Brake Upgrade: StopTech Rotors + TRD Performance Pads

Build goal: Increase braking performance at a reasonable cost utilizing components that are better quality and higher performance than stock.

On the surface an OEM sized brake upgrade seems very straight forward.
-Select pad.
-Select rotor.
-Install.
-Or just buy the pre-bundled kit for cheap!

If only it were so simple.

Brake Fluid
Before considering a brake upgrade, when was the last time you changed your brake fluid?
Toyota does not specify a service interval, though general rule of thumb is every 2 years or 30k miles. Neglecting your brake fluid is like doing engine performance modifications while never changing your engine oil. It is a critical part of the system that must be maintained. Maintenance should always be done first, even if it is not sexy. A brake fluid flush alone can increase performance in vehicles that have been neglected.

Finished product StopTech sport slotted cryo rotors with TRD performance ceramic pads
(thread title kinda gives it away)


Products:


How I chose this setup:

Brakes
Brakes are literally the most important system on your vehicle, bar none.

Aftermarket brakes and headlights actually have more in common than may first appear. While two given products may appear similar or identical on the surface, engineering traits not readily visible to the naked eyecan result in significant differences in their quality and performance. These can be nearly impossible to tell from online pictures or even when holding the product in person.

But before going into solution mode for brake upgrades, I think it is important to first understand what brakes actually do so you can understand the effects of modification. This is more important than may first appear.

Braking Basics
Yes, obviously brakes stop the truck. But more fundamentally, look at the physics law of conservation of energy, energy can be neither created or destroyed. So where does all that forward kinetic energy go when stopping your truck? Heat. Brakes are a system for transferring kinetic energy into thermal energy. As the brakes are applied, the forward motion energy is transferred into thermal energy as the brakes get hot. Critical components of a braking system are then friction coefficient, thermal capacity and cooling ability. In other words how quickly can heat be transferred into the brakes, how much heat can the brakes hold before becoming saturated and how quickly can they shed this heat by cooling to be ready for more. Your brakes are nothing more than an advanced mechanical heat sink.

What happens when the system capacity is exceeded? I've experienced this on my OEM brakes on long steep trail descents, the brakes almost stop working. When you've added more energy to your braking system than the thermal capacity and cooling ability can manage, the heat can exceed your pad materials usable operating temperature causing loss in friction, or transfer to your brake fluid which becomes compromised and becomes no longer able to apply adequate pressure to the brake caliper pistons causing a significant loss in braking ability. This is known as brake fade. Note that brake fluid fade is more likely on vehicles which do not maintain their brake fluid. Nothing like trying to push your brake pedal through the floor while your truck continues a steep descent, because it has literally lost the ability to stop all while smelling like things are on fire. After this incident I had my brake fluid flushed.

Rotors
The capacity to absorb heat is largely related to mass. The more mass, the greater the heat that can be absorbed. This is one of the advantages of big brake kits, they have larger rotors with more mass to absorb more heat. However, the way the rotors react to high heat is entirely dependent on their metallurgy. High temperatures cause metal to soften, in the case of brake rotors this causes warped rotors, which results in pulsating brakes. This can be especially true if one holds the brake pads against the rotor after coming to a long hard stop with hot brakes, putting sustained isolated hot spots on the rotor. Cheap manufactures will use a relatively basic cast iron for the rotor. Higher quality disc brake manufactures combat warping by alloying, most commonly using high carbon alloys as well as chromium and other advanced alloys.

Another form of metallurgy is cryogenic treatment, which uses extreme cold and heat cycling to better align the molecular structure of the metal relieving stress for enhanced durability. Claims are 2-3x longer service life with enhanced wear resistance and superior resistance to warping. I understand forging and quenching, but have not studied cryogenics. However, NASA has, and they buy off on it for aluminum alloys.

