Please recommend a place to buy new front brakes

My car: '01 C4 Coupe Tip. I just got it a week ago and the PPI revealed that the front brakes have 1 mm of pad left before the brake wear sensor kicks in. I want to get this done by an Indy in the Long Beach - Costa Mesa - Newport Beach areai in California. I also want to buy the pads and disks myself, so I can get a better price. Please post (or PM me) your recommendations of good places to buy. If you know the part numbers, that would be the icing on the cake. And if you know a good indy shop in my area that can do the job below dealer price, that would be welcome too! Thanks for a great forum. Patrick

if you have an hour and some basic tools, you can do it yourself....I just did my pads and sensors front and rear in a little over an hour.....longest time was jacking the car up and removing the wheels....A decent indy is DeBonis Motorsports on Baker in Costa Mesa....used to be a tech at Neport Porsche for decades.....

For OEM pads, you can look on ebay. Also allgermanautoparts.com, brandywine, suncoast may have better prices than your local dealer. I got a set of front pads for $45 or 70 on Ebay. I think most dealers sell them for $130-145.

Newport996, thanks for the indy address. Djantlive, thanks for the online parts dealers.

pvanosta, Avoid eBay and any aftermarket parts supplier for OEM brake rotors and pads. The "OEM" brake pads are not made from the same compound as the pads you can buy at a Porsche dealership (even though the manufacturer might be the same) and the rotors while advertised as OEM are not. Fortunately there are dealers like Sunset Imports and sometimes Brandywine or Suncoast (when those two have a sale) that discount the price to about the same level as the aftermarket crap.

JasonAndreas, thanks for the info. What about AllGermanParts.com? They are mentioned also in this thread and they are on Ebay ($360 for set of rotors + pads). The parts are described as: "a pair of new Zimmermann crossed drilled brake rotors with a new set of Pagid or Textar brake pads(with vibration counter weights, the same style of pads you will find at the dealer) 2 new brake sensors, and 4 silence pads, everything you need to do a front brake job" Are those bad parts? How much should I expect to pay?

The Zimmerman rotors are inferior to the factory discs in durability (they sometimes last half as long) and corrosion resistance. Pagid and Textar manufacture an enormous variety of pads so its anyones guess with those. You'll have to call Sunset, etc. and ask them but the price should end up being around the same or a little less.

JasonAndreas, Thanks for that info. You may have saved me some money

My dealer sold rotors for 160 a wheel. I actually bought frozen rotors disks for 190. The pads were 280 for all wheels. I just wrote a blog entry on this at http://www.devwebsphere.com/porsche It's been an expensive week... Billy http://www.trackpedia.com

Thanks to the feedback in this great forum, I ended up NOT buying inferior Zimmerman rotors for $365 for a complete front brake kit. I went with Sunset Imports, based on your recommendations, and I got the same kit, but with GOOD rotors for only $377. And Sunset's shipping charge was less as well! Rotors 104.44 ea Pads 103.42 Anti vibration pucks 5.35 ea, need 4 of them 2 sensors at 10.18 ea Caliper kit 16.48, has pins and metal plates, enough to do both front calipers 4 caliper bolts, 1.67 ea, One final question: a local Indy is quoting me $172 in labor to install front brake rotors, sensors and pads. Is that reasonable?