You’ve Never Seen Brakes Like This Before
This high-tech FLIR (forward-looking infrared) camera can pinpoint how hot your brakes get.
Braking temperatures are extremely important to your car’s ability to stop, making heat dissipation one of the primary jobs of the system. Obviously while you are driving your car, air movement will help to regulate the temperatures of your rotors a bit more than this stationary demonstration will allow. But it is much harder to get a reading with the amazing FLIR (Forward Looking InfraRed) camera on a moving object. There are a few phases to this test that make it interesting to watch, and you can see the areas that get hotter when brakes are applied.
The rotor here is shown at first with no brakes applied at all. You see a minimal increase in temperature, due to friction in the moving parts, and possibly a very light dragging on the brake pad itself. In the video, Jason Fenske, host of Engineering Explained, then pulls up the handbrake, and you can see the temperatures of the center hub (which the brake shoe fits up against) rapidly getting brighter. Similarly, apply the hydraulic brakes, and you can see the face of the rotor getting brighter.
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This test is with the car completely stationary. So really the brakes are just fighting against the engine, not trying to quell the velocity of a moving automobile. Imagine how much hotter these brakes would get during a panic stop from highway speeds, or during a track day with repeated braking.
This video just goes to show how important it is to keep all of your braking components in tip-top shape. From the things you normally think about — like rotors and pads — to the things you don’t often think about — like the rubber flex lines and hydraulic fluid — your braking components all work together to keep you safe on the road and on the track. Dissipate heat and avoid fluid boiling with quality new components when needed, and new brake fluid every other year at a minimum.