The other part of the heat equation is cooling. Internal rotor cooling vein design is critical not only to cooling but also thermal capacity as a result of mass, and rotor integrity as being the key structural component of the rotor. There are 2 basic cooling vein designs, directional and straight. Directional veins are designed for the rotor to turn a specific direction to optimize cooling airflow. Straight veins go from the center of the rotor straight to the edge and are less efficient at cooling but can but are not left/right side specific, making them less expensive to produce. Going from a directional to a straight vein design reduces cooling efficiency of the rotor. Keeping the OEM cooling vein design and minimum vein count is necessary to maintain the OEM performance, or better. Fewer veins equates to less surface area to transfer heat to the air to cool the rotor, reducing cooling ability which reduces performance.

Directional vs Straight


Drilled Rotors
DO NOT BUY DRILLED ROTORS
Starting with a little history, cross drilled rotors arose out of racing around the 60s. At the time asbestos was primarily used in brake pads and when heated compounds in the pads would produce off-gassing, which effectively pushed the pad away from the rotor. Drilling holes through the rotor allowed the off-gassing a way to escape, allowing the pad to maintain contact with the rotor.

Brake manufactures started leaning away from asbestos brake products in the 80s as public health concerns arose against it and by 89 it was Federally banned, only to be overturned with exemptions (including brake pads) a few years later. Today brake manufactures generally do not use asbestos, so off-gassing is largely a non-issue. Asbestos brake pads fell into the organic pad category, and while 50 years ago they were the latest tech, they have since been replaced by superior braking materials. I doubt you are going to put old shelf low performance asbestos pads on your truck with new performance rotors.

Ok, but is still looks cool!
Remember thermal capacity is related to mass. Drilling removes mass, thus reduces thermal capacity. Drilling also weakens the material and introduces stress points which will be prone to cracking. The cooling veins on the inside of the rotor may have to downgrade to straight veins to accommodate a drill pattern without hitting a vein, meaning the rotor cooling capacity is even further reduced. If the manufacture was not careful and hits a cooling vein, the rotors integrity is compromised and can lead to catastrophic failure. In short, this has become a cosmetic brake "upgrade" degrading performance, durability and safety. See this post by EBC on drilled rotor dangers.

Cracking rotors


Or drilling through the veins


Slotted Rotors
Slotted rotors can offer advantages in pad bite and clearing but will likely cause accelerated pad wear. Quality slotted rotors will have beveled edges and no hard/sharp corners. Slots should not extend to the inner and outer edge of the rotor, as this will cause stress points which can lead cracking, similar to drilled rotors. Slotting will provide the pad bite benefits of cross drilled, with lower mass reduction of not drilling, while having stronger more durable rotor design and not introduce stress points that can lead to cracking.

Corrosion
Rotors are made from iron and will rust. If you care about the appearance of your rotors, corrosion resistance is also something to be considered. Lower end rotors have none, and will rust readily, zinc coated or an E-coating (an electrostatically applied coating that bonds to the rotor at the molecular level), are options for corrosion resistance. The OEM rotors have neither. Which is why they rust onto your trucks hub and cause you to curse during a brake job.

Cutting Corners
So with just a little background knowledge, you can guess where those generic no-name $60/set Ebay rotors are going to cut corners that will be invisible to you when buying online or even while installing, leading you to think you got a "good deal".

-Lack of adequate alloying, leading to warping
-Lack of adequate venting, leading to warping and brake fade
-Lack of adequate mass (through thinner discs and/or thinner/less cooling fins) leading to warping and brake fade
-Weakened rotors due to drilling, leading to possible stress fractures
-Weakened rotors due to drilling in veins, leading to compromised rotor structure
-Weakened rotors due to 90-degree slotting, leading to possible stress fractures
-Lack of corrosion protection, leading to rusting

Unfortunately you won't even notice you've bought a sub-par poor quality product for many months or more after the purchase, so you'll probably recommend the sub-par product to others because you got such a "good deal" and those drilled holes look awesome. And the makers of cheap garbage products continue to prosper.

I believe in buying quality once, and brakes are no exception. There are aspects of the rotor that you are not going to be able to tell in person even physically holding the product, meaning you must have faith in the brand to have engineered and manufactured a quality product. For that reason I only consider rotors from name brands with solid well proven reputations.

