I replaced my rear pads on my 2006 RWD GS today. After I completed I noticed a puddle under to front end. I looked under the hood and saw that fluid overflowed from the brake fluid reservoir. This was my first time changing pads and wondered if I did something wrong. The car drives and brakes fine, no issues. I did my front pads last week and had no issues. Has anyone had this happen to them? Any help is appreciated.

 

As long as you sucked the excess fluid out so that it was filled to the Full line.... Someone must've just added fluid to the resevoir when it was low, Thats why there was excess in it.

 

When you have used pads, you will have more fluid in the reseviour. When you compress the pistons in the calipers you push all excess fluid out of the reseviour bottle, which is what I think happened. Aslong as you didnt undo any brake lines or bleeder screws you should be fine. Just make sure the fluid is at the correct level.

 

Thanks guys. Just weird that it didn't happen last week when I did the fronts. No fluid has been added lately.

 

I'm thinking I'm changing my rear soon. How long did it take? Was it hard? The dealer wants to charge me $240.

 

It was my first time so I took my time, about 2.5 hours. That's with taking rotors to get turned at a shop down the street. Not to hard as long as you have all right tools.

 

$240 isn't bad. It saves you the trouble of dealing with the parking brake assemblies!

 

A better way to say this is as your brake pads wear, more fluid remains at each wheel within your calipers or slave cylinders. So the fluid level in the brake reservoir at the master cylinder under the hood is less. As mentioned above, someone at some point added fluid to your reservoir most likely to bring it up to the full line.

While changing your pads, you must compress your calipers or slave cylinders to make room for the "new" pads given their thickness etc. This forces all the additional fluid back up to the master cylinder reservoir.. If no one had ever added fluid to the reservoir the fluid/level would have returned to a full level. Since someone had added fluid, replacing the pads and resulting fluid going back to the reservoir just caused it to be overfull thus your overfill leak / puddle etc.

- If full from the factory, there's typically only two reasons why your brake fluid level gets noticeably lower.. You either have a leak or its getting close to needing a brake job.

- The opposite.. If your brake pads are all shot/very thin and your fluid level is still at the full mark. Someone has topped it off and you need to drain/suck some out prior to compressing the calipers/slave cylinders - or you will overflow the reservoir. I keep a large syringe in my tool box for this type of job.

Cheers

 

When you did your fronts last week, some fluid from the front calipers came back to the reservoir, but wasn't enough to overflew. This week more fluid from the rear calipers came back and overflew the reservoir. No one had to add any. I always keep my eye on the reservoir when compressing back the caliper pistons.

If your brake fluid is still good, I would just clean up the reservoir area and adjust the level like other members suggested. If your fluid is old (more than 2 yrs or 30k), I would clean everything up good, do a flush and start with everything new

 

Yeah, it all makes sense now. Thanks for all the input...

 

The rear calipers have pins in the lower portion and these pins usually seize up. The way I did it was I take off the caliper from the car put a porpane torch to the pin and roughly 3 min when the part is hot I hammer the bracket from the caliper. It is best to clean and lube the pin.

 

My car being 7 years old the pins came right out. They were dirty and definitely needed to be cleaned.

 

Great explanations, thanks guys!