DriftFB

So today I finally finshed off doing my brake pad change, with help from people on here. And as promised I am doing a write up of it, I will add in pictures later, but my camera is acting weird righ now.

So going into this I had never done any brake work at all, and so I will keep this as simple as possible so people, even those with no experiance, can follow along. And to limit confusion I will use inboard and outboard instead of saying the front or rear of the brakes, because it all depends on how you're looking at the brakes. Also, I am going to cover the rear brakes first, since they where the most complicated and there is so little info on them.

Rear Brakes:

-Start out with the car parked, go inside the car and remove the plastic cover that covers the e-brake.
-Jack up the rear end of the car and support with jackstands, put blocks under the front wheels, and remove wheels.
-Loosen the tension in the e-brake cable by turning the hexigon shaped tube that comes up the right side of the e-brake assembly. You have to loosen this alot depending how tight you already had it adjusted.
-Once you have the cable loosened try taking the end of the e-brake, the half-circle shaped bar that runs through the double 'U' shaped piece on the brake caliper.
-If you can't get it out, even by pressing in the 'U' piece, then go into the car and loosen the e-brake some more and try again.
-Once you have that out loosen the bolt on the e-brake cable, the one that is tightened down on to a metal tab that comes off the caliper, the one on the rear side of the tab. Rear meaning front where the engine is. You have to loosen it until the bolt comes off, and then slip the wire through the skinny opening on the tab the bolt was tightened down to.
-Once the e-brake is all the way free of the caliper you can remove the bolt that is on the inboard, bottom side of the caliper, it was a 14mm on my car. You may need a breaker bar to get this loose.
-Swing the caliper up and support it up.
-Remove the brake pads, and put the new ones back in, if the old pads had shims, little pieces of metal hold the brake pad closer to the rotor, remove them and don't replace them.
-With the new pads, both inboard and outboard, in place make sure the little pieces of metal, that hold the pads snuggly in place are in place.
-Now you can either use a special tool, a caliper rotating tool, or just a pair of wire cutters, wrench whatever, put it in the two slots in the piston, and rotate it clockwise back into the caliper.
-Make sure the little slots line up with the hole in the middle of the caliper and rotate the entire caliper back down over the pads.
-Replace the 14mm bolt at the bottom of the caliper and do the reverse of the first few steps, and then repeat on the other side.

Front Brakes:

-Raise the front of the car and support with jackstands
-Remove the wheels
-Loosen up and remove the 17mm bolt on the outboard, bottom of the caliper
-Rotate up the caliper
-Remove the piece of metal that is shaped like a V that goes between the two pads.
-Replace the old pads with the new, and make sure you don't place any shims in with the new pads.
-Make sure to replace the piece of 'V' shaped metal that goes between the pads and hooks into the small holes on backs of the pads.
-Use a C-clamp to force the piston back into the caliper so you can rotate the caliper back down over the pads.
-Replace the 17mm bolt at the bottom of the caliper.
-Replace wheels and lower back down the car.

Drive and enjoy your new pads.

Let me know if you think I missed anything in the write up or if you have questions.

thelittlefatmailman

great write up man thanks!

Kentetsu

One thing that I don't see mentioned much: Before pressing the piston back into the caliper, loosen the bleeder valve. That way, the fluid that has been in the caliper all this time and subjected to the majority of the heat and breakdown, will be pushed out of the system and replaced by fresher fluid. I think this is a pretty good idea myself.

Yark79

So you don't use shims on the new pads? I wonder if I did that last time I did my fronts. That might be what is causing my random break squeal.

DriftFB

Wouldn't this make it to where the brakes would need to be bled? If it does make it to where the brakes need to be bled I might add it in as a special note because I was trying to keep this simple for everyday people to do in a hour or two.

Kentetsu

Bleeding the brakes is always a good idea. However, what I do to avoid this need is this: slightly loosen the bleeders after you begin to apply pressure to the piston. If you do this right (keeping the piston under pressure while the bleeder is open) it should keep air out of the system. I've done this twice now without the need to bleed. Also, the fluid that comes out of the caliper is very ugly due to the constant heat/cool cycles...

64mgb

iTrader: (1)

This really is a nice write-up, and I'm not slamming it at all. But I wish people would include pictures. I get so much more out of pictures, accompanied by the words, than I do from just the words.

Rich

DriftFB

Yeah, I'm adding pictures when I get a working camera again. They do help alot, especially with this write up, there are some tricky areas.