Hey guys, ChrisFix here and today i'm going to show you how to replace your brake pads and rotors on your car or your truck. And we'll be replacing the brake pads on my mustang which is perfect, because the brake setup on this car is going to be similar, if not identical, to most other makes and models. And this video is going to be a complete guide so if you're a beginner and you've never changed the brakes before, after watching this video you'll know everything you need to do to be able to replace the brakes yourself. This is also a good guide for a refresher if you've done brakes before or if you're an expert. I'm gonna be including tips and tricks to anyone watching could perform a complete and thorough brake job. And the last thing i want to say for everybody who's doing this for the first time, don't be afraid to change your own breaks! I know the most nerve-racking thing is the fear that if you do something wrong you're not gonna have brakes to stop your car, but let me tell you. The brake systems on cars are actually pretty simple and it's hard to mess up, so give it a shot. You're going to save a ton of money, you're going to learn something new and you're going to feel proud that you're able to fix your own car. And before we begin I want to thank Advanced Auto for helping out and supplying the brake pads and rotors for the video. Alright! So let's begin. The tools I'll be using for this job are all common hand tools. You need a simple socket set, a breaker bar, a torque wrench, a metal wire brush, and the only specialized tool is this brake piston compressor which is inexpensive and you can pick this up when you pick up your brake pads and rotors. And i also want to include: have a large hammer like this which will help knock the rotors off if they're stuck. And also have a pry bar or flat head screwdriver like this which will help pry open the caliper. You're also going to need to get your tires off the ground, so i'll be using a jack and jack stands. And those are all the tools you're going to need. As for consumables you're gonna need some copper anti-seize, silicon paste, brake cleaner and thread locker. And finally you'll need some brake pads and rotors. I prefer getting ceramic brake pads, they are a little more expensive but they have less dust and they tend to last longer compared to the semi-metallic pads. And make sure when you get your brake pads it includes the brake hardware which is important for doing the complete brake job. And for rotors i like using a regular blank rotor. While drilled and slotted rotors are nice they will eat up your brake pads a lot quicker so for the street this is perfect. And that's all you need, so let's begin!! There are four simple steps to changing your brake pads and rotors. First you want to safely lift the car off the ground and then remove the wheel. Second remove the brake pads unbolt the caliper and remove the rotor. Third put the new rotor on, reattach the caliper and install the new brake pads. And then fourth, put the wheel on, lower the car to the ground and go test those brakes. So let's get started! Since we're replacing the front brakes, the first thing you're going to want to do is lift the front end off the ground, but before we do that, you're going to want to grab your wheel chock, in this case i'm using a piece of wood, and chock off the rear wheel so your car won't move. And before we left the tires off the ground we want to crack all the lug nuts so they're loose, because if you're trying to do this with the tires off the ground, the wheels just gonna spin. If you're not sure where to jack up your car from, go check out the owners manual. In here they give you instructions and show you exactly where they recommend you jack the car up from. Since you replace brake pads in pairs, we're gonna be doing both front brake pads, so I like jacking the car from the middle so both tires raise up at the same time. And the best way to lift up both front tires is by jacking it up from the front crossmember. This is a thick piece of metal and supports the whole front suspension. And with the car in the air slide your jack stand underneath the car and I try to just stick my arms underneath the car when i moved the jack stand. Don't put your whole body under the car. You don't want to be under the car until the car is securely set onto the jack stands. Now we're looking for a place to put your jack stands. This right here is the floorboard. If you put it here, your jack will go right through the floor into your car. What you're looking for, is you want to find a thick piece of metal frame just like this right here and you can find the same exact spot on the other side. And after both jack stands are in place slowly lower the car down so that the jack stands securely support the car. And just add some backup, I like to set up the jack so there's some light pressure on that cross member. And the last thing I like to do is give the car a good shake and make sure that it's stable and doesn't move. And with the car safely lifted off the ground we could remove the lug nuts and remove the wheel. And another thing I like to do for extra safety is slide that wheel underneath the frame. That way in worst-case scenario you have something solid there and the car won't drop all the way down. Alright! So now we have access to our brakes so now we want to remove the old brake pads and our old rotor and in order to do that we need to get access to the bolt behind the caliper here. But we want to work with the car and make the job that much easier. So get in the car and turn the steering wheel so the bolts to the caliper are more accessible. And now it's that much easier to get to the bolts. