Doing front brakes (survey included)

[Doctor J]

My caliper bushings were stuck (causing uneven pad wear) so I made a special tool to pull them out for cleaning and lubricating (I am not a big fan of using hammers on Japanese cars)

Puller mounted on the caliper: you holding the inner screw rod staionary and rotating the hex nut using 9/16 wrench



The boot goes into the 26 mm socket without damage:


Bushing removed


Removing dust boot by hand


The plastic collar inside is not available as a spare part and it could be damaged by careless bushing removal requiring new caliper

I discovered that my $13 Raybestos (from Kragen) rotors were blued and scored by the Sumitomo (Toyota) brake pads.
So I need to hear what Brake pads/ Rotor brands have you use on your 2nd generation Camry; I will summarize these results in a table later.
I will look for the following data:
Rotors:
Wear, discoloration, scoring, warping, glazing
Pads:
Noise, shim requirement, dust formation, cracks
Also specify year /month production and engine type (especially interested in the cars made from 8-86 to 5-87)
Here is my example
Car: 4-87 Camry 3SFE
1) 1-2012 Reason for service: brake pedal pulsation (with hot brakes); uneven pad wear
Rotors: Raybestos economy, blue discoloration, scoring and warping at elevated temperatures
Pads: Toyota OEM semi-metallic (with copper shavings) no shims used, no noise no dust;
2) 3-2007 Reason for service: shimmy steering wheel and pulsating brake pedal lens-like rotor wear
Rotors: unknown Brand name, uneven wear (see above), no scoring/glazing noted
Pads: unknown Brand name, semi-metallic no shims, occasional noise, no dust.

[Doctor J]

I have found several articles telling that rotors do not warp. Well I do not care at this point about terminology, however the issue is for sure temperature related and caused by uneven expansion of the brake rotor as temperature builds up. Ironically solid nonvented rotors of my 79 Supra were good enough to withstand crappy and screaming Pep Boys pads. I can speculate that due to the number of complaints the aftermarket rotor manufacturers made these rotor more wear resistant by increasing the surface hardness and leaving the core metal coarse grained, such composition will cause uneven surface and glazing upon build up of heat

[Grego 92]

I'd help out but haven't had to replace either of those yet and don't know what brand are currently mounted.

The rotors are probably OEM with no uneven wear. The pads are not OEM but did not notice a brand name, I just took them off to slap some brake grease on the shims because they were squeaking.

['88 All-Trac]

My original rotors were warped (visually so, I don't care if people say they don't warp- these looked like tacos as far as rotors go) so I replaced them with generic units from AutoZone. If I had the money, I would have gone Brembo.

I install BrakeBest or better ceramic pads in all of my cars. They don't require shimming or grease (I grease 'em anyway) and they wear like iron... Not to mention they suffer from virtually no fade and they're quiet and extremely potent. I'm fond of them. They make very little if any dust, to boot.

[JohnGD]

Brembos are excellent, but Centric C-tek works fine. Their Centric Premium has a powder coated hub if your region has a lot of road salt. And I'd go with Akebono brake pads.

But OP should consider changing out the dust boots all around, and lube with Permatex ceramic extreme. This caliper design is bad news imo.

[PaulPR]

Last time I replaced pads on our '91 Camry, I replaced the original rotors with whatever they carried at the Auto Parts Store. Seems like they were ~$20 ea. I used Toyota OEM pads. When they get hot, they almost sound like the metal/metal sound you get if you wear down the pad to the backing plate.

I replaced the pads/rotors on my Tacoma a couple weeks ago and used Toyota rotors. No noise/good brakes. Next time I replaced the camry pads, I'm going back to OEM rotors.

[blu_91_cam]

X-90 DLX V6

Rotors- OEM Toyota rotors, never had an issue with warping just had them sent off to get them re-surfaced a couple times.

Pads- Hawk HFP. I have to say that the HFP pads are as a lot of people online complain, they are noisy when cold and tend not to bite as well when cold, but when you get them warmed up a bit they work great, perhaps a little better than OEM but if I was to do it again I would probably go with Axxis semi metallic or OEM. I dont feel like the price difference was really justified in getting the Hawk's vs OEM. As far as brake dust goes its pretty negligible, I'd say less than OEM.