Brake Rotors
 

2014 Camry, 4-cly, 66k miles. Front brakes now need to be turned due to usual vibration. I'm looking for a recommendation for what front rotors to buy in the event they are below the wear limit. I usually get these from Rock. Brands I see now at Rock are Raybestos, Wagner, Bendix, Bosch, Beck/Arnley, ACdelco, and some others I haven't heard of. In the past I've bought Bendix for my Thunderbird and was happy. Prices on Rock are all over the map depending on whether one chooses, "Economy" or something more exotic. I'm looking for a recommendation for a rotor that is "original quality" and reasonably priced.

Beck/Arnley doesn't make parts but buys "white box" parts and resells them. Typically these are very good parts but on rare occasion not up to par. ACDelco Pro is supposed to be better than their normal line. Bosch typically has excellent electrical parts but know nothing about their brake parts. Raybestos Street Performance is supposed to better then their normal line. The others have heard of but no actual experiences.

Not listed but recommended is Brembo. An excellent and very popular brand. Axxis and Hawk are also good brands.

Suggest you don't needed drilled or slotted rotors unless a racing car.

My two cents is if going RockAuto to use Raybestos which looks OK and the price is good.

Suggest getting new rotors and pads such as Akebono, Brembo, Hawk, Toyota brand. There are others out there. For Rock might use Akebono who appears to be an OEM suppler to Toyota.

Even though more expensive I use Toyota brand pads as know the shims, clips etc will fit and the brakes typically do not make brake pad noise. Be sure to use brake grease at the proper points.

For brake vibration issues. Unless changing rotors is a major PIA (as on some cars), suggest skipping turning and installing new rotors and pads. Have had TOO many issues with returning vibration and the rotor thickness is now reduced. At $100 for turning the rotors can buy two new rotors

Rockauto has a 5% off code. Search internet for the lasted code.

FYI, might read up on brake vibration and causes. Its typically variations in rotor thickness or glaze.

Rotors: Rock has Raybestos R-Line rotor for $18.13 and Raybestos Street Performance for 42.79. Also has Bendix for $26.89. I have a hard time thinking $18- can get anything good. I have no problem spending $42.79 if there's a reason to expect its better than the Bendix. Any thoughts??
Pads: Rock has AKEBONO for $40- and BREMBO for $55-. Amazon has the Toyota pads at $76- (local dealer wants $116); I'm leaning towards the Toyota pads at Amazon for the same reasons you mentioned. Opps just noticed the Amazon Toyota pads are pads only, no shims or anything else. Is reusing old shims, clips a problem? Not sure what dealer includes.

Are you on a tight budget?

The $18.13 Raybestos and $26.89 Bendix rotors are listed in the Economy parts selection area. The Economy listing states these parts are for the budget conscious who are not concerned with noise, dust or part life. These parts may have a short life and other issues.

Suggest picking a rotor from the "Daily Driver" area who parts are stated to be OE for the vehicle. Suggest from that list:

RAYBESTOS 980973 Specialty - Street Performance @ $42.79 ea.
ACDELCO 18A2931 {#19306798} Professional @ $45.99

Rockauto also has a Rotor and Brake Pad Kit listing. The brands names are more limited but the kit comes with both rotors/pads and it appears shims.

Shims, clips, etc are metal and can be reused (common). The issue is some non-Toyota pads have a different mount plate. This is the part the actual brake pad material attaches to and that fits into the caliper. The aftermarket mounting plate will fit fine into the Toyota caliper, however the Toyota shims used for the Toyota pads may not fit up to the aftermarket pad mounting plate. It appears this cars brakes may not use shims just having hardware to hold the pad in, etc.

A shim is a thin piece of sheet metal that goes between the pad mounting plate and caliper piston. Its purpose to reduce brake pad vibration and with this noise. If the original brake system had shims, they need not be used but the pads may vibrate.
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For pads suggest again picking from the Daily Driver section. Listed are:

BREMBO P83117N Front Premium Ceramic 54.89 which appears to come with all the shim and clip hardware.

The AKEBONO listings appear not to include shims, etc.

The Toyota pads sold for this year of car by Toyota dealers appear to come with mounting hardware. It doesn't appear a separate shim kit is listed. See link below.

https://parts.olathetoyota.com/oem-p...ItNWwtbDQtZ2Fz

Ebay sells brake parts but watch out for fakes which can also happen on Amazon. Check reviews of sellers.

Thanks very much for your very complete response. This is very helpful. I think I can make a good decision on what to buy now.

I probably should have done this earlier but I just finished measuring the rotors and inspecting the pads. If I just had a brake job yesterday, I would not expect to see much difference from what I saw and measured a few mins ago. All four disks are within a mil or two of new thickness. This means there is no significant rotor wear. I visually peeked at the remaining pad thickness. Again, all four pads appear to have no significant wear (I’m starting to love my Camry more with time!). The brakes work fine except that under hard braking from a high speed such as when exiting the freeway, there is some front-end vibration. If the brakes are already hot, then the vibration is more pronounced. If the braking is gradual, even from a high-speed deceleration, then I may not notice anything abnormal. I’m assuming this symptom is caused by out-of-round front rotors and should be solvable by having the rotors turned.

My fear is that the repair shop may want to turn this into a 'brake-job' rather than 'turn-the-rotor job.' It may also be true that turning the rotors is the same labor as a front brake job so it may make sense to just pay up and have it done without replacing any parts. All I can think to do is let the shop know the facts and hope they don’t make it bigger than it is. Do you agree? Am I overlooking anything in this assessment? Other thoughts?

Consider this:

There is a LOT of misinformation about brake rotor "warping" and what causes brake vibration.

