How Do I Know if My Brake Pads Are Glazed Over?

How can you tell if the brake pads and rotors on your motorcycle, ATV or side-by-side are glazed over? Looking at the brake rotor itself to see if it's unusually shiny is a good place to start.

Partzilla’s powersports pro John Talley livestreams motorcycle and ATV repair Q&A sessions on our YouTube channel every Friday at 3pm Eastern. In this session, John answers the question on how to tell if the brakes on a machine are glazed over.

Glazed over brake pads

Glazed Brake Pads or Rotors Q&A

Brakes aren’t working too well. How do I know if it’s glazed pads or rotors?

John Talley: Well, if they’re glazed, one directly affects the other. The easiest thing to do is look at the rotor itself and if it’s really shiny, then chances are they’re glazed over. Because what happens is the brake compounds get so hot that they harden, and then they lose their ability to really clamp down and stop whatever vehicle you’ve got them attached to. Now if that happens, you can probably save the rotors, but you pretty much have to scrub them of that material so it has a new surface or a clean surface or a non-glazed surface to bite into. As far as trying to reuse the brake pads, well I wouldn’t recommend that. Once they’ve been glazed over severely, they just need to go into the trash can. And also, why would you want to reuse brake pads that aren’t really up to the task? Because if you’re really running a machine that hard, then you need to have a higher performance brake compound, so to speak. Ask me how I know that.