new stainless steel rotors for Camry, now takes longer to stop

Lots of motorcycle experience. There is less friction with SS compared to cast iron. Bikes have SS rotors for street use and aftermarket manufacturers make rustable replacements for racers and performance addicts.

Pat

It's all in the pads. You bought a 'quite' pad which is probably a softer pad, meaning it will wear fast, your rotor wont and stopping time may be slower. A harder pad wont wear as fast but will eat up the rotor quicker, and get you harder breaking. The other thing to note is that there is an oilish film on new rotors which may take a bit to wear off. It's a good idea to spray new Rotors down with a brake cleaner.

A Carbon Kevlar pad is harder but more rotor friendly than other pads. Porterfield's or Axxis Metal Masters are good choices in pads. Upgrading your brake lines to SS brake lines will also help performance.

?? I must say that in my experience with bike discs the softer the pad the better the braking, and by far, but the faster the pad wear. Also harder pads squeel more. This held true with my last car (a peugeot).

That is because stainless steel does not dissipate heat nearly as quickly as does iron. You need different pads to compensate

mike hunt

Fred wrote:

What was the pad material?

I couldn't find any reference to pad/stainless rotor combinations. Do you know which pads to use?

A carbon/kevlar/ceramic pad.

Raybestos Quiet Stop pads used on the stainless rotor is ceramic. Don't know anything about carbon or kevlar.

If it were me looking I would search the wed site of the rotor manufactures for the correct pad application.

mike hunt

Fred wrote:

If it were me, I'd use OEM pads and rotors and be done with it.

Probably much cheaper?

Sounds expensive to me. Are we running at Monte Carlo this weekend?

Aftermarket might be cheaper initially, but by the time you're done with the ceramic/kevlar wunderstuff that everyone is recommending so that the OP's Camry will stop, you would have spent a lot more money. Aftermarket pads can be a PITA (as opposed to PETA) to install and in my experience, parts stores give you the wrong part half the time, where a dealer parts department gets it right most of the time.

A friend always uses aftermarket pads and rotors, and whenever I change pads on his Camry it takes me 45 minutes to an hour or more where I can do them on the Avalon in less than half an hour with OEM parts. It might be my snobby pro-OEM parts attitude but I like OEM brake parts.

On the bikes - various,i couldnt be precise but visually similar pad material with varying surface hardnesses-notably a few different grades of EBC pads.

I also assume its similar on bike rim-brakes - magura HS33 hydraulic rim brakes i had ran two types of pad material for normal use - red and black. Reds weres soft, stopped faster and wore out at about twice the rate.

I'm presuming there is FAR more to it than just pad hardness, as two similarly hard materials can have totally different friction co-efficients.

$20 a set of pads is not all that much. Now you could spend $200 on the Portfields....that's a bit salty.

Now, I haven't had these probs w/aftermarket parts from CarQuest (I used to get an employee discount...) but I generally use OEM tune up parts after two nasty troubles with non-OEM wires and rotors. My 'beater' Celica got aftermarket, but they seem to be working OK (that was 2 years ago...)

I've never used parts from Car Quest because there isn't one nearby. We have Lee, Pep Boys, Napa, Auto Zone, and Murray's. Most of the problem is from incorrect parts.