I just put new front brake pads on and I've noticed that my front rotors are hot. Not smoking, but hot to touch. No long downhill driving or anything taxing on the brakes. Is this normal and do new pads need some time to "break in" and mate to the rotor surface? Or did I do something wrong? It's kinda a hard job to mess up, but maybe I overtightened the caliper bolts? I gave the pins and slides a good greasing too.

I jacked up the front end and there is no excessive dragging. The tires spin with just minimal resistance.

 

During normal use, the rotors will get pretty hot. In normal city driving, it's not uncommon for them hit 150*.

 

They will get hot. In normal daily driving around town you will even see up to 400°F temps with 200° to 300° pretty normal. Some real hard breaking will easily get them to 700°!!

 

When you put new pads in you should also drive real careful, slow and leave lots of room in front so that you can apply brakes real soft for the first 60-100 miles. Normal for them to get hot but how hot you have not said. Too hot to the touch though is normal.

 

Don't touch the rotors . . .

 

OK, sounds normal then. Yeah I know kinda dumb, but after a bit of normal driving I touched a fingertip to the rotor. It was definitely hot, didn't burn me, but I was surprised how hot it was.

 

Actually you want to do a series of aggressive stops to Bed the Brake Pads in after the initial slow easy stops....