Rear Brakes: A not formal how to

[TheGTkid]

So I replaced the rear brakes the other day, I took some pics, and this won't be a "formal" write-up but it will give some advice!
The brakes are 4 wheel disc, so that can be helpful info as you read

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for your vehicle not stopping, going, or the damage you do to yourself and/or vehicle

The rear brakes on my 02 terrified me at first, but its okay, I took my time, assessed the situation and moved on
The slider pin and bolt to hold the rear caliber in place is one piece, so that was weird to me, never seen it, but its Ford, you never know what the engineers are thinking!
There are 2 slider pins with threads at the very end of the "bolt"/slider pin with a size 10 hex head.

Tools needed:
Socket wrench
Socket line (metric)
Screw drivers
Anti-seize
Helper (bleeding brakes)
Brake Fluid
Air ratchet (or just the regular tire iron)
Jack
Jack stands
and if you're over the age of 21, a beer

Procedure:
Step 1: Remove tire
Step 2: Loosen the bolt/slider pin, slide it out, move on to the next bolt
Step 3: Wiggle the caliper off the disc (for some it might come easy, for others I am sorry but it could be a little difficult, just be patient and wiggle, and pull towards the rear of the vehicle)

(the pics are blurry, sorry, it was cold!)
Now you'll find yourself in this position!

See that clip on the left side (outside when mounted on vehicle)? A couple screw drivers will be your friend
Step 4: Pull off the outside pad by prying the clip, and the pad up at the same time (This will be hard, you might consider cursing and throwing things to get your frustration out)
Step 5: Removing the inner pad is simple, the outter pad needs to be gone first though. Simply pull the pad away from the piston, there is a triple prong that grips the inside of the piston, it came out easy for me and is easy to replace
Step 6: Depress the piston, pop the hood, open the brake booster, and get a c-clamp large enough to fit around the caliper
I will edit the pictures to be more understandable soon, but I will describe the best I can now

the rounded part on the caliper is where you will want to put the threaded end of the clamp

the back side of the caliper isn't shown very well, but you see the metal line going into the caliper, don't damage that, but there is a mounting bracket where you can place the stationary part of the clamp on that bracket and put a pad on the piston
start turning the clamp to depress the piston
When the piston is depressed it will be flush to the inside of the caliper and the rubber boot will help you determine that
Step 7: Make sure you have matching pads, there is a double lipped side on all the pads, make sure your left side (of the vehicle) pads have the double lip on the bottom and the right side have the double on the bottom as well (I am not very descriptive but I will get more pics as this is informal and just advise at this point)
Step 8: Install the inside of the caliper pad, this piece has a triple prong that goes into the piston, just slide it in there and it is fine
Step 9: The outside pad is easy (the pad with the large clip) just slide it on, make sure Step 7 is correct or like me, you will have to pry the clip off the caliper to put the right pad on. You will know you did it wrong when you go to put the caliper on to the mounting bracket, thats when I learned
Step 10: Grease up your slider pins, and mount the caliper onto the caliper mounting bracket
Step 11: Do the same for the opposite side
Step 12: Get a helper to bleed your brakes
Step 13: Clean your garage, or don't but test the brakes real quick

Remember: Heavy braking right after putting fresh brakes on isn't good, get about 50 miles on them before you beat them up real good doing 60-0 distances



Harah! My first "write-up" and it's not the best
more pics on the way
better advice and description soon
Any questions, or other advice is helpful to post here!
Thank you for reading

 

[fusseli]

I've done the brakes on my 02 also, it really isn't hard at ALL. Anyone with a socket set and a c-clamp can do it. A torque wrench helps though for proper re-assembly.

What pads did you use? Can you describe your bleeding procedure for the rears?

 

[TheGTkid]

I used Brake Best pads from oreilly's
they are a ceramic OEM replacement

Hint: make sure the booster is full, after every time I break the bleeder open, I check the booster

Bleeding
Bleed the rear right first, (rear passenger)
Rear left second (rear driver)
Front right (front passenger)
Front left (front driver)
The reason why is you want to clean all of the air out

For bleeding, I got a friend to help me... Dale.. Yup, can't go wrong with a guy named Dale helping you
Pump 3 times, hold, inform your bleeder (dale) that your holding
bleeder (dale) turns the bleeder valve and lets the fluid spurt (either it farts air, or it squirts solid stream)
If it farts air, keep the procedure going
pump, bleed, pump, bleed until air is out
I like to go an extra after all the air is out (farting is over) just to be positive its done
Move on to the next one!
pump, hold, break the valve open, tighten valve, pump, hold, break, tighten

Next time I will take a video of us doing bleeding so that we cover it all in one pop!

 

[sfhess]

You don't need to bleed the brakes if you're just changing the pads.

