Fast and Easy Brake Pad Replacement

Replacing your disc brake pads is not a difficult or even a time consuming job if you approach it in the right manner.

I had been noticing a lack of strong braking action on my vehicle and concluded that it was time to swap out the front disc pads for some new ones. I stopped at the auto parts store, told them what I needed and went home with some new pads.

Back at the house I prepared to change out the pads in an orderly and efficient method. First, I got out all the tools I would need. This would be a sturdy jack to get the front wheel off of the ground. A jack stand to rest the truck on so it could not fall. A four way lug wrench to remove the lug nuts so I could take the wheel off. A yard long steel pipe to use as a cheater bar. A socket set with the correct attachments to release the caliper from the brake assembly. And lastly...a C clamp. And a word here about lug wrenches. If you have one of those " L " shaped wrenches....go get a good four way wrench to use instead. Those L shaped tools are inefficient, hard to use, and will break a lug nut stud right off for you.

Finally ready I took the lug wrench and placed the correct socket end on a lug nut. And while holding it in place, I slipped the cheater bar on to the wrench as well..and slowly took up slack. Once the slack was gone..and the wrench was tight up against the nut..all I had to do was exert a moderate amount of force and the leverage applied to the lug nut through the use of this cheater bar extension...broke that lug nut loose in a hurry. If you have ever had a flat, an could not get the lug nuts loose due to the garage that put the nuts on using an impact wrench, you can appreciate the ease of using a cheater bar. This makes removing a lug nut very easy.

I repeated this process for all the lug nuts until they were all loose. I like to use a small floor jack to lift my truck as this jack is hydraulic, easy to slide under the truck and lifts very fast. Once I had the truck up and had a jack stand under it I could go ahead and drop off the lug nuts and remove the wheel. Now, the brake assembly is exposed and I can change out those pads for new ones.

The way that brake calipers are affixed vary from vehicle to vehicle. Some use wedges. Some use bolts. But all of them have one job. To support the brake pad in such a position that when you step on the brake pedal, the pads will come in contact with the rotor. The caliper is essentially a hydraulic piston. You step on the brake and that piston slides forward and pushes the brake pad against the rotor.

My truck uses two bolts to hold this caliper on. I remove those two bolts and use a flat blade screwdriver to force the caliper up and away from it's mounting position. Once it is free, I must also take care to not allow the caliper to fall. Attached to that caliper, is a flexible brake line. The caliper is somewhat heavy, and to let it fall could damage that flex hose and cause a brake failure.

Now comes the part that causes a lot of headaches for shade tree mechanics. The piston in that caliper slowly moves forward over time as the brake pad wears away. That piston, is now so placed that once you install the new pads in the caliper..you can not slide the caliper back over the rotor. The piston has moved to far ahead. So what to do? A nice quick fix is a large C clamp. What I do is I open the bleeder valve on the caliper. I place the C clamp in such a way that when I tighten it down..it pushes the piston back down into it's rear most position..this in turn forces brake fluid out through the bleeder valve. I lose a an ounce of brake fluid, but my caliper will now slide onto it's mounting with no problem at all. And don't forget to close that bleeder valve.

I pop off the old pads, use my C clamp to compress the piston, and pop in my new pads. These pads have spring like extensions of them and they just clip into place very easily.

With the attachment bolts back in place the brake work is finished. I put the wheel back on and snug up the lug nuts. Lift the vehicle enough to pull out the jack stand and them let down and remove the jack. The final job is to torque up the lug nuts now that the weight of the truck is on the wheel again. I like to use a star pattern to re-torque these nuts. I feel it evenly distributes the torque over all the lug nuts.

Repeating all the same things on the other wheel has me driving with new brakes in about two hours. It's a good idea to check your brake fluid level in the master cylinder while you are at it too. Some calipers can be quite large and the fluid loss in using the C clamp can expend more fluid than you might think.