Speaker1: Today on Garden Fork we are going to replace the disk brake pads and rotors on our dodge caravan. This is the kind of repair that despite how electronic cars are these days that you can probably do yourself. I mean it's easy enough to take it to the shop and drop it off and have them do it. But if you are the least bit hand and you have some tools, you can do it. So once you will watch us we will show you.
So you know it's a sign that you need new brakes when your brake pads look like this. These are what new brake pads look like, these are the old brake pads, this is a brand new brake rotor here, this is from the brake pad roughing into the rotor. Before you jack up the car you have to loosen the lug nuts on the tire because if you jack up this tire and then try and take off the lug nuts the tire just going to spin. So using the weight of the car I hold this tire down, so it's just going to loosen each lug nut and then we will jack up the car.
Speaker2: Big lug.
Speaker1: My big lug. If your car have been repaired by a shop and they have tighten lug nuts too tight you might be in trouble, this is called the star wheel or a star wrench it works really well for getting your lug nuts off. When you want to jack up your car you first have to choke the opposite wheels of the wheel that you are going to jack up. So I have got just two pieces of 4X4, we are going to front and the back of the tire.
Speaker2: Can you make some car tuck sounds.
Speaker1: -- This is a -- this is I call the floor jack or garage jack, you can also use what's called the bottle jack, do not use the jack that came with your car to change the spare tire.
Speaker2: Why?
Speaker1: I don't trust them, that's just basically arrack but what we are going to do is we are going to find the jack point underneath here, now we are going to put this right underneath that and jack up the car. You just want the tire to come off the ground not really any further.
Speaker2: I know what the puppy is doing. She loves the car.
Speaker1: After you have got those jacked up to a height you want, you have to put these in, these are called jack stands, this is a safety precaution, so what I do is I slip this under right next to the jack and on the piece of the frame. Then what I do is allow the jack down a little bit in the way to the car sits on this jack stand because you don't want this floor jack to hold up the way to the car to put in a length of time because if it goes, it will fall on you that's a bad thing.
Speaker2: If it goes you go, if this goes I go.
Speaker1: And it sits just like that.
Speaker2: I am such a girl.
Speaker1: You are a girl. Now the beauty of a star wheel like this is you just put it on here and you spin and you look like an expert.
Speaker2: Are you seeing that beauty.
Speaker1: You want to save these and put them on a save place.
Speaker2: What is that?
Speaker1: That's a lug nut. That comes off just like that, it's very nice.
Speaker2: Nice!
Speaker1: Oh! The product placement. May Frisco could sponsor our show. This is the brake rotor, this is a brake caliper.
Speaker2: Wait where is the caliper?
Speaker1: This is the caliper this whole unit here.
Speaker2: The whole thing?
Speaker1: Right. And then this is the brake pad. What we are going to do is we are going to take off the caliper, pull of the pads, pull off the rotor and then put a new rotor on, put new pads in the caliper and put the caliper back in. There are two bolts that hold this caliper on, to left.
That's set the tightening, so you want to have a piece of coat hanger wire or like a piece of a copper wire handy because when you take this caliper off you do not want it to hang by the hydraulic hose this is a brake line hose here. So to get this caliper off you have to press the piston in just a little bit, so I am going to pull the caliper across a little bit and you see I have some wiggle room here. This is your brake caliper here, be careful with it, don't twist it around a lot because this brake line here you don't want to brake that brake line.
Here is your brake pad, here is the brake piston, here is --.
Speaker2: What's the piston that round thing?
Speaker1: That round thing here, it's kind of hard to see, here is your brake piston, here is the seal for the piston and this is the caliper body back here.
Speaker2: What kind of screwdriver?
Speaker1: A regular screwdriver will work, what we call a BFS in the trait. Pops out like that. So that just hangs, so the weight is not on the hydraulic lines. Rotor comes right off. Now this is a perfect world scenario where the rotor comes right off. If they don't come off easily if they are here and there stuck, what you can do is you can a take a hammer with a block of wood or you can take a rubber mallet and tap the back and loosen them up.
Speaker2: They are little shiny still.
Speaker1: It's really shiny because the brake pads rub against them constantly, basically what makes your car stop is this pad presses against this metal here.
Speaker2: Where do you get that rotor?
Speaker1: I got this at Auto part store; make sure that it doesn't have any grease or oil on it keep this clean before you put on. So that goes on the little clips go on.
Speaker2: Puppies, we have an audience.
Speaker1: So I forget to do this before but these latex gloves they sell at the store are really handy to put on because they keep your hands from going black.
Speaker2: By going black.
Speaker1: Okay gloves are on, let's go back to work. This is our caliper and we want to put new pads in here, but first we have to press this piston back in because the piston is protruding out because of all the ware on the old pads and we have new pads now so they wont fit in with that piston now like that. So I have the scrap board here and we lay in this clamp slowly press the piston back in. You also you want to inspect the caliper if you see any leakage any brake fluid coming out or anything like that, that's a bad sign, we are going to put in our new brake shoes, of course you have paid attention to how they came out in the first place.
So these slide right on, so these go in, you might have to move it back and forth a little bit Lefty Lucy.
Speaker2: Righty Tighty.
Speaker1: Righty Tighty. This is the hardest part getting the wheel back, just lining up the lugs. You want to tighten these in a cross hedge pattern so you want to go opposite sides cross-cross-cross in other words don't tighten this one and then the next one, probably it comes down. This is 3X8 Ratcheting Torque Wrench relatively going to be expensive I think I got this for $30 it's not the highest quality but I don't use it everyday like a regular mechanic so I don't need the super expensive kind.
These lug nuts get torque to 90 pounds. So when it clicks like that that means it has hit the torque setting you have set. And we are set, it's time to go to the barn. So here we are at the barn always close the barn door.
Female Speaker: Hey buddy, this is my race horse.
Speaker1: So that's basically a overview of how to replace the brake pads and rotors on your car or truck. You should really check the manual, buy a book and how to this is just kind of an overview there might be a couple of safety things that we missed that could be very important. So don't follow exactly what I did, but kind of enjoyed for the humor of Erick and this picture of the horses behind here but it is easy and it's not too hard you got to be safe, make sure the wheels are checked, make sure you sue jack stands, don't use a cheap jack.
Okay more on cash and later episodes, thank you for watching, I have no food, okay.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services