By now you should be used to our installment of Home+Grown. If youre not let me get you up to speed. Home+Grown is where one of Your Car Care REPs will walk you through a do it yourself maintenance, upgrade or car care procedure for your ride. Today Your Car Care REP, Ralph Stanton, will discuss how to properly change your car’s brake pads. “Brake” it down for us Ralphie
Thanks Facety.
Here are the main components that make up your brake system. Brake pads, brake calipers, brake rotors, brake fluid, brake lines and master cylinder. Most cars have a combination of disc brakes in the front and drum brakes in the rear. Some cars have front and rear disc brakes. Disc brakes operate by pressing up against a spinning suspended rotor. Brake fluid is essentially hydraulic fluid. Hydraulic fluid operates under pressure. The pressure is applied when you press your brake pedal. The master cylinder builds up enough brake pressure which runs through your brake lines to actuate your brake pads and/or drum brakes. You should change your disc brake pads if they are less than a ¼”. If you hear squealing or screeching every time you hit your brake pedals, it’s definitely time to change your brake pads. Let’s get into our equipment list:
Tools Needed:
Latex Gloves
Brake Fluid
Lug Wrench
C-Clamp
Hammer
Open-end wrench (depending on your vehicle)
Allen wrenches (depending on your vehicle)
2 sets of new Disc Brake Pads
Jack Stands
Brake pad grease
*For this episode of Home+Grown we will only discuss changing front disc brake pads
1. Make sure your car is in park with your parking brakes on and a block/chock on your rear tires to prevent the car from rolling back. Loosen up your lug nuts on your front wheels (very important – don’t take off lug nuts – loosen only). Once loose, start jacking up the car. After jacking up the left side, place the jack stand under the left side to hold up the vehicle in place. Remove the left tire by removing lug nuts entirely. Jack up the right side of car and place the jack stand under the right side. Remove the right tire by removing the lug nuts entirely. When front tires are removed you should see your rotors along with disc brake calipers. Calipers are what actuate your disc pads. Lets check our rotors. Run your fingers across the surface of the silver plated rotor. Is it smooth? It should be. If you have noticeable grooves that you can feel on the inside and outside of your rotors proceed to step 1A. If there are no grooves on the inner or outer surface of your rotors and it feels smooth you can proceed to step two.
1A. Do your rotors have grooves/scoring that feel like a 12” LP? That’s a problem that we need to correct. On the back of the caliper you will find a bolt on both sides. It will be a hex bolt or an Allen bolt. Remove the bolts with your open end wrench and place them in secure area. Hold the caliper from the top and pull upward, wiggling it to loosen up. With the caliper out-of-the-way you can now remove the brake rotor. Sometimes it can get stuck so you may need to give it a tap with a hammer or use penetrating oil to free it up. Some manufactures use small screws to hold the rotor in place. If this is the case, remove these screws. Once your rotors are removed bring them to a good auto maintenance shop. Any good auto shop will have a lathe machine used to turn or smooth out your rotors. Once you bring them to the shop, let them know you’re changing your disc brake pads and you need your rotors cut, resurfaced or turned. They will essentially take off a layer (several thousands of an inch) of metal from your rotors making these grooves disappear. If you don’t want to have your rotors cut, you can buy new rotors. Pricing will vary according to your car model and rotor brand. After having the rotors resurfaced (or purchasing new ones) place them back onto vehicle.
2. Now let’s remove our old brake pads. Brake pads are held in place by calipers. They will be riding along the top of the rotors. On the back of the caliper you will find a bolt on both sides. It will be a hex bolt or an Allen bolt. Remove the bolts and place them in a secure area. Hold the caliper from the top and pull upward, wiggling it to loosen up. Make sure you don’t put any unnecessary pressure on the brake line. Never let the caliper hang by the brake line. Each car is unique so take a look at how the brake pads are installed into the caliper before removing them. If there are metal clips, note how they are installed so you can put it together the same way.
3. With the caliper out-of-the-way the brake pads should slide out. If they don’t slide out easily give them a little tap with your hammer to loosen them up. Before putting in your new pads we need to place a small amount of grease on the back of the pads. This will lubricate your brake pads. Remember the grease will go on the back of the pad that attached to the caliper and not the front that comes in contact with the rotor. Put your new pads into the slots with any metal clips that you removed.
4. As your brakes wear out, the caliper adjusts itself so that you will maintain strong brake pressure throughout the life of your pads. If you look on the inside of your caliper you’ll see a round piston coming out of it. We’re going to use our C-Clamp to push the piston back in place to the starting point.
5. Take your C-Clamp and place the end with the screw on it against the piston with the other end of the clamp around the back of the caliper assembly. Now slowly tighten the clamp until the piston has moved far enough in that you can easily put in your caliper assembly over your new pads.
6. With the piston compressed you should be able to easily slide the caliper in place. Once this is done replace the bolts you removed and tighten them firmly. Do Step 5 to the right side of your car. Press your brake pedals to make sure you have firm brake pressure. The first pump or two will be soft as the piston finds its new starting point on the back of the pad. Return both wheels and lower the car.
Take your ride for a test drive. With new brakes you can get a scraping sound. This sound will usually go away in a few days. Is your car stopping better than before? Does your brake pedal have enough pressure? If your pedal sinks to the floor or seems soft try adding brake fluid. If brake fluid doesn’t help it could mean you need to bleed your brakes, which we’ll discuss in another episode of Home+Grown. Thanks for taking this “Brake” with us GoJu Nation! I’m Ralph Your Car Care REP.
