free market and if you want to pay extra to see "Toyota" on your parts, that's your option.

 

Combined with my experience comparing the quality of their parts to some I've seen aftermarket, though, it does turn out to mean something after all.

Not that it's impossible for another manufacturer to produce a part of equal or better quality. Of course it's possible. But there could be a lot of frogs to kiss to find that one.

 

Neither of us knows how it goes. It could be that the ones that don't pass QC get thrown into the OEM bucket and sold without a Toyota logo. Why even pretend you know how they are doing it? You have no idea. And neither do I.

 

In around 2001, I got a dealer price of over $700 for a replacement exhaust system for my 89 Accord.
I went to an auto parts store to price it and it was about $300. I thought, what the heck, it was a 12 year old car, I will just buy the cheaper system. Once I got it home and laid it out side by side with the Honda original, it was clear that it was not going to be just a direct replacement. It would take some work to adapt it to the car.

I returned it to the store.The original exhaust was made of stainless steel which is why it lasted 12 years. The aftermarket replacement was aluminized coated steel which is good for 3 or 4 years. The original one had flanges and bolts to connect the three sections together. The replacement had slip fit pieces and u-bolt clamps which was probably not a big deal. What it was missing was one of the support hooks that the original had and the overall length was about six inches shorter. The muffler on the 89 Accord was at the very back of the car. The pipe lengths were all correct until the muffler. The aftermarket muffler was shorter and it had a shorter tailpipe. That tailpipe would not allow it to extend out from under the rear bumper. There was a muffler support hook past the muffler that was missing and reinstalling the chrome tip would be useless as it would end up being under the car.

The clerk checked his book to confirm part numbers and told me that this was the correct exhaust system for my car. He offered to sell me a coupler and a straight section of tubing to make up the length but that wouldn't solve the problem with the missing support hook.

I ended up spending the extra money to buy the Honda exhaust instead of the aftermarket one. The car was so reliable that I ended up keeping it for 21 years so I guess the additional expense was worth it. Had I bought the aftermarket system, I would probably have been doing exhaust replacements every three or four years.

 

I do agree that neither of us actually knows what they actually do but do you really believe a company like Asin would sell their Toyota QC rejects under their own name?

 

Yeah but topic is brake pads?

 

Yes, most certainly. If you say "rejects", it sounds terrible, but not very descriptive. There could be tolerances that Toyota imposes that are not met, but are fine and that could cause the "reject". It's not a terrible thing, but that's how it often works. This is why sometimes even OEM parts do not fit as well as the same manufacturer's branded parts. It happens. Been there done that. Again, I would not hesitate to buy an OEM part that I know is the same as the branded one, but I better have a good reason for doing so. Usually the good reason is cost. But there is a good reason cost is different. You just have to be okay with it.

 

Well I hijacked it into water pumps. What you gonna do now?

 

I think the OEM for the Prius brakes is ADVICS (which makes pretty highly regarded race braking systems). If I recall correctly, Akebono is the McLaren OEM (for at least the P1 system).

Cost and weight are significant factors apart from durability that the OEMs have to engineer into the system. It's why we have so many cars with plastic intake manifolds these days.

Maybe your parts store only really had a low quality part. I figure there are three pathways most consumers are going to fall into here:
1. need a replacement part and end up at the auto parts store because they need something cheap: so a lot of part places stock cheap stuff
2. have money and just do whatever the dealer recommends: these people just buy OEM
3. performance-oriented enthusiasts, who are willing to pay OEM or higher prices

We had a one-generation newer Accord than you and had to replace the exhaust as well. I put an all-stainless sports exhaust on, and to my knowledge, it's still operational today on that car (also over 12 years of service). It was $650 shipped.

 

Well, since posting in this thread, my '07 required a front brake job. Rotors, pads and rubber boots for the slide pins. Guess what? My choice for replacement parts was not only NOT Toyota, but it wasn't even OEM. It was what was recommended to me by a trusted independent parts store/foreign auto repair shop. They specialize in Toyota and recommended an inexpensive set of rotors and pads that they install all day long. It's a very reputable shop and has been around for a long time. I have bought parts from them for over a decade, but never used the shop part of their business. I bought some unknown to me brand called OP (stands for Original Performance). Both pads and rotors. Rubber boots for the pins came from NAPA. Reason for all the non-Toyota parts? Cost and the fact that I know that I will be the owner/maintainer of this car in the foreseeable future. Rotors were $37 each and the pads were $35 for the set (ceramic). I did not hesitate to use these parts because of the recommendation from people who's reputation depends on quality service. I did not price out the Toyota parts for this job save for the boots. Toyota wanted $10 for each boot. I bought a set of four from NAPA for $8. Again, I will be monitoring the front brakes very closely now and am okay with non-OEM and non-Toyota parts there. My point is that it is okay to go with whatever replacement parts you want given that you fully understand the differences between the name brand, OEM and generic type of manufacturer. I made a conscious choice to go with inexpensive replacement parts that were highly recommended by a well-established Toyota repair business and I fully understand that they may be of inferior quality to Toyota or Toyota's OEM. My intention is to monitor this system closely since the failure of the old set was due to pins that were not moving properly and caused incorrect wear pattern on the inboard pads. These brakes were installed by Firestone before my ownership.