Brake vibration can be caused by variations in rotor thickness, glazed rotors surfaces, built up pad debris on the rotor face, frozen caliper pins that prevent caliper movement (the caliper and pads float around the rotor), rotor face rust, improper wheel lug torque, bad wheel bearings, rough rotor surfaces causing non-uniform pad wear which then unevenly wears the rotor, worn suspension parts and more.

Actual rotor warping could happen say if driving HOT rotors through standing water where the brake rotor might actually warp.

The rear brakes are not vented and may have more problems than vented.

How does the rotor thickness vary around its circumference? Is the rotor thickness uniform across the rotor braking faces?

If glazed rotors or brake pad debris can try sanding the rotors with 80 grit paper. The internet has lots of videos and post on this subject! This is worth a try!

Turing rotors can mean actual cutting of rotor surface material or sanding the surfaces. Obviously cutting both rotor faces should eliminate surface glaze and pad debris while making both rotor surfaces true.

One can investigate and try all of the above or just replace the brake parts. Ditto for having the rotors turned or just replacing them. One issue is the cost to turn rotors (front) may be more then cost to buy two new ones.

Will this be the first brake job in 66k miles? Are you able to work on the brakes or will you need to have a shop do this. A complete brake job by a shop can be expensive versus being very reasonable for a DIY'er.

If brake problems at high mileage between brake jobs, some DIY just change out the brake rotors and pads and call it good. When doing this they also inspect the brake components such as caliper and slider pins for issues. Most modern cars make changing rotors, pads, etc very simple.

Depending on the shop you go to. Some will inspect the car and come back with a long laundry list of items they state need attending at a price. Others will just, in this case, cut the rotors and reuse the same pads.

Note if the shop thinks the brakes are unsafe (which isn't the case here), they are not going to get involved due to possible liability issues unless the situation is corrected by them or someone else.

Unless taking the rotors off is real pain or the rotors are rare, very expensive, etc I never have them turned anymore. I just replace them.

Thanks much for all of this information! After my last post I did some web work on vibration under braking and learned a little about some of the things you mentioned. I had always thought vibration was simply due to disk warp from repeated heating and cooling. Maybe that’s the old school or I just didn't have all the facts.

I guess I need to decide if I want to leave this to the local pros or DIY it. It used to be an easy decision because I thought brakes were one of the few things the repair folks couldn’t screw up. Now I’m not so sure. We have a few pretty good shops around here but they are top-dollar. We’ll have to see.

I’m pretty sure this is the first brake job because the rotors have obviously not been turned. I got the car at 35k miles and this is the first brake issue.

With all the front brake jobs I’ve had in the past (other cars), labor always included turning rotors and if they needed replacement the labor charge was the same even though nothing was turned. Therefore, replacing rotors was always more expensive by the cost of the rotors. This seems different from your experience since you mentioned the cost to turn could be the same as to replace. Are you talking about cost to turn if you deliver loose rotors to the shop or as part of a brake job?

My rotors look smooth and shiny. If there is brake pad debris on the rotors is this visible?

One thing I plan to do is to reseat the front wheels and re-torque to see if it makes a difference. I would love to try is sanding with 80 grit as you mentioned. I can’t see how to do this without removing the rotors though and if I do that, I’m certainly going to do and finish the complete break job!

Thanks again for your help!

I think its fixed!

I checked out the on-line videos you mentioned earlier for deglazing the disks with sand paper. I took the wheels off and used my poor man’s technique for measuring disk warp. Both disks are totally true. No sign of warp. However, I put my finger on the rotating disk surface and could feel bumps or dimples or imperfections as the disk turned under power. So, I did a quick on-vehicle disk sanding/deglazing similar to what is seen here:
I probably should have sanded longer or used coarser paper since there is still a slight blackish tint to the rotor surface. Still, after the sanding I could no longer feel any imperfection using the mentioned finger test. The problem now seems nearly resolved. At speeds like 60+ MPH I can feel a very minor judder which I don’t think anyone else would detect.

I wonder how long a repair of this sort might last. I’m hoping I can buy enough time to wear out these long-lasting original pads. When that happens, I’ll do a real brake job!

Good job in moving forward with solving your brake issues. Sometimes a simple fix is all that is needed.

A brake job is one of the easier tasks for the DIY'er. Get some kind of service info such as a Haynes manual and review utube video's! This site has DIY references for a brake job.

Take lots of photos of the brake assy before and as you are taking the assy apart for reference when putting it back together. Do one side at time to allow referencing the other side. Once the caliber is off don't press on the brake pedal or the piston the moves the pad will pop out of its assy.

Replacing rotor will be more expensive if having a shop to the job. But for a DIY, if the professional rotor resurfacing costs say $100+, this is the price of 2 new rotors.

Rotor appearance can have nothing to do with its surface condition issues.

A rotor does get hot when braking, but then it cools again slowly and uniformly. This uniform heating and cooling prevents doesn't allow warping of the metal.

If rotor was hot and not cooled uniformly or suddenly cooled (driven through standing water) the part could warp.

Thanks. Just for reference, our shops here in California charge about $200- for labor on Front brakes independent of whether they turn the rotors or replace them. Ergo they don't charge to turn rotors. Sounds silly I know, but its been that way for as long as I remember. O'Reilly Auto parts will turn rotors a customer takes in to them at $20- per each so it will be a savings over buying new. Sanding takes some patience and some elbow grease and generates nasty dust so the decision among sand, turn or replace is an interesting one likely, at least in California, to be a matter of preferences. I'm glad my problem was solved with just a lite sanding but I'm prepared for more work as needed, next time around. Thanks much for your guidance. Much appreciated education!