The Only Brake Job Guide You’ll Ever Need: Real Tips for DIY Success!

You guys, Garrett Brown, and today we're going to be showing you how to replace your brakes on your car. Super easy, super simple. Let's show you how to do it. So these are the general tools that you'll need. Some of them you'll need and some of them you can get by without. Now, when I show you how to do this job, it may be easy on my end. Maybe everything will go right, but it doesn't mean everything will go right for you. So I'm going to guide you on what could happen and tools that can help you in this scenario. So these are the general tools that you'll need. Some of them you'll need and some of them you can get by without. All right, when it comes to tools, we're going to keep it pretty basic. So like I said, you're going to want a jack and jack stands. Always use jack stands when you're working on your car. Next, as you can see here, we have our impact sockets and regular sockets. Now you can get by without an impact. You could just use a breaker bar or extended ratchet, but having an impact gun obviously will help us out a lot. Again, not needed, but it'll help a lot. Having your basic hand ratchets and sockets are really going to help you out. And again, if you have an extended ratchet, it's going to help you out drastically. Also, just because you have an impact gun doesn't mean you should impact everything out with them. You understand in a bit why I say that. Next, you're going to want a tool to compress the piston. Sometimes you can get by with C-clamp. You could also get by with one of these bad boys. And other times you might have to have the actual brake caliper compressing tool. Next, you're going to want different sized hammers. If you only have one size hammer, that's fine. You can get by most of the time without it, but having more hammers will definitely help you out. And again, having an extended ratchet and a breaker bar is a must when it comes to working on brakes. And last but not least, things go south really quick sometimes, especially with brakes. And if you live in a rust belt, you're going to want some form of heat so you could heat up those components so they won't snap on you or break on you. And then having something for your knees so you're not just kneeling on the hard ground. As you can see, I'm working in a parking lot, not a garage. So you want to have something to kneel on. You don't want to just be kneeling on this hard ground. So wear knee pads or use something like that, or get one of these cool mini stools. Now, the first thing we're going to do is jack up the car. What I do is get one of these foam pads from Harper Freight. They're about 10 bucks for a pack of four of them. And like I said, really affordable. So we'll go ahead and get the jack under there. Now, when you raise a car, you want to make sure you put the jack in a position where you could still put a jack stand somewhere. So right now, I'm going to go a little bit more into the frame. And if you're worried about crushing some part of the frame, you could put a piece of wood right there so it doesn't damage any rusty part on your car. And once you have it in the air, you're going to want to make sure you position your jack properly. And then you want to slowly lower it. Keep in mind when you're jacking up a car, guys, watch your jack. Make sure it's not tilting or leaning. Because sometimes when you're on a hill like this, it'll want to lean to one side when you're jacking it and the car can fall over. Always, always be careful when you're raising and lowering a car. I'll leave the jack there for extra security. Now, let's go ahead and loosen the lug nuts and get this wheel off. Keep in mind if you're using a breaker bar, you want to break these loose once they're on the ground. If you're like me though, you could do it while it's in the air since we have the impact gun. Now, if you're unfortunate and you have a Dodge or a Jeep or something with these style lug nuts where they have this crappy cap over them, they're going to be distorted. So what I mean is this is typically a 19 millimeter, right? But on here, it doesn't fit at all. Why? It's because rust got underneath this cap and it kind of swelled up. So what you're going to do is get a 20 and this 20 just barely fits on. So unfortunately, we're going to have to tap it on just a little bit so we could impact it out. Now, the proper thing to do is get a half size socket. So like a 20.5, but a lot of us at home aren't going to just go ahead and buy sockets like that on the spot. So let's go ahead and just impact this out. And once you have it loose, what you're going to do is impact a little bit back like that. And then you're going to grab the extension, pull towards you, pull away. And there we go. Now it's back off. And now we can slightly, and I mean slightly, impact it out. There we go. Now, only one lug nut is swollen out of all five of them, but you get the point. Sometimes it happens, or as you could see on the side, this is truly swollen up. So anyway, let's get the rest of these out. Now, once you have the wheel off, what I like to do is put the wheel underneath the car. Even though we have a jack stand, it's always nice to have a second layer of protection just in case the jack falls, the car leans, whatever it may be, put it underneath to protect yourself. Now, first things first, when you're doing brakes, the number one thing you want to check is your bleeder screw. You want to make sure that's not rotted all the way out because that may be a problem if you did get air into the system. So what you always want to do is spray penetrating oil and let it sit, let it soak. So hopefully we can get this out. If it is really rusted, what we'll do at the end is get our heat and hold the heat really good. Keep heating it up and hopefully, hopefully it won't snap off, but nonetheless, let's go ahead and replace these pads. So we're going to do pads and rotors on this. This is the guide pin right here. It goes from the caliper all the way to the caliper mounting bracket. Now, the first bolts we're going to loosen are the bolts that hold in the caliper to the