Bed In New Brake Pads

"After replacing your disc brake pads or your disc rotor, things need to "bed in." The surface of your pads and the surface of your rotor need to sort of rub up against each other and sort of move molecules back and forth until you have a real solid, positive connection. Brand new rotor, brand new disc brake pad, even on a brake that's perfectly bled, perfectly well-functioning, isn't going to have very good stopping power because things need to burnish, basically, which is the process where things rub up against each other and get that good, gummy friction stuff going on. The best way to bed in your brakes is to - after you put on your new pads or your new rotors - you take your bike down, throw on a helmet, you go out, and you ride a little bit. What you do is pedal up to about 15 miles an hour or so, and then just progressively just sort of stab on your brakes. This brake pads is, well, it's pretty touchy. I touch it, it stops. Same with the back. But if it was new, I would be pedaling this thing, and it would be moving along like that. It usually takes about 24 or 30 of these stops from about 15 miles an hour to get these things burnished in."