Be careful buying stuff off ebay - lots of it is of very poor quality. Not all, of course, but the difficulty is knowing what is and what isn't.

When I was restoring my A35 van the drums were warped so I bought brand new ones off ebay and they were far worse than the old ones, which ended up going back on!

I agree Bob, time was when ebay was a life saver, but these days there is so much poor quality junk being listed you have to check very carefully before you buy. Check especially the feedback, they may have 100% not every one who is unhappy gives negative, so worth reading a few feed backs before you buy. When it comes to the stuff listed direct from China, forget it, unless you are happy to pay very low prices for very low quality and wait a couple of weeks for the privilege.

I tend to look for new old stock original products and avoid reproductions, better to pay a bit more than get something inferior. Caveat emptor as they say. Syd

I agree. NOS is the way to go every time.

People are always criticising Lucas but in my experience a NOS Lucas item is far better than anything you can buy new.

But often we're very grateful that new stuff is available or we'd be well and truly stuck!

Haha, cheers for the advice guys. Yeah, you're right, some new stuff from China is very poor quality. But these are brakes! Whats the worst thing that can happen..........oh yeah. Anyway, you can sleep soundly tonight, I'll be dropping them off for a skim on Friday...

What I don't understand is what is wrong with buying new discs from one of the ( at least 2 ) reputable large suppliers , or from the smaller suppliers well known on this board , when they cost in relative terms the square root of diddly squat ?

Nothing wrong at all with buying from reputable suppliers on here Christopher, that's where I buy a lot of my irrepairable or consumables from, but the guys were just warning me about cheap ebay products. Lots of substandard parts on there. I decided to go down the skim route because the price was half that of new ones, and I expect my genuine Jaguar originals will be better quality. I have a whole car to rebuild, so despite the savings being modest in relative terms for this one item, they add up to a lot more than diddly squat when everything needs doing. Cheers, Steve.

Well, looks like I won't be getting the disks skimmed after all. I popped along to a local reputable engineering firm and the guy said, "Crickey, they look thin already, have the been skimmed before?". I said that I had no idea about the history of the car, so he checked his 'Car Brake Disk Skimming For Dummies' book, or something like that, and it stated that the disks are fitted at 10mm, and the minimum thickness is 8.7mm. He measured them at 9.8mm, so that's only just over 1/2 a mm on each face, which would hardly be enough to skim the disk at all. I read a bit later online about them and apparently that's right, the disks are not meant to be skimmed and should be replaced with new when worn below 8.7mm. So, anyway, the upshot is that I've ordered new ones from DMG.