Pads
A brake pads purpose is to generate friction against the rotor, transferring the kinetic energy into thermal energy (generating heat) to stop your truck. While this seems straight forward, there are differing pad materials with different operating characteristics to consider. What may generate excellent friction cold, may not work as well when hot, and visa-versa. Track/race pads for example may generate the best friction performance at extreme temperatures on the track, but next to nothing when cold. So while that works great on a track car, it would be terrible on a commuter.

Generalizations on Pad Composition
There are 3 basic kinds of brake pads, Organic, Semi-Metallic and Ceramic. Each have pros and cons.

Organic pads are a quiet, low dust, relatively inexpensive pad that is easy on rotors, which usually has good cold stopping characteristics but does not typically handle high heat well, they have the narrowest effective operating temperature range.

Semi-metallic (sometimes referred to as Metallic) have the widest operating temperature range for improved performance. They will perform well cold as well as hot. They are less expensive than ceramic. However, they are the noisiest type of pad. The metallic nature is also going to be hardest on your brake rotors leading to accelerated wear. And they will have the worst brake dust of any pad type. Brake pads are rated in NVH (Noise, Vibration, Harshness) and semi-metallics have the worst rating in all 3 categories.

Ceramic pads are often an OEM pad choice, this is what is stock on the 2nd Gen Tacoma. They provide quiet operation, low wear on the rotor and very low dust. They generally are more expensive than Semi-metallic pads. The dust from ceramics is a light fine dust, vs the black caking that can come from semi-metallics. So it is easy to see why this is an OEM choice. Ceramics will perform better in a wider temperature range than Organics, but not as well in extreme heat or extreme cold as semi-metallics. Semi-metallics (due to their metallic nature) also do a better job at absorbing heat than ceramics.

The above are just generalizations of pad properties based on their composition. Within each pad type it is possible to further shift material properties to achieve differing performance, but nothing is for free. So if you optimize your semi-metallic pad for high temp performance, you will likely sacrifice that good low temp friction, or maybe you trade it for a rapid wearing pad that induces massive brake dust.

In short, there is no best "brake pad". You need to determine what characteristics are important to you and make an informed decision accordingly.


Brake Upgrade Selection:
After a light crash course on braking, it helps to have a baseline:
The 2nd gen Tacoma has plain jane straight vein rotors with OEM ceramic pads.

Rotor Upgrade
Criteria:
-Highest quality available from a reputable brand
-Alloyed high carbon steel or better
-Directionalized cooling veins
-Slotted rotors preferred
-Corrosion resistant coating
-Reasonable cost

What I really wanted to find was a rotor that upgraded the cooling veins from strait to directional. The performance benefits of optimized cooling capacity would be the best available upgrade in a stock sized rotor IMO. Unfortunately not many companies seem interested in re-engineering a rotors cooling system, probably because it costs far more in R&D and doesn't sell as well as drilling some cheap holes. I did actually find such a rotor in StopTech's innovative 2 piece AreoRotor, but at over $900 on rotors alone it was more than I was looking to spend.

I had considered running EBC straight vein slotted rotors, but after my brother's pair warped, and reading similar reviews online, plus their slots extend to the end of the rotor, I decided to look for a different alternative.

StopTech Sport Slotted Cryo Rotors
I selected these as I thought they met everything I wanted, plus they were cryogenically treated. StopTech advertises "Improved cooling" on their sport rotors and I thought they were directional vein, though it turns out they are only vein directionalized when the OEM rotor is directionalized. The Tacoma uses straight veins, so the StopTechs for the Tacoma are straight vein as well. I contemplated returning them but no other reasonably priced rotor had directionalized veins, and these rotors at least offered cryo treatment, slotting and corrosion inhibiting coating over my OEM rotors. I decided to give them a shot anyway.



StopTech vs OEM Rotor - Some basic comparative analysis

Recall the braking systems capacity to hold heat is largely proportional to rotor mass. While you do not want a lead weight rotor, you certainly do not want to lose mass over the OEM setup or your thermal capacity has been degraded, resulting in a loss of performance.

OEM Rotor: 17.8 lbs


StopTech Sport Slotted Cryo Rotor: 19.4 lbs


While maybe seeming small, that is non-trivial. It is a 9% mass gain, meaning all things equal, these rotors could take 9% more thermal energy before becoming saturated, leading to improved resistance to brake fade.

