Overheated brakes?

I just did a brake job on my 2016 Tundra and was on the process of bedding them after I flushed the fluid as well.

while bedding the pads I know they got hot and started getting fade as soon towards the end of the bedding process. The dash flashed that the traction control was disabled and now my pedal feels mushy. Did I some how manage to boil fresh dot 5.1 brake fluid and get air in the line?

 

Except for high-performance vehicles, or for aftermarket rotors and pads that specify it, bedding new brakes is unnecessary in my opinion. Toyota doesn't say to bed your brakes, only to avoid hard stops for the first few hundred miles.

Hard to say what has happened during your "bedding" attempt, but I'm skeptical that you've "boiled" the fluid. My only suggestion would be to remove the wheels to inspect rotors and pads for any abnormality. If everything looks okay there, then the conservative safe course (just in case you actually "boiled" the fluid) would be to flush/bleed the system again, and see how your pedal turns out.

Didn't I see a previous thread about this brake maintenance, and that you used Techstream to actuate the ABS controller?

 

I completely agree with this. Any break job I've done we tell the customer to take it easy on the brakes for the first couple hundred miles. Bedding is unnecessary. I always test drive and make sure the brakes feel good.

 

I doubt you boiled the fluid. Ya may wanna re-bleed the system and see you got all the air out. How did you flush them? What order did you go in when you cracked all the bleeders?

 

You probably cooked the pads. Hopefully you didn't cook any rubber brake lines. I usually just do a couple firm 30 mph to 5 stops and call it good.

 

Your new brake fluid can handle higher temperatures than the piston seals (o-rings) in OEM brake calipers.

If you still have OEM calipers and standard duty brake pads you may have cooked the caliper seals and the brake pads.

I switched to DOT 4 to get rid of a mushy pedal and it didn't improve until I replaced my original equipment front calipers also.(@ 181k miles)

Can you describe your bedding process? (E.G. hard brake three times from 50 - 20 mph then moderately heavy brake three times from 35-15 mph then drive with minimal braking and no stopping for 30 mins)

It's hard to make reasonable and specific suggestions without having an idea how hot your brakes may have gotten during the bedding process.

 

When I replaced the calipers a few weeks ago I found that one of the caliper pistons on the passenger, inboard side was seized.

That's what caused the mushy pedal.

I'd pulled a very heavy trailer cross-country and I suspect it cooked that caliper piston seal when the brakes got hotter than usual in the mountains. I had drilled and slotted rotors to improve heat dissipation, but it seems that it wasn't enough. It wasn't hot enough the hurt the heavy duty brake pads or to create noticable brake fade at the time, but I noticed the mushy pedal a few months after trip the was over.