Chevrolet GMC Cadillac Front & Rear Semi-Metallic Brake Pad & Rotor Kit TRQ BKA14681

Okay, friends, one of the first things we have to do is safely raise and support the vehicle. Once you have your wheels off the ground in the rear, we're gonna go ahead and remove all six of these lug nuts. Remove your wheel. Now, that the wheel is off, we have a clear view of our caliper. If you were to be able to see behind this tin, you're gonna be able to see where the caliper piston is. We need to be able to push that piston back.

To do that, if this shield wasn't here, you can come in between and just slowly pry, or if you do have that shield where you can come is right up along here, just get in between the pad and the caliper, and then slowly pry as well, and just keep working your way back and forth until the piston is all the way in.

The next thing that we need to do is remove our caliper bolts. These are the bolts that are gonna hold the caliper to the bracket. I like to hold onto my slider, so it can't spin. I'll leave that bolt loose, but leave it in for now. Do the same to the other one. I can get both these bolts outta here. Hold onto that caliper so it can't fall. Slide it off. I always like to take a peak at my caliper to make sure that it's not leaking any fluid along where the boot should be. Set this aside. Now, let's remove those brake pads. Set those aside.

Now, we have a clear view of our brake caliper mounting bolts. Remove them both. And then put in a couple threads. Remove the bracket. At this point, you wanna give your rotor a little wiggle. If it doesn't seem like it wants to break free, grab a lug nut, start it on there a few threads. Now, with your hand protection and eye protection, of course, we're gonna go ahead and give it a bonk with a hammer to break it free. You can come right up along the top here.

If that doesn't work and you're not reusing your rotor, of course, you could, of course, bonk on the braking surface, or even better than that, from the backside. Remove your rotor. Now, it's gonna be time to prep the brand new rotor. To do that, you wanna make sure you clean the braking surface. A little bit of parts cleaner, a nice rag. Get off any of the coding that might be on there. It should come with a little coding on there to prevent against rust. Go ahead and flip that over.

Now, you can see the other braking surface. We'll clean that. And now, we also wanna make sure we clean this area right along here, because this is where the emergency brake shoe is gonna ride. Now, at this point, you have a clear view of your e-brake shoe and of course of the axle mating surface where it's gonna connect onto the rotor. If you're axle looks as though it's in poor condition, maybe it's got a lot of rust, or rot, or debris, or anything like that all over it, you'd, of course, wanna sand it down, make it look nice and smooth, and then code it just like this with some copper Never-seez.

Before we go ahead and put the rotor on there, we also wanna take a look at this right here. This is your emergency brake shoe. If you happen to notice that your emergency brake shoe doesn't have any meat on it, maybe it looks a little bit more like this one where it's literally just a solid shoe of metal and it has no more breaking material, you need to go ahead and replace that. And if you need instructional video on how to do that, we have it. We get a nice new coding of Never-seez on there after we cleaned it down. We've got our rotor. Carefully, slide it up on here. We get the rotor on there.

Now, what we need to do is head up our vehicle in neutral, so that we can spin our rear wheels. And we just kinda wanna push in and give this a little spin, and listen for a scraping noise. I can hear a very minor scraping noise there. So that tells me that I don't have very much drag from my e-brake shoes to the inner portion of my rotor. If you put your rotor on, maybe it was a difficult time pushing on, and you went to turn it, and it just didn't want to turn at all, your e-brake shoes are probably over adjusted and you're gonna have an issue.

If that was the case, you would just pull this off and then you can look down here at your adjuster. With the caliper bracket over on the bench, I just wanna show you areas that you're gonna wanna clean up. You wanna clean up this area right along here, and right there, the same right here. If you were to take your tin and you were to put it over it, any area that touches that... If you were to take your tin and put it right over the bracket, you'll be able to see exactly where you need to clean up. Any areas that the bracket is gonna touch up against this tin need to be nice and smooth, and they also need to be lubricated. Just take your little brush, clean up in between there, clean up all this right here.

If there's any really tough areas that don't seem like they wanna break free but they're raised up, use a nice screwdriver or whatever you might have, and just kinda clean up any of that crud or anything like that that might be on there. Now, once you've cleaned all the mounting areas for where your tins are gonna go for your brake pads, you're gonna come right here to the sliders. Grab that, pull it right out. Take your rag, clean it up. Inspect the slider, make sure it's in good condition. If it looks like it's pitted or it's gonna cause restriction going in and out, you either need to clean it up better with a wire wheel or replace it.