Recall that greater cooling surface area should result in in better heat transfer and better cooling. Comparing cooling veins, the StopTech rotor veins extend nearly to the edge of the rotor, whereas the OEM veins are shorter and V down inside the rotor. StopTech's veins have more surface area.


But there is something way more significant in this picture. The StopTech rotors have more veins. Note how the 5th vein up on StopTech lines up with the OEM. Start counting the veins and it is easy to see StopTech has more closer together.

Measuring the outer edges of 2 adjacent veins:
OEM 26.9mm


StopTech 22.8mm


The StopTech rotors appear to have approximately 18% more cooling veins than OEM. Which adds more internal cooling surface area for better performance. I measured vein thickness and both rotors were the same, as was inner and outer rotor disk thickness, meaning the increase in rotor weight is primarily due to the increase in cooling veins and cooling vein length.

Rotor Final Thoughts
These rotors appear to have approximately 9% greater thermal capacity based on mass and improved cooling ability over the OEM rotor while the cryogenic treatment claims to have 2-3x wear resistance and improved resilience to warping. While also adding a corrosion resistant coating. In every measurable attribute, these appear to be a valid performance upgrade over stock.

Pad Upgrade
Criteria:
-Performance upgrade over stock
-Wide range of operating temps
-Low dust

I would consider myself a spirited driver at times. The truck is supercharged with a smaller pulley and Baja suspension. I'm looking for a moderate performance improvement while trying to minimize the negative compromises that usually come with increased performance pads.

My go-to has been EBC green stuff organic pads on my lighter cars of the past, but wasn't as happy with them on my lifted and armored Jeep on 33s. In my experience Hawk semi-metallic pads seem to defy the laws of physics and some how turn into matter producing devices that cake everything in thick black brake dust greater than the mass of the pad it came from. While I am a proponent of functionality over form, my truck is a daily driver and I don't want the front wheels constantly looking like I spent the weekend at the track.

TRD Performance Pads
When I discovered TRD makes an OEM ceramic performance pad, I stopped looking and decided I would give them a try. I am a proponent of OEM build quality and was curious what the TRD engineers could put together in a ceramic performance pad. Being a ceramic pad and OEM, I'd expect this to meet all my brake pad criteria in a well-balanced performance product, though not being the most extreme pad out there. Toyota claims: reduced stopping distance, optimum range of cold and hot friction, reduced brake fade during repeated stops or downhill driving and low noise while noting these pads are not intended for track use.


Pad break-in
One of the less than ideal things about performance pads is they usually require break-in or bedding procedures. This is often a series of high speed extreme stops to be performed back-to-back-to-back. Typically something like 60mph to almost zero, in a near panic stop without actually stopping, followed by repeating immediately numerous times. Alternatively some pads will say you can also drive normally for X-miles just don't come to a stop from high speed and leave your foot on the brake. Doing so can imprint pad material onto the rotor and destroy the brakes. Again, more trade offs. You can see why they don't put these brakes on from the factory. It is more doable than it sounds, but requires additional focus.

Fast break in


Slow alternate break in


Braided Stainless Steel Brake Line Upgrade
OEM rubber brake lines stretch/swell under hydraulic pressure while braking. This effectively causes some mild play in the braking system where the lines expand while braking before being able to apply the full braking force to the pad, causing a small delay between the pedal and the pad. Using a braided stainless steel line eliminates that expansion/play so that your brake pedal effort is more directly transferred to your brake pad resulting in faster response and firmer pedal feel. The braided stainless lines themselves offer no improvement in actual stopping power, they only improve engagement speed and pedal feel.

When looking at braided stainless lines, you want to be sure the the braided lines are coated in a plastic outer sleeve to prevent debris getting into the steel braid and being abrasive on the lines, most modern lines are.

There are many brands to chose from for braided brake lines most of which are made in China. Wheelers Off Road sells sleeved braided stainless steel lines made in the USA, which are the lines I selected to use. They also sell rear braided lines in extended lengths for lifted trucks.

Install
I'm not going to cover the install in depth as brakes are pretty basic, but I'll offer a few pointers.

