Brake Upgrade Workflow

ASSISTANCE Suspension, Brakes & Wheels
21

Next Step: Installing Rotors, Calipers, Pads and Brake Lines

More newbie brake job info. I’m writing this down before I forget…
(this is not meant to replace the need to read the proper maintenance manual. These are just my experiences.)

When last heard from we were removing the caliper and caliper bracket bolts.

  1. After you’ve loosened the upper and lower caliper bolt, go ahead and remove the lower one. Now you can flip the caliper up and away and remove the old brake pads. There might be a lot of pad dust and other contaminants around here so seriously consider wearing at least a minimal mask and nitrile gloves. Depending on who did done your previous brake job there might be a series of metal shims encapsulating the pads. Remove and save these unless you have new ones.

  2. Remove the upper caliper bolt and then the caliper.

  3. Remove the caliper bracket bolts. The ones on the front wheels can be bastards. They are normally torqued to some ungodly level – around 75 - 80 ft/lbs if I remember correctly. Put the closed end of an open end wrench on it and smack it counter-clockwise (relative to the bolt) with a hammer until they break free. It really helps if you pre-treat the caliper and caliper bracket bolts with PB Catalyst before hand.

  4. After removing the caliper bracket bolts, remove the bracket.

  5. If you’re still with me, you now have to remove the old rotor. Use an impact driver (impact screwdriver) to remove the screws holding the rotor on. These screws will either be almost loose or incredibly stuck. Again, PB Catalyst is your friend.

  6. Remove the rotor.

  7. Now the fun begins. If you’re a newb like me, you really, really wanted to know what was involved in cleaning your calipers. But if you’re like me you have more money than time so you quickly realize that spending your afternoon in the backyard, freezing in 30 F weather, spraying the calipers down with and inhaling brake cleaner while scrubbing them is clearly not where you wanted to be when you were 48 (or 16). You’re lucky though. Having read this you realize that this is not a good investment of your time and you bought the new/rebuilt calipers when you ordered the rest of the stuff. Those new calipers also look much nicer than semi-scrubbed old ones. If you bought the new ones, move on to the next step and consider that an afternoon saved. If not (for whatever reason), keep following…

So, we’ve decided that cleaning / maintaining your calipers is kinda fun the first time. You’ll want to at least clean off the surfaces with brake cleaner, scrub the pad retainers, and other misc moving parts. If you’re truly anal, you can go over it with various abrasives to clean off more crud and light corrosion. When you’re done with that, feel free to paint them but I didn’t.

The next thing to do is to clean and relube the slide pistons. Remove the pistons carefully, making sure not to break or crack the piston boot. Set the piston and boot aside and look into the piston cylinder with a handy light. It’s probably cruddy in there so clean it out as best you can. I posted a link to a Honda site which covers a truly first rate rebuild in painstaking detail. I did most of it. Remove the boot from the piston and clean the piston with brake cleaner and elbow grease. After that apply a fairly thin coat of brake lubricant (I like Sil-Glyde) onto the piston. It’s also a good idea to apply a generous coat of lubricant to the boot since it aids in reassembly – this is especially important if you live in an area with harsh weather and or road salt. Now that you have the boot all lubed up you can press it down into the area on the caliper cylinder that it mates with. On the front calipers the boot fits over the mating area. On the rears in fits into a socket-like mating area, which only fully mates when you press the piston into it. In either case, press and twist the piston into the boot hole until its completely mounted and the boot is secure over piston and mating area. Test the boot integrity by pulling the piston out, but not too hard. You’ll see if it needs re-seating. If so, repeat the seating process.

If the boot is cracked or refuses to seat properly, you’ll need a new one. Those generally only come in a caliper rebuild kit for $30. If you break the boot, you’ll buy a kit so take care.

Now make sure that the piston is properly lubricated. If you’re lucky and got the piston and piston cylinder really clean and well lubricated it should slide like a, well, a well lubricated piston. If you got it mostly clean then it will travel back and forth pretty well, but slower. If you didn’t then it will barely move at all and you’ll need to repeat or buy a new caliper. See how much fun you can have?

