How to Clean & Install New Brake Rotors on Your Car

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is Nate McCullough on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this clip we are going to talk about the proper way to clean a new rotor and install on the vehicle's hub. These rotors are built years and years before they are used. So to prevent them from corroding on the shelf, they come with an oil on them. You can see as I smear the oil with my fingers, you may be able to see it around this area or around this area. You can see droplets. This is packing oil. It is put on there like I said to keep it from corroding. You need to use some kind of solvent; either a brake clean or a card cleaner and spray this surface of the rotor down and get that oil off of there. That oil will contaminate your brake pads and cause the coefficient of friction to be less than what it is desired to be. It will also generate some pretty foul smoke and odor. You will notice if you don't clean this off it will be rolling out of the vehicle after the first couple of times you stop on a new rotor. You can use either brake clean or carb clean. They have exactly the same ingredients. For my dollars, I use carburetor cleaner. It's about a buck cheaper than brake clean and like I said they are made of identically the same components. Let's pop our top off here, spray the surfaces down like so. You are going to want to try and shoot in to the cooling pins a little bit. You can see that oil turning red and coming off of there The idea is to get the majority of the oil off. You are not going to be able to get all of it from outside the cooling pins or inside the cooling pins for that matter. You are going to take and dry it off good. It may take a second to dry. Just set it out in ambient air. It will dry while you are performing any other surface on the vehicle. That spray is rather volatile and will dry pretty quick. Go ahead and make sure you don't have any fuzzes on it. Once you've wiped it down, it is okay to go ahead and line it up on the vehicles wheel stud and slide it into place. That's the proper way to clean and reinstall your new braking rotor. "