I am replacing all four rotors and all pads on a 94 coupe. When i took the tire off and looked at the caliper, the bottom bolt seems to be a hex bolt and where the top bolt is, there's a rubber boot. I was just wondering if anyone knows if i should use an allen wrench or one of those star drivers for the bolt. And for the top bolt, do i just grip the rubber thing with pliers and pull it off? i just don't want to break anything or strip out the bolt.
Ken[>:]

 

well you pull out the one bottom bolt then you flip the caliper up pivoting on the pin which is the rubbuer thing you talked about and you should be able to slide the caliperback on that pin and take it off. i assume you are talking about the rear brakes and you will also find that getting the caliper piston in will take a special tool,,the piston actually has to be spun back into place and you will need a tool that has 2 tabs on it that will grip the piston and spin it back in,,,good luck

 

thanks a lot. i just changed replaced the rotor and pads only on one side though, cuz i ran out of time. ford puts so much threadlock on those bolts! I had to hammer it forwards and backwards. all in all, i spent about 30 minutes hammering the wrench. But it worked. Thanks!

 

Aren't you worried about proportioning?

I read this article about upgrading brakes. The article mentions that factory brakes setups have a proportioning valve so when you apply braking force, the right amount of fluid goes to the front and to the rear to put the right amount of braking force on the front and on the rear. This is all based on the front to rear weight ratio of the vehicle. By upgrading the brakes at the wheels, you can throw the proportioning off. Under light pedal pressure, the upgraded brakes up front grab and slow the car down, while the rear wheels are barely helping. Under hard braking, the ABS is already preventing the front wheels from locking before the rear even gets to do some work. In effect, you end up with longer stopping distances.

I'm not a brake expert trying to be critical. I'm just curious.

 

[&:] ...i have no idea what you are talking about.

 

i believe he is replacing for maintainance reasons,

and regardless if you are buying a whole set of upgraded calipers rotors and pads you shouldn't need to worry about it,,

even if you put a big brake set up front it shouldn't be that big of deal,,because the fronts do 70% of the work anyway, and a big brake set on the front lowers its workload slightly due to heat disipation and contact area,,but that doesn't mean since the front workload is lowered the rears have to work harder and will spin the car out of control and into a tailslide,, it just means the whole brake system has to do less and works more efficiently

i am not saying your article is wrong but maybe a little critical,,,i have seen many people add big brake setups to the front only and have had great results with it,,and in a perfect world you probably should upgrade both front and rear,,,and if someone isn't satisfied with brake pressure after such an upgrade adjustable valves are available.

 

oh, you were talking about upgrading. nah, i'm not upgrading. I'm just replacing all rotors and pads with new factory take-off rotors and cheapo pads. my old rotors were crappy and made the car shake when braking. I replaced the really bad one and the shaking is mostly gone now. I don't have time to do it all at one setting. Is there any way to get the bolts out easier though? I have tried to just put the wrench on the bolt and then use a bottle jack to jack the end of the wrench up and that seems to work. if not, i smack the wrench a few times with a hammer while the jack is still putting pressure on the bolt and that seems to break the the bolt loose... is this bad? maybe lubricant? heating? also, is changing the back brakes hard to do? something about a special tool to "screw" the piston back in? i think the back brakes are still ok, so if it's going to be troublesome, i'll just leave them be.

 

if the backs are good just leave them alone.

as for breaking the bolts loose i would look into geting a long ratched or a breaker bar. i do brakes all day and i know those ***** are tight as hell i have to use a 2ft 1/2" breaker bar on the braket bolts before i can even think about removing them with my 3/8 impact gun. Remember that more leverage means less work i would get a longer tool to remove them.

and yes i realise i said longer tool

 

yeah, but only using a floor jack makes it a little hard to use a really long tool. i was using a breaker bar, but this thing's only about two foot. i just couldn't really get under there to do anything because i only just got the car high enough to get the tire off the car. You probably work with a lift. i would kill for a lift. haha

 

Lifts make things so much easier. As for the special tool if you get some C clamp vice grips those should work, I use those for compressing regular pistons anyways, also heat is always a good option and/or penetrating oil. Just don't spray it with oil and spark up a torch[8D].