  1. Now that that’s all done, we want to put it all back together.

I personally bought new rotors, so if you didn’t do that, go and get them turned, resurfaced, whatever.

If you do have new rotors, this is where you take them outside and clean off the industrial corrosion preventive sealant that they put on them. Set the rotor down on some cardboard and spray a clean shop towel with brake cleaner. Use the towel impregnated with cleaner to remove the sealant. This is much easier than spewing brake cleaner all over the rotor and more efficient. It’s especially important if your rotors already have their hats pre-painted. Brake cleaner is an excellent paint remover. Anyway, clean those rotors off until they shine. If the manufacturer pre-painted the hats and put sealant on them, then go ahead and use the towel to rub it off, but one pass only or it will start taking paint off.

  1. Now put the rotor on the axle. Insert the rotor screws and tighten them to spec. Be careful not to overtighten them as they’re there mostly to keep the rotor flush to the axle. It’s really the wheel and lugnuts that keeps the rotor on.

  2. Install the caliper bracket and tighten the bracket bolts to spec. The front ones are torqued to somewhere around 75-80 ft/lbs and the rears to about 28 ft/lbs but refer to the manual for proper torque specs.

  3. Take your shiny new pads and install the shims on them. Make sure you apply a thin coat of brake lube (Sil-Glyde or Permatex) between the shim and the pad or you will get brake squeal.

  4. Install the pads in the retainer clips. Make sure you’ve got the inner and outer pads right.

  5. Now you need to install the caliper itself. Install the top half of the caliper and it’s respective bolt. Don’t tighten it yet. The next step can be a little tricky because the caliper piston needs to be pushed back into its housing so that there is room for the new pads. This is accomplished using compression and turning. To compress the piston back in you can use a custom piston tool or you can use a c-clamp. I used a c-clamp. I think I used a 6" c-clamp, but your mileage may vary. Open up the c-clamp so the shoe of the clamp fits on the inside of the piston and the base of the clamp fits on the far side. Turn the clamp until the piston starts receding back into its cylinder. Test the caliper fit over the new pads from time-to-time until it fits with a little clearance over the pads. Try not to push it in further than necessary. If you can’t get the piston to move by compressing you’ll probably need to turn it with a large flathead screwdriver placed into its cross-channels.

When you get proper clearance, you need to close the caliper. This can also be a little tricky. You need to make sure that the piston head, which has a square cross channeled into its face, is turned so that the arms of the cross are facing the 12, 3, 6 and 9 o’clock positions (relative to the final caliper installation position). This is because there’s a notch on the inner pad that needs to glide across the horizontal cross channel when you close it. I believe the piston head turns counter-clockwise. You can use a large screwdriver blade or similar tool to turn it. Once it is set correctly the caliper should close over the pads.

Since the pad retainers have a fair amount of spring force, you’ll need to hold the caliper closed while you put either the upper or lower caliper bolt into place. Finish installing the bolts and torque to spec.

  1. At this point, if you purchased stainless steel brake lines, you need to install them. Follow the instructions that came with your package. I used Goodridge and the directions were pretty clear. Only a couple notes: (a) I would hang onto your original banjo bolts as I believe they are much more durable than the those that come with the kits. (b) After installation of the front hoses, make sure you adjust them so they don’t bind or overextend inwards or outwards. Double check the hose routing and turn your wheel from extreme left to extreme right to verify your work. (c) On the rear lines, try to make sure that the brake hose bracket closest to the banjo bolt is pivoted away a bit or it could interfere with the proper installation of the caliper shield. If you don’t know what I mean, go ahead and do it and you’ll see.

  2. Repeat this process for all the wheels.

  3. At this point you should have new rotors, pads and stainless steel brake lines installed. If you could afford them and you were smart you bought new or rebuilt calipers. Now for the new master cylinder.

