'97 Z28 rear brakes

[jeffs97z28]

Got 82,000 miles on my '97 Z28. My rear pads are shot, inside pad right down to wear indicators, outside pad still has some life in it. I know I have to replace these but I only got 34,000 miles out of NAPA Ceramic pads.
99.00 a set. I got 48,000 out of the originals. I drive the car very easy,[ a lot of freeway miles ]. Are these ceramic pads BS other than reducing dust??
What happened to the days when you could get 50,000 miles out of a premium pad if you drove easy?? I'm on a budget here and I'm wondering if the ceramics are a lot of hype and will a preminum semi-metallic last longer?
Also are the 65.00 rotors [ NAPA Generic OEM ] any better than the 38.00 ones made in China? Common sense says yes but now days you never know.

Thanks.

[Joe 1320]

First, PBR calipers from the vette are a little undersized for the weight of our cars. Second, the fact that the inner and outer are wearing at different rates points out that the caliper is probably not lubricated well and applying equal pressure from both pads. As far as pad choice, I am not a fan of ceramic for a babied street car. All the ceramics that I've tried required a fair amount of heat in them before they had any grip. Terrible in the rain, too. On a road course, that's a different story.... they resist fade well and have reduced dust. For street use I went back to preformance friction carbon metallic. Much better cool and wet grip, medium to low dust and good wear characteristics. I think the mileage that you see on the rear is about normal. The fronts will last considerably longer though.

I would take apart the rear calipers, clean them well and lube them so that they slide with ease. Install the new pads with an anti squeal backing and as long as the rotors are perfectly true, you're good to go with whatever pad you choose. There is one fly in the ointment. Supposedly, once ceramic pads are used, they imbed the ceramic into the rotor material and is a cause of decreased grip once swapped back with regular pads. I cannot verify this 100%..... however, I did notice that when I swapped back to the CM pads, the brake feel wasn't as good as I had hoped. I put on new rotors and all was well. I suppose you could call that verified, but I never measured the thickness of the rotor to determine if that was the culprit or not. I know I'll never use ceramic pads on the street again.... at least not until something changes in it's behaviors.

[Injuneer]

I got about 50K out of the stock rear pads. Replaced them with the Performance Friction Z-rated pads. Car now has 70K+ on the odometer (which stopped working a couple of years ago - but now it only gets driven a 1/4-mile at a time ) and the rear pads show little sign of wear. Considering the car does occaisionally make fairly high load stops from 130MPH, I'd say the PF pads will provide the required stopping power, and last as long as I own the car.

The PF Z-rated pads are often cited for excessive dusting, but even when the car was street driven on a daily basis, I did not find it to be a problem.