Since your OEM rotors have no corrosion protection, they are probably rusted to your hubs. Bashing it with your rubber mallet is probably not breaking them free. Awesome. Using an M8x1.25 bolt from your assorted metric bolt kit (you do have a kit right? If not get one at your local autoparts store), you can thread the bolt into the empty threaded hole on the rotor. If you have already taken the calipers off as I have in this picture, you will need to use a prybar locking between the studs to prevent rotor rotation in order to turn the bolt once it makes contact with the hub. Simply drive the bolt in and it will pry the rotor off. Only 1 bolt is needed, 2 shown for demonstration visibility.


The 2nd Gen Tacoma front brakes are actually pretty easy to work with. Remove the outer spring clip from the pins. Slide the pins out. Remove the brake pads with the spreader spring. Install is the reverse, insert the pads with the spreader spring, insert the holding pins, reinstall the outer spring clip.

The TRD pads come with external mechanical wear indicators. These make contact with your rotor when pads are getting low to make the awful screeching noise so you know it is time to change your pads. Only 2 of the 4 pads have wear indicators, which is common. I like to install the wear indicator pads on the inside of the brake rotors as this is the pad that is less visible for inspection. Note the TRD pads already have installed shims, you are not supposed to reuse the 2 part backing shims off your old OEM pads.


After install I went out to attempt the high speed pad break-in procedure. The way I read it, 10 consecutive 60-10mph without ever stopping really meant I just needed 10 consecutive 50mph deltas, where safe and legal of course. Turned out after a few 50mph deltas, more were not really possible in my area, so I'm now following the alternative break in schedule. So when coming to a stop off the highway I put the truck in neutral and hold in position with the parking brake to prevent pad imprinting on the rotor, rather than using the brakes. Break in period on the alternative schedule is 200 miles. As a reminder to myself, I reset the trip odometer and leave it on the trip setting so I can see how many miles I have on the brakes.

Part numbers
StopTech sport slotted cryo rotor right: 126.44129CSR (non-cryo is SR)
StopTechsport slotted cryorotor left: 126.44129CSL (non-cryo is SL)
TRD performance Tacoma brake pads 2005-current: PTR09-89111 (these fit 3rd Gen, despite Toyota's parts catalog saying they don't. See post #554)
Wheelers front brake lines 05+ Tacoma: BLINE-06XSM
Wheelers rear brake lines +2" 05+ Tacoma: BLINE-08XSM

Cost
StopTech Rotors were about $115/ea on Amazon over black Friday weekend. They typically run about $135. I purchased these separately as I did not see them sold as a pair. This is roughly double the cost of the OEM rotor. The non-cryo rotors are a bit cheaper, saving roughly $35/ea.
TRD pads were about $90 off amazon
Total upgrade cost me about $320.

Another way to improve or maintain braking performance is to minimize rotation weight. Increases in rotational weight from larger heavy tires and heavy wheels cause reduced braking performance and additional load on your braking system.

See my thread on choosing a light weight wheel/tire combo: https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...eel-tire-combo-trd-rock-warriors-ko2s.381030/

Going Bigger than Stock: Big Brake Kits


Much like the StopTech rotor upgrade works increasing surface area for improved cooling and increasing mass for improved thermal capacity, big brake kits (often abbreviated as BBK) take this to a level not possible on the stock size setup. Rotors become significantly larger drastically increasing surface area for cooling while also significantly increasing thermal capacity through more mass.

In addition moving the caliper further out from the center of rotation on a larger rotor gives greater mechanical advantage in braking power. Just like using a longer wrench provides a greater lever to give increased mechanical advantage in turning a difficult bolt, moving the caliper further out gives greater mechanical advantage to the caliper to apply force against the rotor rotation.

The ultimate rotors are two piece rotors with directional cooling. By using a two piece hybrid bolt together design, the center of the rotor is aluminum to minimize weight where heat resistance is not necessary, while the outer rotor brake contact surface is cast iron for maximum heat resistance. The OEM and most aftermarket rotors utilize straight vein cooling. Two piece rotors completely change the cooling architecture to directionalized cooling, which is 80% more efficient according to StopTech. Meaning two piece rotors are lighter than their one piece counterparts while also being 80% more efficient at cooling, leading to lower unsprung weight, lower rotating weight and greater resistance to brake fade.