If you were to look inside here, you're gonna need that to be nice and clean as well. You can do something as simple as maybe using a bore brush, something like that inside there. Of course, you don't wanna damage the boot, though, so you'd wanna be very careful. Get out as much of the crud as you can inside there, make it as clean as possible.

Maybe even take a nice rag, twist it, put it right inside there, and get out as much as possible. I'm gonna use some nice silicone here. This is Moly grease, it's great for calipers. You wanna make sure you get right up along this area right there. If you can see where that lip is, where my finger is, get some grease all up on there. It's gonna be super important because that's gonna help keep moisture out right along this seal.

Slide that in there. Give it a nice twist. Move along. Those sliders are in there. Let's go ahead and go right along the bracket. Just go right in this area. As you can see, I have it along all ridges going along. Now, I would put my tin on here. See if I can get this lined up. Slide it down. Do the same to the other side. Let's grab our caliper bracket and our caliper bracket bolts. If you have any leftover threadlocker on them, make sure you clean it off. And if you wanna put on some new, it's probably a great idea.

Put this right over. Start in both of your bolts before you tighten either of them down. Now, let's bottom them out and then we'll torque them to manufacturer specification. Let's go ahead and torque these to 148 foot-pounds. Now, it's time to install our brake pads. When you go to install it, you wanna make sure that you have your squealer or the wear indicator facing down. And so I got that one right here. Slide that in. And then my outer pad, I'm gonna do the same thing. My wear indicator facing down.

What I'm doing now is I'm lubricating the mating points where the pads gonna touch up against the caliper. So right along that piston, and then of course, both of these ears. Awesome. See if we can slide this over. Grab your bolts. If you want to use some threadlocker, once again, you're prerogative. Now, let's torque these to 31 foot-pounds. Hold that. There we are. So now, let's just go pump up the brakes.

Now, it's gonna be time to get the wheel up on here. Let's start on those lug nuts. And then we'll bottom them out. And we'll torque them to 140 foot-pounds. Let's torque them. Double-check them if you want. And if you have a center cover, put that on as well. Let's make sure we double check that brake fluid. Give it a wiggle. It looks as though this is low. There's the maximum line. Open this up. We're gonna add some DOT 3 brake fluid. Bring it right up to that maximum line. Make sure you close it back up, down the road, you go.

I'm going to use a 22-millimeter socket, take off the lug nuts, so we can remove the wheel. And remove the wheel. I'm going to take these two caliper slide bolts out. I'm going to use an 18-millimeter socket. Get those free first, and slide those out. Now, I'll take a screwdriver, I'm just going to pry the pistons of the caliper in a little bit, just go in between the caliper and the rotor, make it easier to take the caliper off. Now you can take a brake caliper hanger and support the brake caliper itself, just hook it on the upper control arm, or fold the caliper over and just set it so that it doesn't fall. Just make sure there's no tension on the brake hose.

Now we can take the brake pads off. Just use a straight blade screwdriver. Pry them off. Now, we want to take the caliper bracket off. We're going to take these two bolts out. I'm going to use an 18-millimeter socket, loosen those up. Take those bolts out and slide the bracket off. Take the rotor off. If your rotor is stuck on there, you can take a hammer and just hit in these areas. Just be careful of not hitting the studs. Slide it off. Just take a little anti seize, and just wipe it on the hub surface. Just a nice, thin coat.

Take the new rotor. Just going to put it on backwards, first. Take some brake parts cleaner. Just clean the back side of the rotor. Use a rag, wipe it off. And flip it over, and clean the front side, and wipe it down. If you want to, you can put a lug nut on to hold the rotor on. Makes installing it a little bit easier. Keeps the rotor in place. All right. Just take the brake caliper bracket. Use a screwdriver, straight blade screwdriver. Slide these anti rattle clips off where the pad slides off. Take a wire brush, just clean off the rust on this area.

All right. Now, just take some brake caliper grease, and just put a little bit on the ears, where the pad slides are going to go. Take the new pad slides, line them up, press them on. And take a little caliper grease, just put a nice thin coat right here, and right here, and do the same on the other side. And, just slide the caliper bracket over the rotor.

