Complete Brake Upgrade Installation

I'm Chris Duke and this is Motorz. When it comes to aftermarket brakes for your vehicle, there's a lot of different choices out there. You can go bigger for more stopping power or you can simply upgrade what you've got to something that performs better and looks more aggressive. Today on Motorz, we're going to upgrade the rotors and brakes on our 2008 Mustang GT. We got to hold down some new Stillen's sport rotors and brake pads which provide more bite when cold, extra cooling when they're hot, due to the cross drilling and slots; they are cut into the rotor. This is something you can do yourself with just a floor jack and a few simple tools. Let's check them out. The brake upgrade kit that we got from Stillen comes with the Zinc plated front and rear replacement rotors that are drilled and slotted, and these brake pads were made from a high-performance semi-metallic compound. Now, here is a quick comparison between the stock rotors, these are the front and the aftermarket ones from Stillen. You can see they're about the same size, the big difference is the Stillen ones are slotted and drilled. For this installation, you're going to need some jack stands as well as a low profile floor jack, some gloves and safety goggles as well as some brake cleaner, a flat blade screwdriver and a brake pad spreader and a brake piston too, now you can get both of these at your local auto parts store. Some socket wrenches, a breaker bar, a torque wrench, various sockets and extensions. Use a breaker bar to break your lug nuts loose and then jack up the rear of the vehicle. To remove the brake caliper there's a 13millimeter bolt on the top and there's also one down here in the bottom, then after you've done that, you are going to grab a 15millimeter socket. Remove this bolt here there's one on top and one on the bottom, that's going to get rid of that bracket. Once you've got the bolts loose from the caliper, you can wiggle that off. Here is a little tip, grab your jack stand, you can set it down right on that, so you don't want to mess with that brake line. I remove your brake pads and I get this 15millimeter bolts off the back, you're going to need your breaker bar and a lot of brute force. And I get the last bolt down then you can remove this caliper bracket. Next thing you want to do is take off this metal ring that's right here, you can just get in there with a screwdriver. it's going to take a little bit of work to get that off then you can slide the rotor off. Put on your new rotor and then reinstall your caliper bracket. Go ahead and remove the cover from your brake fluid reservoir before you compress your calipers and put your new break pads on. Just to make sure you watch the fill line. Now on the front, use this brake pad spreader to compress the calipers but on the rear, since they are self adjusting you have to use this brake piston tool. So grab that and snap it onto a socket and then pair these teeth right there up with the piston and once those are on there, crank this really hard in a clockwise direction. Now once you've got everything put back together, you're going to take a look at these rotors and they're going to look pretty nasty from bunch of grease and finger prints and stuff. So put down a bunch of towels and get some brake cleaner, spray that off and turn this as you go, so you can get it nice and clean all the way around. Toss the wheel back on and then attack the front. Jack up the front of the car under the K-member, which is located directly behind this front tire. Now take a jack stand and put that under the front. There's a tip for you when you do in the front, you want to turn your wheel so that caliper is pointing out as much as possible. Just as we did for the back, we want to remove the front caliper, with the one difference being that you want to use the 12 millimeter socket for this top bolt and this one still a 15 down here. Pop off the 2 piston caliper up here on front; just like we did in the back, you want to set this aside on a jack stand. Take off your bracket and you can pop off your rotor, take that clip off first. Put on you new rotor and brake pads and repeat onto the other side. After torquing your lugs and checking your air pressure of your tires, you want to perform the bad end procedures recommended by the manufacturer. Now this is a very important step in order to break in your new rotors, and after you've done this procedure, you need to take it easy on your new brakes for the next 500 or so miles. Now, our website below the player you can download this information as well as look at other show notes about this installation. Well, this is for this episode of Motorz. For more information on Stillens products that we installed in this episode, head on over to www.stillen.com and for more episodes of Motorz of course, go to motorz.tv where you can chat it up on our forums and take a look at all sorts of other information below the player at our website. When it comes to aftermarket brakes for your vehicle, I had to swallow.