Back in early January I changed the front pads and rotors with Napa safety stop pads. I've been noticing an unusually high amount of brake dust accumulating in a short period of time.Is this normal for the first couple of weeks? The pads were not cheap.

 

Your going to have to check the wear on your pads ASAP, as it looks like to achieve that extra stopping performance the pads wear quicker. But unless you drive about mad just fit good quality pads.

 

I replaced my pads with good quality Napa pads. I can't believe the amount of brake dust after only two days of local driving. My wife drives the car (typical normal female driving).
No unusual odors, and other than the dust it seems to preforming normal. The only thing I haven't done is spray brake cleaner; which is my next step.

 

We get what we pay for :

- my early days asbestos
- then came organic semi-organic or metallic
- now we have ceramic pads
- leave the organic semi-organic or metallic to boy racers, cop cars & commercial vehicles
- ceramic about £60 for 4 dust free corners

 

Ceramic brake pads (front) for Chrysler Town & Country on sale right now at rockauto.com for $11.60

 

Here it's a question of pedal effort. Soft brake pads/shoes will give you a miraculous easy pedal but will wear (and produce a lot of dust). Hard pads/shoes will need more pedal effort but last a long time, and with less dust. So long as the system can lock the wheels (if allowed by the ABS) whatever you use is safe enough. If ceramic pads do the job safely, why not? Less likely to have fading problems with heat too. And $11:60 sounds cheap compared to ceramic discs/rotors!

Leedsman.

 

I used work for a company with 650 fleet of cars. We tried hardened pads to reduce the cost of brake pad replacement, it worked, the price of replacing the pads reduced by 30%. However the increased cost of replacing worn out discs / rotors was three times the saving on the pad replacement.