 

[tower]

It's all fun and games until you remove the rear rotor

 

[TheGTkid]

You don't need to bleed the brakes if you're just changing the pads.

Yes you do, you have to extend the piston so it is adjusted right
if not adjusted right you will either blow the piston, or you will never have stopping power from the rear

And i dont doubt the fun and games til the rotor comes off
that looked just a little more intense to do
especially cause my rotor has a fine amount of rust holding it to lugs, plus a little dirt as cement

 

[TheGTkid]

You don't need to bleed the brakes if you're just changing the pads.

also in response to that, why do people bleed their brakes then?
you never would need to if you didn't have to
when you do brakes you just put new pads on with a new rotor in between occasionally
if you don't need to bleed the brakes how come when I change my pads and I bleed the brakes a nice spurt of air will spit out and the piston adjusts?

 

[Exproblems]

Yes you do, you have to extend the piston so it is adjusted right
if not adjusted right you will either blow the piston, or you will never have stopping power from the rear

Rear disc brakes do very little of the stopping power of a car. I would "approx say" 10% of the actual stopping power or less from the rears and approx 90% stopping power comes from the front. The great majority of the stopping power comes from your front brakes. On these Explorers, you have dual pistons and a much larger caliper on the front and single piston, smaller calipers on the rear. The front and rear rotors are different as well and I am not referring to the Parking Brake section of the rears. On whether or not you need to bleed the rear brake lines just because you changed the brake pads, I say no you don't. It's not necessary. The caliper piston will re-position itself after you opened it up with a C-Clamp to allow room to install the new, thicker pads and you depress the brake pedal several times after you are done with the new pad installation. In 35 years of changing my own brake pads on my vehicles during that time, I never blew out a piston by not bleeding the brake lines after a pad change. You really only need to bleed the brake lines if you have a spongy brake pedal and air has gotten into the brake lines some how or you needed to replace a master cylinder, caliper or section of rusted out brake line. It doesn't hurt anything bleeding the brake lines, especially if you want to introduce fresh brake fluid to an old system, but it isn't a "must do" thing after a pad change.

 

[JoshMcMadMac]

Yes you do, you have to extend the piston so it is adjusted right
if not adjusted right you will either blow the piston, or you will never have stopping power from the rear

also in response to that, why do people bleed their brakes then?
you never would need to if you didn't have to
when you do brakes you just put new pads on with a new rotor in between occasionally
if you don't need to bleed the brakes how come when I change my pads and I bleed the brakes a nice spurt of air will spit out and the piston adjusts?

You do not need to bleed the brakes to change pads. You should open up the brake reservoir before compressing the piston. If you are getting air out of the system when bleeding, it was there to begin with. It is a sealed system, so how would you introduce air into it simply by moving the piston? You bleed the brakes when you change calipers primarily. It is also best to bleed the system on a scheduled basis, as the fluid is hygroscopic and over time that degrades its performance.

 

[TheGTkid]

My pedal was spongy and tightened up real good, I like my brakes touchy
When I bled the brakes you would be amazed at how much air can get in a system that is completely closed and topped off
and when I did brakes on my f250 and the piston blew out when I didn't bleed the brakes, finally enough fluid reached the piston and it didn't get adjusted and the slider pins werent adjusted because I didnt bleed the brakes
thats when you wave your front right piston good bye at 25mph

You can not do it all you want, I have had my experience with it, I don't want to risk mine or my vehicles life

 

[Exproblems]

My pedal was spongy and tightened up real good, I like my brakes touchy
When I bled the brakes you would be amazed at how much air can get in a system that is completely closed and topped off
and when I did brakes on my f250 and the piston blew out when I didn't bleed the brakes, finally enough fluid reached the piston and it didn't get adjusted and the slider pins werent adjusted because I didnt bleed the brakes
thats when you wave your front right piston good bye at 25mph

You can not do it all you want, I have had my experience with it, I don't want to risk mine or my vehicles life

If your pedal was spongy to begin with prior to the pad change, then you had air in the system and the brake lines did need to be bled in that case. If your brake pedal is not spongy prior to changing the brake pads, then you do not need to bleed the brake lines. On the caliper blowing out on your F-250, I'd say that caliper was bad long before doing the pad change on that vehicle. Calipers go bad over time, it happens, but not because you didn't bleed the brake lines after a pad change. You should always re-grease the slide pins while doing a pad change, it's easy brake maintenance. Maybe I'm wrong on this or not, but I think you mentioned you were 18 or 19 years old in one of your not-so past posts, so you don't have a lot of experience driving or working on your own vehicles. In my 35 years of experience with brakes, I've never risked my life or anyone else's because I didn't bleed the brakes lines after a simple pad change and never had my brakes fail in any way from a lack of brake line bleeding.
I also think you like to have "touchy brakes" because you like to do a little hot-rodding around town in the EX, and that comes with your young age. Been there, done that! This sort of hard driving may have also led to the F-250 caliper failure IMO.

