Back over the winter I bought a bunch of parts for my car to do some work on it when the weather got better . Got distracted a bit and Spring turned to Summer and I finally got around to installing the parts . Specifically I put all new rear brakes on my car and when buying the parts from Rock Auto (who I do not blame for this , we're talking pure manufacturer defect here and I waited WAY too long to find out the drums are junk to try to return them to RA) I bought the most expensive of everything hoping that maybe the higher priced parts would somehow be better , gambling on the ol "ya get what ya pay for" , quality wise . Interestingly , these drums are no longer available from RA .

So , I installed the brakes , just as I've done bunches of times before on cars big & small and all went well . On my typical around town errands the car rode well , stopped well , and all seemed just peachy with ol Orangebird ......

Till , a few weeks later , I had a trip that required me to use the highway , and at around 70 MPH all Hell broke loose in the back with the most violent shaking I've ever felt on something that wasn't riding on a flat tire !!!! In fact , that's what I thought at first was that I had gotten a flat tire but when I slowed down the vibration went away . So then I thought maybe the lugnuts were loose but no , nice and tight there so my next thought was that perhaps a balance weight had come off of one of my wheels , I didn't give a thought to the brakes because it had been almost a month and they were working fine so I has the rear tires balanced and no good , still shook like a paint mixer at 70 . Now , kinda grasping at straws at this point I decided to rotate the tires to see if the shake still remained in the back or moved to the front and when I took the two back tires off that's when it hit me , looking at my nice brand new drums I noticed they HAD NO BALANCE WEIGHT WHATSOEVER !!!! nor did they have the max diameter stamping or any other writing on them . These were brand new in sealed bags in boxes with the "Power Stop" logo that were complete trash right out of the box ! You can plainly see in RA's picture the drum has both a balance weight and the writing on it , VS my drums that must have somehow missed both the balancing part of their manufacturing process and also the quality control that one would hope should be part of the manufacturing of any safety critical part of any machine .

A new set of properly balanced drums from a different manufacturer has ol Orangebird back to cruising smooth and sweet at 70 MPH , Buy "Power Stop" drums at your own peril ..........

 

Wow, that's outrageous. Are those aluminum drums?...

 

Hi T.L. , No they are regular metal drums that the Power Stop advertising claimed were coated with some kind of special rust preventing coating , I don't recall the exact wording they used . I'm just damned lucky I noticed the missing balance weights when I did , I was running out of ideas of what could be causing such a violent shaking at specifically 70 MPH and all kinds of bad suspicions were beginning to cloud my thinking . As to the drums themselves when an internet search didn't turn up any practical way to balance them , into the scrap metal bin they went .

I normally don't post negative threads but I really don't want to see any of my fellow third gen owners get burned on a set of these drums like I did .

 

Regardless of how long ago you bought those drums, you should still contact Power Stop and make a complaint. If nothing else, it would be of interest to everyone to see just what their response might be. Who knows, if they're a stand-up outfit, maybe they'll make it right for you. If not, well, everyone here will know not to give them the time of day going forward.

For me at least---and probably you too as well--it's not necessarily about the $$$; the cost of a couple of brake drums isn't going to bankrupt anyone. But it's about a company that might be selling cheap Chinese junk, and then not standing behind it, and if that's the case, potential customers need to know about it. Word-of-mouth is all-powerful when it comes to companies getting repeat business---or not.

I'm glad you were able to correct the problem and get your car squared-away.

 

No doubt Chinese garbage. And their casting work is horrible at best. Without balancing those would easily cause some major vibration. Good that you found the problem.

 

Just posting this in regards to the above original post. Even though this thread is 4 years old, interestingly I have just purchased the PowerStop front and rear brake kit for my 85Z from Summit Racing. I had seen this post before when looking for opinions on brake kits, so I looked back at the image of the kit, and it showed the drums with balance weight attached and the appropriate markings, very similar to the original drums.

Seeing this, I thought that the issue that, Orange Bird had noticed was resolved, but having just received my kit, it has the same drums, with exactly the same part number, and they are also slightly smaller in overall diameter. The kit part number is, PWR-K15044DK, and the part number of the rear kit is PWR-KOE-15291DK.
I have sent an email to PowerStop to see what they have to say regarding this, as I don't want to get these installed and have the same vibration issues.

I have attached a picture of the kit from powerstops website, and a picture of the drums that I received.

Cheers,
Alicat.