Brake pad tabs important?

Mine was snapped off brand new. I’ll certainly never buy aftermarket pads again. But can I use these?

 

If you bought them at autozone they should have a lifetime warranty

 

Where did you get them? What brand are they?

 

Centric off of Amazon. I realized those are the wear indicators. They would squeal when the pads are worn. Nice but not mandatory in my opinion so I’m going with it.

Centric pads are garbage. This wasn’t the only issue. Pin wouldn’t go thru due to misaligned backing plate.

 

Yeah I wouldnt worry about the squealer if you watch the mileage your putting on them. Beat pads on Amazon are Akebono Pro-Act Ceramics. Wouldnt touch any other brand after trying them. If you wanna buy local, Napa Premium Ceramics would be my first choice. All of the duralast and Oreilly brakes are made by Bosch last I read, and Ive never been a bosch fan outside of wiper blades.

 

You might want to consider making sure you have the OEM shim plates that tend to get lost over years.

When I reinstalled these shims my brakes worked better and didn’t have any warping issues.
Believe it or not these made a big difference for me.

 

Some people just drive and never do maintenance

 

Huh, good tip. My shim pads were missing. Whatever "mechanics" worked on my truck before I owned it messed up a lot of things. I've found sheared off bolts, broken wiring harness clips, loose bolts, clutch pedal bracket nearly falling off, etc.

 

So after installing I realized by snipping the misaligned shim, it would allow the shim to rotate out of place if the backing shim were to come unglued. I don't want anything in my brakes moving out of place, given that a brake lockup could be fatal. I decided to buy another set of pads and redo the job.

STAY AWAY FROM CENTRIC!!! The company produces a low quality product and doesn't stand behind the product either. I had a horrible experience on the phone with customer support.

This is a product where the pads are hand glued. The company confirmed my suspicions about this. I now have 8 samples to look at, and I can see that none of them are perfect. Some of them are acceptable. Some of them are unsafe in my opinion. Should I, a layman, be required to tell the difference between safe and unsafe? I'm not an engineer and just have my unintelligent eyeballs to evaluate with. The long and short of it, stick with OEM. And stay away from Centric.

 

I have had excellent luck with EBC pads, much better than OEM
EBC Green Stuff 7000 Series For 1997 Toyota Tacoma DP7807