"Burning in brakes"

[Sjm9911]

This is pretty intresting. TBH, never thought on it. The weird part is I kinda bed my brakes anyways. After installing new pads I always drove around the block and speed up and hard stopped a few times. In fact , I still do it every camping season to test out the system. Could this be a carry over from taking autoshop in high school long ago? IDK. I just always did it.

Now after reading some stuff it makes sense, the pad need to ecenly melt and deposit some material on the drum or rotor to work better. So, I read that off one of the sites. I originally thought it was to knock off rust if sitting idol or taking the glaze of the brakes after hard stopping. So, you learn something new everyday.

 

[vetteyog]

I used high boost at first till I did some of what the video I posted details.
Zero boost after for great trailer braking.

Didi the same with mine when I was burning them in. Working good now.

 

[brettstoner]

If it was me I would jack up each side, spin the tire, and adjust the brake. It is a 5 minute job. Crank the adjuster down till the wheel is hard to turn then back off until you hear the whoosh whoosh whoosh as the shoes lightly scrape the drum.

 

[judenray]

Last time I disassembled the hubs to repack the bearings on the 2009 Coleman Cobalt I cleaned the brake mechanisms and drum surface with brake cleaner. I lightly buffed the drum friction area with very fine steel wool and brake cleaner to remove light surface rust, then applied a dab of brake grease to the pivot points and inner backing plate contact points. In cleaning the drums assume I removed the light layer of brake shoe material on the drum friction area for the brakes hardly worked afterwards. After "burning in" the shoes again the brakes worked better than ever, with no more squeal from the rust.