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to remove the brake pads and in order to do that we're going to go and remove this bolt right down here which is going to allow our caliper to pivot upward like a clamshell. Then we could pull the pads out. Normally these bolts use a regular socket but in this case we have a torx bolt, so we're using a T50 torx. And I start off with a breaker bar every time just so you can break these bolts loose easily. And then once you use your breaker bar to break the bolt loose, you can use a regular ratchet to loosen it up the rest of the way and it'll come right out. And you can see the blue loctite on the thread so we'll be sure to add some when we screw this in later on Now we could pry open our caliper which might take a little force, and then remove our old brake pads and they'll come right out just like that. So for this brake caliper we just had to remove that one bolt right down here, but on other brake calipers there's also another bolt right up here that you could remove to take this whole clamshell off. In this case all you have to do is lift this up like that and the caliper slides right out. And with the caliper removed you don't want the caliper to just dangle by the brake line because that's how you damage your brake line. So, instead, you want to try to find a place to put your caliper where it's out of the way and there's no pressure on the brake line. If you don't have a nice place to leave the brake caliper like that you could also use a bungee cord or rope or something to hang it up. All right! Next, we want to remove this caliper bracket so we could pull the old brake rotor off, and to remove the caliper bracket we want to go behind the knuckle and you can see there's a bolt right up here and a bolt right down here holding this bracket in, that we need to remove, In this case it's a 15mm bolt, and again start off with your breaker bar so you can easily break these loose. These are going to be the tightest bolts, so they're going to be the toughest to break loose and again after we're done cracking the bolts loose with our breaker bar, we could loosen them the rest of the way with are shorter ratchet. And that's one and that will remove the bottom with no bolts holding it in, the caliper bracket slides right out. Now we're going to remove the brake rotor and you want to make sure that the brake rotor isn't being held in by a screw. In this case there's nothing holding it in, so you could try wiggling it off but just as i figured it's rusted to the hub. So to remove the rotor we're going to be using a large hammer and you want to use a pretty good amount of force and hit the outside edge of the rotor spinning the rotor as you go, until it breaks loose. Just like that. And if you take a look at the back of the rotor you could see it's all rusty in here, which just rust wields itself right to the hub. Now with our old rotor off we want this surface right here to be smooth and relatively rust-free. Doesn't have to be perfect but we want a good flat surface, so grab your metal wire brush or sandpaper and start removing the rust from the hub surface. It's also a good idea to use eye protection and a dust mask while you're doing this. You want to have a smooth surface for your new brake rotor, so come out flush against the hub. And after we sand the whole surface we want to grab a bucket, grab our brake cleaner and spray it down. And since we're cleaning things up, now's a good time to clean up our caliper bracket. Awesome! With everything sanded down we could add our new brakes. But you guys know how I like to go over the top with my cars, so I cleaned up the suspension a little bit, so i just removed all the grease, i sanded it down, used a little bit of primer and then used black spray paint to get this looking real nice, and you guys definitely don't have to spray paint your whole suspension, but you want to just make sure that your hub surface is completely smooth, so that we could install our new brake rotor. And before you go and install your brake rotor, one thing that they do with brake rotors is they put this oily film on here so that the brake rotors won't rust when they're all packaged inside the box. So what you do is you get a little bit of brake clean and just spray down the entire surface of the rotor and then wipe it down with a paper towel. And you could see all the oils that are getting removed from that rotor surface. And don't forget to do the other side as well! Wipe it clean and again look at all the oils removed. Good, now we can install our rotor and you'll see that the rotor tends to want to fall off, so a little trick to hold it in place is to use a lug nut and just thread it all the way on, so it prevents the rotor from moving while you install the rest of the brakes. With the rotor securely in place, now we can install our caliper bracket which is held in with these two bolts, and we want to add some medium strength thread locker to prevent vibrations from loosening up the bolts as we drive. Now we could take a bolt and align our caliper bracket and tighten the bolt by hand and we'll do the same thing with the second bolt and hand tighten that all the way down. Good! Now grab your torque wrench and on this car the caliper bracket bolts get torqued down to 90 pound feet. That's one and that's the other. With our caliper bracket in place, now we want to grab our caliper and we need to compress this piston all the way back into the caliper, so our new thick brake pads will fit in here. And a quick tip is before you go and compress this piston into the caliper, we want to remove all the acidic brake dust and all the dirt and grime here, because we don't want that stuff to find its way into the caliper and contaminate the brake fluid and damage the seals. Now you don't want to