Brake pads Bosch or Raybestos

Bosch’s Quietcast brakes have never done me wrong. I’ve used them in three vehicles now and had good pad life and performance on a budget. No squeaks, decent life for ceramics.

I recently replaced my factory Kia front pads with some EHT's. Did not replace rotors, just cleaned and removed some rust on them. Applied some caliper grease to the proper areas and these pads so far have been really nice. A VERY noticeable difference vs. the factory pads in stopping power. My only complaint was that Raybestos did not include new pad retainer springs in the box.

Honestly for everyday driving the Bosch and centric is a good combo. The powerstop are very grabby and have a bit more stopping power but it’s not worth the extra money, plus long term normal rotors are better. Drilled/slotted don’t have as much durability

Yes to the Bosch/Centric combo. No to drilled rotors on a daily driver.

I had this problem too and I saw in other forums quite a few other people as well. I used Bosch pads too I think (can’t recall right now) but when I compared them to the OeM ones I removed, there was a difference similar the the gaps you pointed to in your pic. Putting the old OEM ones back and the gap is not there. So what I ended up doing was simply added a bit of shim to one side of the Bosch pad to take up the gap and the problem went away. I put the shim only on one side, the side that would be compressed when in reverse. FWIW others have tried other brands of pads and they all seem to have the same issue. Apparently the only ones that don’t are the OEM ones for some strange reason. When I compared mine, it wasn’t the pad backing that was causing the delta, it was the shim.

I'm very happy with Bosch QuietCast pads and rotors.

Guy above says don’t go cheap….I just used some raybestos pads and rotors for the rear I got from rock auto for 100$. Cheap, fast and easy. First time doing brakes and despite some snags had it done in an hour.

I went aftermarket with centric posi-quiet pads or Bosch quiet cast. Won’t ever go back to factory.

I use these pads (and rotors) on my FX35. A couple things I have noticed:

1). There have never been appropriate rattle clips included with any set of pads that I have ever purchased for this car…ever. I am still on OEM stuff at 180k miles. That isn’t just Raybestos. I even ordered Centric hardware…no dice. Not even close. Mind you, I always order model-specific hardware. No idea what the issue is, but it is clearly for the wrong car.

2). These pads take a few stops to heat up, which I kind of expected. I am satisfied with them on my daily, but the rotors are another matter entirely. They all warp within a month or two. That is odd considering they advertise the construction as Dura-Bar. That should be pretty resistant to that kind of thing. They definitely don’t hold up like Centrics do.

3). The shims have a nasty habit of falling off. Not while driving, but during service. You have one maybe two removals before they go MIA.

Other than that, I am not sure that I have noticed an issue with the pads being either wrong or out of tolerance. That is very not what I would expect from a brand like this.

I have had a different experience; total junk. 15K miles and they squeal like nobody's business.