mounting bracket. Now, as you can see at the top right here, our first problem is that we can't get our socket onto there. You might be trying to get an open wrench on it, but you also might strip it. So the easy trick that you do, or more tip than trick is you're going to break the bottom bolt loose first. Also, if you don't have an extended ratchet, like I do right here, what you could do is get your regular ratchet, put your socket on it, and you're going to get a deep socket and extension. And now this is going to make up the difference and you'll have plenty of more leverage. Just be careful. You don't want it to slip and it smacks you straight in the face. It happens. Be very careful and very mindful. If you think this is too dangerous, you could always use a pipe over the ratchet as well. I'm just giving you some ideas so you could be a little bit innovative if you don't have the proper tools. And as you can see, the threads on these are pretty chewed up and it's pretty nasty. Thankfully, we have a replacement set. When you can, invest the extra $5 on these bolts. They're going to help you out because a lot of the times these get stripped at the head or these threads get chewed up. Now, all we're going to do is pry up just like that. And now if you're just replacing the brake pads, all you're going to do is pop these brake pads out, put the new ones in and then slap it back together. Unfortunately, we're doing the rotors, so this has to come out. Now, generally what you're supposed to do is technically you got to undo this bad boy and then you'll be able to get access to this one just because of how tight the clearance is. However, this guide pin should be still good. So what we could do is smack the caliper out that way and we can still reuse that same guide pin. We should be fine. So let's go ahead and do that. Now, since this guide pin is really seized, typically it comes out with just hammering it or pushing it out. This guide pin is really seized, does not want to come out. So what we're going to do is get some heat, just some propane from Walmart and then a torch. So all we're going to do is heat up this part of where the guide pin goes into. The guide pin goes into this little part right here. We want to make sure we don't test any rubbers because that's going to be a really bad day. So a cool tip you could do is put the wrench actually right here. So it's blocking the open flame from hitting that boo. It's going to preserve it a good amount. It's not going to be perfect, but this is better than just letting an open flame hit that part of the boo. Now, after you got it really hot, all you're going to do is get your hammer and then tap it out. There you go. Nice and hot. All right. So now that we got that off, we're going to take the boo off and then we're going to clean this really good with a wire brush. So get your wire brush. You're going to want to clean it very nicely. You don't want any crap on here. There should be no slides. You're going to want this nice and clean because this is what slides and helps you break. If this doesn't slide, you're going to have a lock and break. And that's how your pads wear out very unevenly because one side's moving and the other side's not. So you want this really nice and clean. Now go ahead and wipe it down nicely. Just like that. Look at that. Looking brand freaking new. Now next, all you're going to do is get some grease. You don't have to put too much, just a little, just a good layer of grease on that guide pin. Because again, this is what's going to help you break and let the brake pads wear evenly. You want this to move nice and freely. You do not want this to be stuck. So not too much, just get them out. And then what I like to do is put it into where it goes and move it around a bit. Make sure it moves nice and freely. As you can see, it moves pretty good. If there's a lot of debris in here, you want to get a screwdriver, go in here and clean that crap out because you do not want it to get stuck again. A lot of us don't want that. And there you go. It's nice and smooth. Now next, what you're going to want to do is get your wire brush and you want to clean the insides of this caliper. So you want to clean this surface, this surface, and then this surface. You want them all nice and smooth. You're going to put a little bit of grease on them, but you do not want a lot of old brake dust and all that crap on there. You just want to clean a little tiny bit. It doesn't have to be perfect, but you generally want it to be a little bit nicer than what it is right now. Now next, what you're going to want to do is compress this caliper. But before you do that, what you want to do is open up the cap on the brake reservoir. What I do is I leave it here so I don't forget about it. So let's go ahead and compress this piston back. Now to compress the piston, all you're going to do is either get a C or a G clamp, get your brake pad. You'll put it right here and you'll put it in between here and then you compress it. When you compress it, you want to go very nice and slow, nice and smooth. However, when you're working on a car, sometimes on the rear calipers, they have an insert where you have to twist it to get it to closed. Compressing it won't just work. So what you could do is get a vice grip and then you could turn it slowly, little by little. Sometimes even that won't work because sometimes you need to twist it and compress it at the same time. But thankfully for this caliper, we don't have to do that. So I'm actually going to be using this tool. This tool is like 10 bucks or some crap off of Amazon. So all you do is put it into here and then you're going to ratchet it just like that. Slowly. Feels nice. A lot quicker than the G clamp. And now when you want to release it, you just put the switch up and you, there you go. And there you go. It's compressed all the way. Now the next one I like to do is put a little bit of grease right here. So it makes contact to the pads. It's nice and smooth and there's no noise on it. Also a cool tip you can do. If you do not have it where it's convenient that you could just hook the caliper back on like