 

[TheGTkid]

Not trying to cause a problem but saying my age limits my experience makes you sound like an idiot
whether you want to know or not I have built boats that do 80mph across bumpy water
Butch Ott races a boat I do maintenance on, this boat does atleast 90mph
I have built quads, dirtbikes, and a 500hp motor sitting in a corvette
I have changed drum brakes, disc brakes, and have designed a "brake" for boats moving faster than you can legally drive in the US
I think before you want to go and say my experience isn't much you should consider your knowledge of me
the slider pins were greased on the f250 like they were on my explorer, my lt250r, my taurus, and 30+ other vehicles I have worked on
the piston blew out
it could have been from other issues with the system, but the fact is the piston must get adjusted, the most efficient and safe way to do that is by bleeding your brakes IMO
if you do it on the road who is to say the piston will adjust? and then you mind as well drive a toyota prius with a stuck gas pedal
this is my procedure, you can ask me questions respectfully but you cannot tell me that my experience is limited because I am 18 years old
I respectfully submit this to you, and I hope you can accept that I want to move on from this like this like it never happened
Thank you, Exproblems

 

[TheGTkid]

My response to the brakes being spongy
yes some air might have gotten in the system some way or another but with my experience the pedal gets spongy after using them a while
when you put new pads on I have never been able to have a touchy pedal, it usually seems to be spongy still
this is another reason I like to bleed my brakes in this process
plus it doesnt hurt, and youre already there!
its kind of like "Well I already have to have the engine rebuilt, mind as well just have them cylinders bored and do a stroker kit while I'm at it!"
or "I am already going to drive down south, mind as well stop at the Corvette museum on the way"
Its just a matter of convenience for me

 

[tower]

Love it, the kid who just "stuffed pads" is telling us all the "right" way to do brakes and thinks it's just some rust holding the rear rotors on :bsnicker:

 

[Exproblems]

Not trying to cause a problem but saying my age limits my experience makes you sound like an idiot

I have changed drum brakes, disc brakes, and have designed a "brake" for boats moving faster than you can legally drive in the US

I think before you want to go and say my experience isn't much you should consider your knowledge of me

I respectfully submit this to you, and I hope you can accept that I want to move on from this like this like it never happened
Thank you, Exproblems

I'm not trying to turn this into a pi$$ing match, but with age, comes experience, not the other way around. I have to question whether or not you have worked on drum brakes before, because you said the following >>>>( And i dont doubt the fun and games til the rotor comes off
that looked just a little more intense to do)>>>>>> after someone else mentioned removing the rear rotor. Once the rear rotor is removed, you will be looking at the Parking Brake and it's hardware or "Drum Brake" and you commented "that looked just a little more intense to do". Your comment tells me that you haven't worked on a drum brake or seen one before, because you appeared overwhelmed at what you were looking at, which is nothing more than a "drum brake" setup which is also the Parking Brake. You also didn't know much about the percentage of stopping power that comes from the rear brakes on a vehicle and or the fact that you do not need to bleed the brake lines simply because you changed brake pads. Other people told you the same as me on this. MY original comment to you was to simply save you some time when you change brake pads and not go thru the un-necessary process of bleeding the brake lines each time you change pads. If you feel happier bleeding the brake lines each time you do pads, then knock yourself out, but it isn't a "must do" thing as you told someone else who said the same thing to you as me.
BTW, the first part of your reply calls me an "idiot" and the last part says "you respectfully submit this to me"! So which is it, you being a repsectful youth of todays America(are there any left? ) or you just calling me an idiot for giving you some helpful advice? Don't worry GT, I'm not bothered at all being called an idiot by you, it would have been one of the nicer things said to me on any given day at work during my career.

 

[Exproblems]

Love it, the kid who just "stuffed pads" is telling us all the "right" way to do brakes and thinks it's just some rust holding the rear rotors on :bsnicker:

Yep, just wait till he see's that hidden under the rotor drum brake setup aka the Parking Brake. I bet the missing, rear star wheel adjustment hole for the drum brake adjustment will confuse the hell out of him!

 

[TheGTkid]

In your quest to be right and win an argument that meant nothing you have only offended me and left me to say "You are right" just so you can get off my back
You are right
can you sleep better?

 

[JoshMcMadMac]

In your quest to be right and win an argument that meant nothing you have only offended me and left me to say "You are right" just so you can get off my back
You are right
can you sleep better?

Which is somehow worse than your righteous need to come in and get the last word?