Take the bolts. You can put some thread lock adhesive on them. Now we're going to torque these bolts to 129 foot-pounds. Now, I'm going to take the brake pads, put the brake pads on. Now the warning indicator for the inboard pad, the one that goes on the inside, is going to be at the bottom. There's only one. There's nothing on the top. The one that goes on the outside has both squealers or warning indicators. Slide those into position.

Now, I need to compress the pistons back into the caliper. You can use a piston compressing tool. They make different types of tools. This is a ratchet type. As I tighten this up, it's going to push the brake fluid...push the piston back into the caliper, which is going to push the brake fluid through the hoses, through the lines, and back up into the master cylinder. Just go nice and slow. You don't want to rush this. The slower the better.
All right, those pistons are compressed. Now slide the caliper over the brake pads. Now you can take the two brake caliper bolts, clean them off with some brake parts cleaner, just wipe them off. These aren't too bad. And just take some brake caliper grease, on the guide pins. Now install the caliper bolts, or guide pins, and torque those to 80 foot-pounds.

Now you can take this lug nut off and put the wheel back up. Now put the tire back on. And the lug nuts. I'm going to torque the lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds in a star pattern or in a cross pattern, so that it tightens the wheel down evenly. Just go around again, double-check.

Now after you're done, you want to make sure you pump up the brake pedal, nice and slow. There's going to be an air gap between the caliper piston and the brake pads. So just do that, until that feels pretty good. And then double-check your brake fluid level, and adjust accordingly.

All right. So one of the first things you need to do is safely raise and support the vehicle. Once you've done that, you're going to remove all six of your lug nuts. Remove your wheel. Now, the next thing that we would want to do is take a look at our caliper right here. Look all around it to make sure you don't see any moisture coming out. If you see moisture coming out of it, more than likely it's got a fluid leak. Assuming it looks like it's in good condition, we're going to go ahead and push back the piston a little bit. Grab your small pry bar. Come right in between the caliper and up against the pad if you can, or even the rotor. And then we're just going to carefully slowly push this back.

Once your caliper is off, take a good look. Make sure you don't see any moisture coming around these boots right here. If you see any moisture, you have a brake leak, you need to replace your caliper. Now we can grab onto those pads. We'll take them right off of here and just take a nice look. This one has plenty of meat all the way around. It's not damaged in any way. If anything, I could use a little bit of parts cleaner, but that's about as much as I would go. Let's take a look at this one. That looks perfect as well. If they were worn at an angle or anything like that, there would be an issue that you'd need to diagnose. Let's get this bracket off of here to remove the rotor. Now, before we go ahead and get our new rotor up on, we want to make sure that we clean up the hub area of the bearing that's going to mate against the new rotor. So it's nice and clean. You don't want any raised areas. The next thing you need to do is clean up the rotor braking surface. Let's use some copper never seize right here on the hub.

Let's get the rotor back up on here. Now we're going to use one lug nut, screw it all the way on so it holds the rotor from moving around. The next thing we're going to need to do is push back the brake caliper. To do that, you can either open up this bleeder screw right here, and you take a risk, of course, breaking it either going in or out, or you can just go ahead and turn the caliper around. I like to use a pad and then you would just use something to squish this down and force those pistons back down and in. This is a tool that works great for the job. Let's put it in here. As I crank, it's going to spread and it's going to push back those pistons. I'm going to do this nice and slow. You'll notice this is pushing in both pistons at the same time. If you tried to push in one piston at a time, more than likely the other piston is going to want to come out.

So now we just need to take a peak along here and just double-check those boots. Make sure that they're not swollen or pushed out or ripped or torn in any way and there's definitely no leakage. These look great. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to continue on by using a little bit of caliper grease, and I'm going to go right along the mating surfaces, where the caliper is going to touch directly against the brake pad. All right. So we made our way over to the bench with the caliper bracket because it's time to start cleaning it up and preparing it for installation. Let's grab our small pocket screwdriver or pretty much anything you got that you can grab onto this area right there and remove the 10. Do the same to the other side. Next, we're going to move along to cleaning up this area right here, all the areas that you saw that this 10 was riding against. So if you see any rust buildup, make sure you clean it down.