spray the brake clean directly onto here because there's a rubber seal right back here and brake clean will dry out that seal. So instead just spray it onto a towel and clean off that piston. and that simple trick will prolong the life of your caliper. Now we could compress the piston and to compress the piston just get one of the old brake pads, put it up against the piston and then get your brake piston compressor tool, slide it in there and start turning it. And you can watch the brake piston compress right back into the caliper. This should feel nice and smooth. It shouldn't be difficult to do and once it starts getting difficult to turn, that means you bottomed out here so loosen it up and remove the tool and break pad. now there are some pistons that are solid and have a cross in them, and these pistons need to be turned to compress. And they make an inexpensive tool for that. This is most common on the rear brakes but i just wanted to show you in case you encounter this. So with our piston compressed, now's a good time to add our new brake hardware. For this caliper we only have one break clip that goes right there, so i'm just going to use a screwdriver and pop this out. And the old one was oriented like that, so we'll install our new one in the exact same orientation. Good! With the piston compressed, our break clip in, and our caliper bracket on, we're ready to install our brake pads. But before we do that, we need to lubricate the brake system. And to do that we're going to be using a copper-based anti-sieze. Not the typical silver graphite based anti-sieze. So the first area of lubrication is right here at the brake caliper bracket. Right where the brake padding guide meets up here and down here we want to add some anti-seize. So be careful, just add a little bit right down here and right up here. And it makes sense to have some type of lubrication here so you don't have metal-to-metal contact with no lubricant. Because this does have to slide back and forth as the brakes get used. And then on the other side of the caliper you have the identical spots where the brake pad sit in that you also want to lubricate. It's also important to lubricate the brake hardware. So just get a little copper anti-sieze and lubricate the top of the brake hardware. And the last place to add a thin layer of anti-seize is on the back of the brake pad which helps prevent squeaks. And that's everything you need to lubricate. And right now your hands are gonna be covered in anti-sieze so it's important that you clean them off or get new gloves, because you don't want to get the anti-seize on the brake pad surface or the rotor, which could cause your brakes to fail. Alright! So let's install our brake pads and if you guys are wondering what these stripes were on the brake pads, that's actually burnishing compound to help break the brake pads in. And it's really this easy, the brake pads just slide right in just like that. They won't fit in properly if you put them in backwards and that's what I mean before, when I was saying it's really easy to install brakes, it's really hard to mess this up. Now the caliper slides on something called caliper guide pins which is this right here. You want this to be smooth, rust-free and lubricated really well so the caliper can move freely. So clean it up with some brake clean. And now you're gonna want to add some silicone paste right to that caliper guide pin. Don't use anti-sieze and don't use a petroleum based lubricant, because those products will degrade the rubber on the caliper. Silicone is the proper lubricant to use for the guide pins. And this is how one set up for the guide pins looks. In other cars, like this Honda, the guide pins are built into the caliper which are just like bolts that you slide out, clean off lubricate, and then push back in. You want to make sure that the guide pins move freely. In this case the caliper slides over the guide pin and then you close the caliper over the brake pads like so. And now we're going to install our bolt, but if you remember we saw some blue loctite on the end here, so i'm going to add a little bit of blue loctite on the end, and tighten our bolt up. Now this bolt gets torque down to 25 pound feet of torque. Then we can turn the steering wheel straight so we can more easily put the wheel back on, and don't forget to remove that ;ug nut you had on there to hold the rotor in place. Then you can put the wheels on your car and hand tighten all your lug nuts. And we are almost done! Now go do your brakes on the other side and then after you finish the other side, remove the jack stands and slowly lower the car so the tires are just touching the ground, so they won't spin when you go to torque them. Now you want to torque down your lug nuts in a star pattern so the wheel tightens evenly. Most wheels are torqued between 80 and 100 pound feet and in this case I'm torquing them to a 100. With the wheels torqued, let the full weight of the car on the wheels and remove the jack. And that's all there is to replacing your brake pads and rotors. There's one more thing we need to do inside the car and that's start up the car, then you want to pump the brakes a few times. Don't worry, you're not gonna have any brake pressure the first few pumps but then the pressure buildup and the pedal should feel hard. And that's all there is to it. So now after watching this, you'll be able to change your own brakes, so go out there and give it a try. And if you do change your brakes after watching this video, let me know in the comments below. As always, hopefully the video was helpful and if you're not a subscriber consider subscribing for more how-to videos just like this, and finally the products i used in this video are linked in the description
