LexBrett

Hi All,

I changed my brake pads recently and I thought I would write an instructional thread w/ pics;

1. First jack up the car at the recommended jack points and take off wheels, see owners manual for jack points. You will probably will have to use a breaker bar!



2. Remove a little brake fluid with a turkey baster. The brake fluid level will rise when you compress the brake pistons, which I will explain in subsequent steps.




3. In order to remove the caliper, unscrew 4 bolts. There is a pair of 14mm and a pair of 17mm bolts (I think). I used a breaker bar for the 17mm bolts, and they are a pain to remove. Once the calipers are removed, don't let them just hang because you could damage the brake line. Tie them somewhere with a zip tie or cord. Note that some people will say that you don't need to remove the calipers. I disagree. It is a little up front work but pays off later.

Now comes the darn brake retainer pins. There are three pins. Make sure to TAKE A PICTURE of the placement of the pins. Taking these pins out is easy, but really confusing to put back in IMO.

First there is a little pin holding in the larger sliding pins,






Once you remove the little pin, just slide the retainers out.

Now take out the other two pins. These are tricky. Here is a pic to assist you, but make sure to take a really good picture so you will know what to do to put it back together.




Now you can slide out the brake pads,




4. Below are my new brake pads. I used OEM brake pads, that were less than $50 delivered from amazon,




5. You will need to remove the shim attached to the brake pad. Be careful not to bend the shim, as it needs to be flush with your new pads. I sprayed some CRC brake anti-noise fluid on the side of the pad does not touch the rotor. This is supposed to prevent brake noise. Here is a pic where you can see the shim,




Make sure to let the fluid dry, and do not put too much on, otherwise the pad will stick to your caliper.

6. Now comes the fun part! You will need to compress the brake piston. I used a 6 inch c-clamp. Other clamps did not work for me. Essentially all you are doing is pushing this down to make space for the new, thicker pads. Here is a pic with the location of the piston,




Now compress the piston. Make sure to compress the piston evenly. You may use the old pad so the piston goes down correctly. The pic should be self explanatory,









7. The last step is to put everything back together. Take your time and follow your diagram/pics of the brake retainer pics. If you wanted to take off your rotors to replace or clean them, now is the time. There are 8mm bolt holes in the rotor, and you can screw in the 8mm bolts and the rotor will pop right off. You will hear an audible pop.Just make sure to release your emergency brake. Here is a pic of the 8mm bolts (not in the rotors though) and my slotted rotors that I cleaned with CRC.









7. Now put your wheel back on, make sure everything is tight and go for a test drive. My non-expert diagnosis of a successful brake job is that the car brakes nice with no unusual brake noise.

I hope this helps, and please feel to provide questions or comments. You can also cross reference my write up with a video on Youtube of a brake job for a GS430 I will write instructions on front brakes as well.

iolmaster

iTrader: (1)

Why did you replace those pads? They appear to have plenty of material left.

LexBrett

They seemed to be making some noise and not stopping as well as I hoped, so I wanted to try OEM

Black31385

nice write up.....thanks

kjcole

Compressing the pistons is simple if you open the bleeder while compressing. I like to purge that brake fluid in the caliper anyway. I also like to soak the exposed piston with brake cleaner and scrub it up before compressing it back into the caliper.

bacardi11

iTrader: (1)

lex them pads don't look to bad you think you may need a good brake bleed.

Pep59

Driver rear caliper showing all hardware.

I recently did the rear brake pads on my 2005 SC430 and I did it a bit differently.
After jacking up the car and removing the wheels, I pried up gently on that retaining clip that looks like a butterfly to remove it.
I then removed the thin wire spring piece that keeps the pads separated.
Then I removed the little retaining pin and pulled the bolt from the brake pads.
I was able to pull on the loops on the pads and they came out quite easily.
I wasn't sure if I could compress the caliper pistons in place so I removed the caliper.
The pistons went back into position very easily so when I did the other side, I compressed the pistons with the caliper attached.
I used the soft rubber handle of my pliers and did the pistons one at a time.
I did not have to siphon any brake fluid out of the reservoir.
I did put rags around it just in case but had no signs of spills.
I used Akebono pads that had shims already attached so I did not reuse the hard and soft shim that were in place with the original pads.