Derf00

excellent link!

d3mon

for the front i just took the wheel off, unbolted the 2 bolts behind the caliper and i took the caliper out replaced the pads and done.... never used c-clamps, or bleed anything...

monkeydude3

it's actually optimal to open the bleeder, push the piston in, and close it. Do you want to shove any crap back into the ABS module or the master? And honestly after pad swaps, rotors, any brake work its always good to bleed each wheel to get out some fluid and flush out some crap

Derf00

I usually do a fluid replacement when I do my brakes so that last part is a mute point.

I have four tubes with check valves on them and a brake flushing kit I modified. I take the fourt tubes and put them on the 4 bleeder valves, the tubes go into bottles. I open all four bleeder valves while the brake flushing kit has a quart bottle of Dot4 attatched to it. I then push the brake pedal a number of times until the fluid coming out is clean. I close up all of the bleeders and the master. Then bleed out each caliper individually. I've got it down to 20 minutes now and I don't have to worry as much about crap in the lines since I have fresh fluid in every time.

monkeydude3

nice!
My buddy has a power bleeder you hook to the master... but it only works with metal masters. But dang, power bleeding makes life much easier.

gjscott

I'm European and have been changing brake pads plus everything else on cars for nearly 20 years and nobody ever skims disks at a routine brake pad change in Europe and that includes trucks and busses etc
I don't understand your 'heat cycling' statement. Your changing the pad so that negates that, and to harden cast iron you need to get to 1,500 to 1,750 degrees which I doubt any of us are getting to. The disks would warp way before that point and you'd have to change them anyway.

There is no need to skim unless the disks are scored, warped or massively uneven. And even then we replace the disks. This sounds like the similar scam and old wifes tale dreamt up by dealers and garages as the 3k oil change interval. Ford recommends 5k, at least they do in my maintenence manual.
Just because a garage says it, definately doesn't mean it's true. They're out to make money and if you think any other than that you'll be ripped off.

In Europe now many cars that are the same as here are having factory oil changes at between 10k to 20k miles including that first change after new, and there is nothing different about the car or the oil in Europe. Modern engineering tolerances are so accurate and oil quality is so high that it takes a long time for it to get contaminated and degrade. So the garages simply get their money other ways, sales, parts etc

Additionally the master cylinder is designed so that fluid can pass back through it wheither you have ABS or not, if it wasn't your brakes would lock on after the first use. You simply have to push the cylinders back slowly and steadily and maybe remove the resevoir cap in case theres too much fluid. I don't think you'd get any crap in your fluid thais way, if you did you would have had a leak from the piston seals first place.

Well that's my opinion anyway.

Derf00

If you don't skim/turn them at least get a grinder with a medium pad on it and cross/hatch the surface. This breaks the glaze on the rotors and allows the surface to properly mate with the new pads.

gjscott

This glazing that you talk about is not true, the only thing that could happen to cast iron is it could get hardened and that is very unlikely. The pads are way softer than the disk and there is a lot of friction so when you use your brakes so the pads will bed in very quickly whatever you do.

All you are doing by skimming or grinding is taking away mass from the disk which may have a detrimental effect on heat dissipation and will definately shorten disk life.

It's all a scam dreamt up by garages and disk manufacturers.

As I say, this is simply my opinion and is not stricktly true.

kingbri1

On an '04 Mustang... how do you get the caliper bolts to come out?? I've been trying to get the bolts out to replace the pads but they just come loose then spin.. they dont come out....am I missing something??? looks like there is another piece of the bolt that spins with it on the other side of the caliper connection...

fudleyd

This is very true!!! If you don't turn the rear pistons clockwise as they are compressed back in you can blow them out!If this happens you will more than likely be replacing more parts than the pads...This isdue (I believe) to the integrated parking brake system.

Use an open end wrench on the spinning bolt--there are two flats on it to grip as you loosen the nut.