Pad/Rotor brake-in [Seth]

[rocketstarter]

This is pretty simple. Yet crucial. Writing this up for a friends specific application but it might come in handy for you.

Alright Seth. Before you put the rotors on make sure you bomb them with brake parts cleaner on BOTH sides and try not to touch and/or get any kind of grease on them. NO GREASE. NO FINGERPRINTS. NADA.

Also make sure you tighten your lugnuts to 80 ft/lbs with a torque wrench. You don't wanna warp your brand new rotors when breaking them in. And when you put the pads on throw some anti-squeal stuff on the back of the shims. Trust me.

Oh yeah. Forgot to tell you, there are 2 tools you might not have on hand. Impact driver [$10 @autozone] and you'll need to rent a kit to screw [not push] the pistons back in the caliper on the rears.


Anyway. I think your green stuff max temp is 800C so I say warm your rotors up a touch, and do:

7 consecutive stops from 50mph down to 10mph. Hard enough to smoke the pads, but not hard enough to engage ABS.

DO NOT STOP. Drive around til your brakes cool down. If yo stop you'll leave a STAMP of break-in coating on your rotor which will translate into brake shudder later down the road.

7 more consecutive stops under same conditions. Let brakes cool down again.


The first 7 stops are to get the break-in coating to distribute as evenly as possible on the rotor surface. The second set is to cure the brake pad composite.

Find a road on base that's closed off to public or untrafficed so you're not pissing anybody off and won't have to stop randomly and fuck up the entire procedure. The stops HAVE to be back to back.

Hit me up if you got questions brov.

[Abailey4]

Good stuff, very useful.

[seththekorean]

Thanks Matt.
Good information.
May just have to do it when i get up there, greenstuff pads were backordeered but i did get my Rotors!

[AV6NHBP6SPD]

have to find road today to do brake in, lucky you have base. around here its city and high way.

[Mike]

I usually try to do mine on the highway at night. I think that the most important part of this is to keep them as clean as possiable