when you get new rotors or have them turned you have to bed-in the brake pads, why? when they get to hot you get some kind of carbide deposits making the rotor surface uneven - do properly bedded in rotors protect against this better then ones that havent been broken in properly? why? do "bedded-in" rotors dissapate heat faster for some reason? also, why does over-torqueing lug nuts damage the brake rotors?

btw i already posted this in the suspension/brake forum but no luck cause not to many people visit there often, and since the first gen section is my internet home, i posted here .

 

It is very important, click on the link to see what Hawk brakes have to say.
Hawk Performance Brakes

Most people have found for racing application, do not mix new pads with new rotors. Never use race brake pads on street cars. It takes a lot of heat to get race pad to work.

Torque you wheels does 2 things, keeps from stressing the stud/bolt, plus the reason it warps is because you putting over pressure on the rotor via the bolts. In some case uneven lug nut torque will cause warping too.

John

 

cool, that link pretty much explained everything. now my question is what would be the proper breaking in procedure for my 83 GS that i just got the rotors turned and new pads (normal, no metallics). i would guess that you would do increasingly faster stops to a certain point to heat up the rotor and then do increasingly slower stops to cool it off. then maybe do it again except faster for some more heavy duty heat treating. is this right? what speed should i use and how many stops? thanks.

 

more about the overtorqueing thing........if you warped the rotors by overtorqueing the lugs, wouldn't the wheel be off balence too? so even if you got the rotor turned, braking would be smooth but the tire would be off balance and vibrate when moving depending on how much you over torqued. on an averaged sized car, how much torque on the lug nuts do you think it would take to warp the rotor?

 

I'm wondering about brakes too, what would be the best buy to a 83 gs? Hawk pads on the front ?

 

BDizzle:

I've used a few HAWK brake pads in the past. I've tried using this bed-in proceedure they talk about, and that works really well.

Actually, I should say that it works really well for their race pads. The difference between doing this proceedure and not doing it makes a world of difference before heading out on the track.

That said, the proceedure HAWK recommends is very excessive for street pads! I know of a few cases where people have tried this on street pads and essentially destroyed the bite that one expects from brake pads. The only way we found to correct that, was to order a new set. Even sanding them down with sand paper did not allow them to recover.

If you decide to "bed-in" the pads, you'll want to *not* be very aggressive about it. Unlike the race pads, street pads are not designed to handle the heat stress of multiple rapid high speed stops in short intervals of time.

wilson94T

 

so i could do the same thing, just scaled down?
im wondering what speeds & how fast decel & how many stops? i have the stock rotors that i just got turned and regular non-metallic replacement pads. i cant afford to get the nice stuff right now