  4. In the next posting I’ll detail the new master cylinder installation. If for some reason I don’t get around to it, you can read about it in the manual, but let me say the following:

The master cylinder install would have been straight-forward for me except for the following: When I took the old master cylinder out I accidentally bent one of the brake lines a little. I mean probably less than a millimeter, but enough to keep the brake line from threading onto the new cylinder. If you want a good definition of frustration and futility try installing a freshly bench bled and dripping master cylinder onto a brake line which just won’t seem to mate correctly. Not so much that it’s obvious … you think maybe I’ve just got it off center slightly – if I just keep trying, and if it weren’t for that damn slippery brake fluid that keeps drip, drip, dripping onto my glove and keeping me from screwing it in.

Make sure you don’t bend the brake lines. Take your time. This warning is actually in the manual but I missed it.

Finally, before you prep and bench bleed the new master cylinder, remove the old one and test install the new one dry. This way you will make sure nothing is bent and everything fits properly when you have all the time in the world and brake fluid isn’t dripping everywhere.

So next time I’ll cover bench bleeding and installing your new master cylinder from a newbie point of view.

(I hope this is useful to someone and doesn’t seem completely embarrassing to the experienced mechanics out there).

eris

22

Well it’s been 2 1/2 years and I thought I’d follow up on my old brake replacement workflow.

  1. Sorry that I didn’t cover the installation of the master cylinder. It’s definitely in the manual, so read the instructions and what I’ve said carefully.

  2. A bit about the performance of the system I installed:

a) After initial installation and bedding-in, the system I installed kicked ass. The breaking power was even all-around, not a huge jerky bite when you press the pedal down. Just even, effortless and predictable pedal feel all around. You want twice the breaking power, press twice as hard. You want four times the breaking power, 4 times as hard. If that doesn’t stop your car, you’re doing it wrong. I didn’t notice any fade after spirited breaking. All around awesome… well almost

b) After a few days I noticed pedal was feeling a little sloppy. I had planned to have a pro mechanic check my work anyway because it was my first time. So I took it to a well respected shop and the senior mechanic just happened to have time to look at it. I got a call later from him telling me he needed to charge me for another hours labor because it needed re-bleeding and he couldn’t get it to bleed properly. After an hour inspecting it he found that the the master cylinder hadn’t sealed properly against the driver’s side firewall. So take care when you seal it against the firewall. After that all was well. For the first year.

c) After about a year of no-autocross, no-street-racing and just spirited driving I started to get some squeal. At first it wouldn’t only happen when it was cold, but then it was happening all the time. Then I started to hear metal-on-metal scraping of the pad-end-of-life. So I took it to another shop because I just didn’t have time. The brake guy said that the front driver’s side rotor and pad were fine, the passenger-side front rotor was a little grooved, but the pad was okay. The rears however were deeply grooved and the pads were almost toast. I looked at them and he was right. The only think I could figure out was the I hadn’t done a complete job of rebuilding the calipers and the pads were constantly making contact with the rotors or something like that.

d) So here I am today re-doing the brake job from 2.5 years ago. A little wiser. Take my word for it, unless you have a lot of time and experience rebuilding calipers, let someone else do it. Either get OEMs (crazy expensive and rare) or a highly regarded rebuilder. So I’m about to go back out to the garage and continue. Before I do that I’ll tell you the changes I’ve made to the new parts:

-  The front rotors are ATE PremiumOne.   Other people have had decent luck with them and they are slightly slotted which should help with buildup.   They also look good on the wheels.  :-)
-  The rear rotors are standard Brembo blanks.   Why spend more when you can have really solid rotors for a reasonable price.
-  On the outside chance that the rotors were getting grooved from the CarboTech super pads doing a number on somewhat substandard steel crystals from the lack of TLC in China's finest rotor foundry, I had all of the rotors cryo treated.   Perhaps a little paranoid, but you're only supposed to do your brake job once every several years and I want it done right.
-  I'm replacing the CarboTech 1521's with another set of 1521's.   I love the completely linear braking on these things.   Low dust too (at least in my experience).
-  The brake lines and master cylinder are fine.
-  ATE Super Blue brake fluid.  I know I don't need this for spirited street driving, but I only do this every day so I figured I'd spoil the beloved Teg.

I’ll let you know how it goes. This is nowhere need as PITA as the previous time.

(BTW: I’m glad I wrote about it extensively the last time. This time I just have to review my previous work. Good luck with your projects)