Aftermarket big brake kit calipers are typically forged aluminum, stronger with less deflection than their cast iron OEM parts they replace while keeping unsprung weight gain to a minimum. Similar to how braided stainless steel lines eliminate line flex for more responsive braking, forged calipers eliminate caliper deflection/flex for more responsive braking.

Aftermarket calipers will also use larger piston volumes for greater hydraulic advantage in clamping power on the rotor, leading to increased stopping power. However, larger pistons do require more fluid volume, which means more more volume output from the master cylinder. If the piston volume is too large the master cylinder will lack the adequate capacity to meet the demand with reasonable pedal travel and the result will be excessive pedal travel to engage the brakes. It is important the caliper upgrade is appropriately matched to the vehicles stock master cylinder to not negatively affect pedal feel and not significantly alter the front/rear brake bias. Braking bias is the front and rear brake power distribution to get the maximum braking power to the ground via all 4 wheels in a balanced manner to stop the truck as efficiently as possible.

Aftermarket calipers allow for larger brake pads. If equal braking pressure is applied on a smaller and a larger pad, the larger pad will run cooler as it has a greater surface area to distribute the frictional force. A cooler running pad will be more resilient to brake fade. The Tacoma's stock calipers have 4 pistons which is reasonably good by stock standards, in an aftermarket performance caliper you can optionally upgrade to 6 pistons for more uniform even application of force against the brake pad.

Wheel size considerations for BBKs
When it comes to big brake kits, the wheel is the limit. The rotor can only be enlarged so much to leave room for the caliper and still fit within the inside of the wheel. The smaller the wheel size, the more the options are limited. From that standpoint, it makes a lot of sense to evaluate options by wheel size.

Big Brake Kits By Wheel Size
For reference stock rotor 319mm x 28mm
StopTech coupon for sosperformance.com links below
Use discount code "Taco-GB"

16" Wheels
This is the only 16" BBK I am aware of:
StopTech 323mm 6 piston

17" Wheels
Wilwood 327mm two piece rotor super light 6 piston
4runner 338mm x 32mm OEM swap or with added 4runner Wilwood BBK 6 piston calipers
StopTech 340mm 4 piston
StopTech 340mm 6 piston <- What I am running. Install covered in post #617.

18" Wheels
StopTech 355mm two piece aero rotor 6 piston
This kit was also sold as a TRD part using 4 piston rebadged StopTech calipers as TRD, but has been discontinued. Toyota part number PTR09-35050.

20" Wheels
StopTech 380mm two piece aero rotor 6 piston


If you have any questions or would like help on your project, don't hesitate to shoot me a PM or reply to this thread.

 

Nice write up @crashnburn80

 

Nice write up. Since you are all about improving the baking system, I'm suprised you did not mention up grading the brake lines.

 

@crashnburn80 One question: Mercedes Benz among some other manufacturers install cross drilled rotors on some of their vehicles. Can you explain that?

 

Great information thanks for taking the time to pass on. Did the brake fluid flush require anything special?

 

Nice - and very complete - write-up as usual! I'm looking forward to future posts on how well everything turned out.

 

Nice post, great pictures

 

Excellent write up as always!

 

Slotted rotors dont do anything too improve stopping or durability either,this has been well proven.

 

Thanks for taking the time to write this up, a lot of good information here.

 

Just replaced my pads/rotors on a base regular cab Tacoma. Went with OEM style rotors/ceramic pads off a big EBay seller (Callahan). Very satisfied and the total cost was 60 bucks shipped....

 

very nice write up this looks like a very good set up for my next brake change, what brake fluid did you end up using for the flush? here is a good brake fluid comparison chart I found, looking for the highest Wet boiling point is whats most important its how the brake fluid temperature performs when moisture has entered the fluid https://www.lelandwest.com/brake-fluid-comparison-chart.cfm

 

Subed

 

Great point. Good mod to improve pedal feel and responsiveness to pressure. I was more focused on battling brake fade and new pads since my pads were up for replacement. The new rotors were already splurging since I didn't need them. But yes, braided brake lines can be a good additional brake performance upgrade option for those looking for sportier brake feel.