this. What you could do while you're messing with this brake caliper bracket is you can get one of these bad boys. You can get them for like two bucks or five bucks on Amazon. So all you're going to do is go ahead and hook this to the strut like this. And then now it is up and out of the way. You do not have to worry about it falling or breaking the brake hose. It is literally perfectly fine. So love it. Really much worth it. A lot better than using bungee cord. So a little cool tip or trick that I learned along the way. I wish I knew this like a couple of years back. I just found this out this year and they're stupid cheap. So I really like it. Now, next up, you want to make sure you do the same thing you did for this guide pin to the bottom guide pin. So you want to make sure you clean this nice and good. Thankfully again, we have a brand new bolt. So we're just going to put this one into this bottom bolt into the bottom right here and then we should be good. But again, do not forget to grease this bolt. You want them nice and lubricated. You do not want them to go in there dry. That's what she said. All right. So now once you got all that done, what you want to do is get your brake and your rotor and you want to compare them because the number one thing that happens with everyone is that we get the wrong parts from either the parts person. They don't know what they're doing or sometimes even when we order online, they're the wrong parts. You want to make sure they're same size, same diameter, and you want to make sure these top hats are the same size as well. Now, also when you're reusing these, if this old rotor has a rubber fitting right here, you want to transfer that onto here. As you can see, the owner didn't really leave us that. So we're just going to have to wing it for now, but that's what we're going to do. So we'll go ahead and put this rotor onto the Dodge. Now go ahead and install that rotor. You want to make sure you always clean it off nicely with some brake cleaner. If you have some handy. If you don't, I've used a greaser before and just wiped it down really nicely. It'll get by. It's not the end of the world if you don't have any. And the reason why you clean this off is from the factory, they have a rust preventative coating on it. So this part of the rotor doesn't rust while it's in storage. So that's what you're cleaning off. So the greaser or brake cleaner will work perfectly fine. Now, if the rotor doesn't want to stay in, what you're going to do is get a lug nut and you're going to fasten that all the way flush so it keeps it in. If your lug nut doesn't thread on all the way, what you could do is put a spacer or a nut and then put the lug nut on top of it and bing bada boom, it'll hold it in or while you put your brake rotor in. Again, this brake job that I'm doing is a lot easier than normal. Normally what you would do is you'd have to remove this bracket, which is about two bolts. So you have a 14 here, a 14 here, and it comes right out and then you can put the rotor. But in this case, it's so easy that I don't even have to remove this caliper mounting bracket. I can just literally pull the rotor out. Now, after you lubricate the actual guide pins, what you want to do is replace the hardware. Most of your brake pad kits come with hardware that you can just go ahead and replace. However, if you want to reuse them or if they didn't come with them, what you could do is get a wire brush and then you're just going to clean it off really nicely. Just like that. As you can see, it's pretty much brand new. If you add new hardware, you just put it in place of this one and make sure you do it to the top one. Again, if you're reusing it, if you're not reusing it, just go ahead and replace it. Now, what I like to do is put grease on the very ends of the actual brake pad, just right here, because this is where it's going to pretty much make contact with that mounting bracket. This is where the hardware actually touches. It touches this component right here. There you go. Now, I'll just take a little bit of this and put a little bit onto that hardware, just a little bit. You don't need a lot. You don't need to go crazy. Again, I'm just putting a little tiny bit. You don't want a lot of this crap all over it. And we'll go ahead and put this brake pad in. What a lot of people do is just try to put it in straight on. What you want to do is angle the pad in. You're going to put the bottom in first, and then you'll want to angle it in, just like that. As you can see, it went in nice and smooth. Sometimes you got to really angle it. You really got to go at a harsh angle and then put it into place, just like that. Now, for this style caliper, this brake pad actually slides onto the caliper. We got to push it on like that, and there you go. Now, we'll just go ahead and slide this baby on, just like that. Now, we can just slide this down here, just like that. Now, we'll take our brake caliper bolt, we'll slide it in, and then all we're going to do is tighten it. Now, go ahead and tighten it up. Now, you can always try to torque it spec, but really these caliper top bolts are not that tight. You can just really do it by hand, and you should be good. There we go. We're pretty much all done. Now, we're going to go ahead and repeat to the other side. Once you're done, what you want to do when you get to the inside of the car is pump the brakes. Again, if you do end up getting air in the system, you want to make sure you use a lot of PB Blaster on here, a lot of heat, so we can get this bleeder screw out without it snapping off. Now, the reason you want to pump the brakes first and leave the wheels off, because just in case you need to bleed the brakes, you have the wheels off already. You don't have to take the wheels back off, so let's go ahead and pump them brakes, and be sure to put the cap back on. Now, we'll go ahead and turn on the car and pump the brakes. As you can see, we have perfect brake pressure. Now, if you did enjoy the video, be sure to subscribe because I post plenty of videos just like this one, and I post reels daily, so don't miss out on that. I really hope it helped.