brake temperature - is this normal?

the front brakes should get hot to the touch, or too hot to touch depending on what you've been doing, as that's what brakes do, turn rotationaly energy into heat energy via friction

the rears do less work so they don't get as hot

you can by temprature gauges from the likes of maplins etc for a tenner that you point to the thing youwant to measure, rpess the button, and it gives you a temprature reading via a laser beam so it might be the best investment rather than spending a few quid to find out there's nothing wrong

if one side is substantially hotter than the toher it may point to the other side either not being as efficient or one side working much harder

i can tell you for free though that the rear brakes on my estate, even though they have been done recently and i've deglazed the pads and everyting else, still do hardly any work at all, although this may be because the fronts do so much work instead :} but the fronts are warm to the touch and the rears are like 5 minute old toast to the touch

i'll go out and get some readings later today if you want to wait for them

Thanks for your comments. I know the brakes should get warm but too hot to touch after normal driving and not being heavy on the brakes doesn't seem right to me.

Car is now back with the garage after I rang him to ask about the temp and differences. He's said the back one that has the new caliper is working even though it's not getting warm and this is perfectly normal. Reckons the other side will require a new caliper though which to be fair, I expected.

He also said that the fronts are normal to get that hot (too hot to touch) and that there are rarely problems with the front brakes on Mondys.

When I pick the car up later he's said he will put it on the brake test machine so I can see what's happening myself so can't say fairer than that.

Just a little concerned that the new caliper doesn't generate any heat to speak of.