I swapped rotors and pads in front this past weekend. My brakes started shaking a few months ago, and have gotten progressively worse.. I know this is super common on Tundras so this is my first attempt at solving it. I went with the cheapest possible rotors and pads from O'Riley's... right around $300 out the door. My rationale is I want to first see if I can discover another issue prior to throwing larger money at this, and if there's another issue I'd rather warp a Carquest rotor than a brand new DBA or Brembo.. feel free to challenge that, that's why we post to the internet.
Convinced my rotors were "warped," I measured runout on each of them prior to swapping and was disappointed things weren't worse. I measured about .0015" on the PS, and more like .0010" on the driver side. factory spec is .002" so I was still within tolerance. Still that's something, so I spent about 30 minutes per side removing gunk from the mating surfaces with a combination of wire wheel, screwdriver, scotchbrite, and brake cleaner... got the outer face of the hub as smooth as I could, and also cleaned up the inside of the rim as best I could also.
I put the new rotors on and used the lug nuts to snug them up, torqued evenly, then measured runout again. Both of them now are under .0005" total indicated reading so I did improve something. Here's the video that shows runout before and after:
View: https://youtu.be/aSqz7eGOBX0
The other thing I noticed was on the hubs there were two sets of indents from the M8 jack-off bolts.. which means I'm the 3rd guy in 100k miles to swap rotors here. I'm positive I took more time than the last 2 guys cleaning things, but besides that I think it kinda speaks to the data you see with Tundra brakes. And my old pads are almost brand new, the old rotors have a few wear marks but they're barely worn, there's no lip on the edge or anything. I am tempted to get those turned, so I've got a quick set to swap over should I need it. I will say I really like this design, better than 80/100 where you're messing with wheel bearings-
My only other observation is the old rotors weren't resting centered around the wheel studs... here's a picture of an old one:
And here's a picture of a new one, which I set into place using the lug nuts. there's a little chamfer on the end of the nuts that force the rotor into position concentric with the studs.
So the question is do the rotors shift against the stud the first time I slam on the brakes? Or will they stay positioned like this? and does that even matter. I guess I'll find out next time I pull a front tire.
Anyway the truck stops butter smooth now.. so hoping that lasts for a while. Will see how I feel when/if it starts shaking again, do I upgrade to something fancy or just swap back the cheap turned rotors? Given how easy it is to replace, I'm tempted to stay on the cheap side. thoughts?