Sometimes car design can be a funny thing. Take the base C class for example, around $40k. The base AMG version, around $68k. For that markup, there is more that buyers expect of the car than actual performance. Buyers want to 'see' the performance. They want their car to look and sound more performant than the other cars to make sure they are differentiated. You just spent $28k more than the previous guy, the brakes (and all parts) should be visibly more performant. Call it a victim of marketing, sales BS, status. Many new performance models actually use the vehicles stereo system to actively artificially pump in a more aggressive engine sound/exhaust note into the cab than actually exists, so buyers feel their car is more performant.

But to answer your question, OEM designed drilled rotors are different than aftermarket rotor retrofits. To design a braking system you will factor the cars weight, horsepower, and desired braking performance and size the braking system accordingly. An OEM can oversize the brakes to account for drilling and design efficient cooling systems for the rotor, reducing stress, and then pad those numbers with a significant safety factor. Often times the designs of performance cars like this also have brake cooling built into the aerodynamics of the car, where cold air is fed from the front of the vehicle through dedicated inlets directly to the brake rotors for further enhanced cooling. The brake rotors themselves will be the some of the best quality you can buy, undergoing far more rigorous testing than an aftermarket rotor. In the case of the "low end" C class AMG, a single rotor costs a mere $1000. Compared to the $60 OEM Tacoma rotor. Comparing to a retrofitted cross drilled brake on a Tacoma, the braking system was already sized to the vehicle and you are reducing mass by drilling the rotor, reducing capacity leading to increased stress on the rotor. The rotor is not oversized to account for material loss, reduced operating temperatures, or safety factor, meaning it is going to run hotter. The cooling system of the rotor is often equivalent to stock or worse, rarely completely redesigned for significant increases in cooling ability, meaning the brakes will run even hotter still, leading to more stress. Chances are the metallurgy of the rotor is not on par with an $1000 AMG rotor. The Tacoma certainly does not have brake cooling ducts, and the braking technology for our trucks is pretty bottom of the barrel, in terms of performance (with the exception of the electronically boosted TRD OR brake booster).

So while on the surface it can seem similar, it is always important to look at a component as a part of the system it was designed for, and not the component on its own.

Admittedly the truck is still under "Toyota Care". Worst mistake ever. First time I've had someone else maintain my vehicle, as I have always done it myself, and it will certainly be the last. If you want something done right, there is no better way than doing it yourself.

I had Toyota replace the brake fluid on my next service after completely fubaring mine, so it was the OEM fluid. Of course they changed the PS fluid instead. But eventually got it right.

 

Did you see this part?

 

Ugh, makes me wonder if dealership automotive techs go through any training at all. I've seen all kinds of really basic mistakes that really make me cringe.

 

I actually flushed my brake fluid and resurfaced the rotors last week. One thing I think I need is new pads though. I want more initial "bite" from the system. I don't typically have any issue with fade since I do quite well using the gears on descent in the mountains. However, with the 34" tires I need more bite or grab. I'm going to try pads first. If that doesn't do it I'm probably stuck because there's no way I'm going big brake kit on this thing. And yes, I already have SS lines on the truck. Had to when I got the extended travel Icons and the Dakar leaf pack.

Excellent write up!

 

My son recently decided to get out of the automotive business. He was Toyota & Lexus Certified and went through two years of college (something called the Toyota T-Ten program) before he got his certifications while working at dealerships. You'd be surprised at some of the idiots he went to school with. Remember, "working on cars" isn't considered a very sexy profession and think about who populated the "auto tech" program at your high school. Not always exactly a bunch or rocket scientists.

And once one gets to the dealership level, you have to work in the absolutely brutal "flat rate" world. Although most dealerships make their real money on Service, not Sales, they certainly don't want to share much of that money with the folks who actually get their hands dirty. Personally, I'm not surprised - knowing what I now know - that many dealership service experiences are so poor.

 

Awesome write up! I’ll be doing this same rotor and pad combo on my truck.

 

Great write up man