You can use a nice wire brush and try to get in there. Spend some time. You could use your screwdriver, scrape it all up or, of course, you can use a nice sanding grinding wheel and clean it up good. You just want to be careful not to take off too much of the material of the actual bracket. Okay. So we cleaned up those areas great. Both sides of the caliper bracket look decent. Something that I did happen to notice that I want to mention to you is all this extra rot that's built up everywhere, there's a possibility that any of this could flake off and get into your braking systems, such as in between your pad and rotor, which could of course cause an issue. So just take a little punch or chisel or prybar or whatever you got, and just kind of try to get some of this crud off of here. So we got off the majority of the rust off this thing. Now we're going to clean out the inside there. Use one of these bore brushes.

So now that we have this as clean as we can get it, right out here and on the inside where those sliders are going to go, we're going to use some of this moly grease or caliper grease, and I'm going to go along the areas that we just finished sanding down. Now we have our 10s. You'll notice that you have a side that's a little thicker and a thinner side. If you were to look at the bracket, you can see exactly how it needs to go. The thicker side is going to be the side facing the boot. Go and slide it up against there and then lock it in. Do the same to the other side.

Making our way back over to the vehicle, the next things that we need to do is clean up slider bolts here and of course get all the thread locker off of our mounting bolts. Now that I have these cleaned up, let's continue on by installing the caliper. Let's grab our bracket and our two bolts. I like to use a little bit of thread locker on them, but we'll call it your prerogative. Go ahead and slide that in. Start in those bolts, we'll snug them up, and then we're going to torque them to 139 foot-pounds. You're going to notice that one of your pads has two of these brake wear indicators and then the other one's going to have one. The pad that has two goes on the inside.

The outer pad on there. Let's grab the caliper, slide it right down over here. Be careful for these boots. You want to make sure that they're lined up with the hole so the slider can go through. Perfect. At this point, we're going to add some lubricant to the sliders. When we're going to add it, we're going to put it along here all the way up to there, but you don't need to get it up onto the threaded area. Let's go ahead and put those in there. Bottom these out, torque them to 80 foot-pounds. The next thing that I would want to do is pump up the brake and make sure everything's functioning properly. You also pump up the brake for safety so that way there, when you get inside the vehicle, after you've done this job, you will have a brake pedal. Now that we've pumped up the brake, I just want to check that brake fluid real quick. Now let's go ahead and get this off of here and we'll get the wheel on. Now let's go ahead and torque our lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds. Center cap, go ahead and pop it on there.

We're gonna start by taking the wheel off. I'm gonna use a 22-millimeter socket. Take off all the lug nuts. And take the wheel off. Now, we can take these caliper bolts out. I'm gonna use a 12-millimeter socket. Loosen those up. And if the caliper slide is spinning, you can use a 17-millimeter wrench to hold it while you take the bolt out. Now, you can grab the caliper. You might want to rock it back and forth a little bit. That'll compress the piston a little, make it easier to slide off.

And then, you can use a brake caliper hanger, and just hang it from the upper control arm, or you can hang it from the coil spring just like that. Just make sure there's not any tension on the brake hose itself. Now, take the brake pads off, just slide them out of the way. Now, we're gonna take the bracket off. You need to take these two bolts out, use an 18-millimeter socket. Loosen these up. And then, grab the bracket, and just slide it off. Now, you're gonna take the rotor off, just grab it and slide it.

If it's stuck on there, you can take a hammer and just hit in these locations. It's stuck on the parking brake a little bit. Just try to wiggle it. You can just take a prybar and try, and pry in here a little bit. It should get this off. All right. I'm just gonna take two screwdrivers, just try to wiggle this back and forth. There we go, slides right off. Before you put the new rotor on, just take a wire brush, and just clean up some of the rust right here. You could also use a die grinder, and just don't sand down too much. Just get some of the rust off.

Now, you're gonna install this rotor backwards first. Take a little brake parts cleaner, just clean off the backside, and flip it around, and slide it over the parking brake. If you have to adjust the parking brake, you can adjust it right there. And then, spray this side with brake parts cleaner, and wipe it down with a rag. Now, you're gonna take a wire brush, and just clean up this bracket. If you're gonna reuse these clips, just clean these up. If not, take them off.

Just clean up some of this rust right here. Do the same with the other side. And then, just take some brake caliper grease, and just put a nice, thin coat right here. Same on the other side. And then, take these pad slides, and do the same. Put on a nice, thin coat. And then, take these pad slides out. The slide pins. Take a little break parts cleaner and a rag. Just wipe these off. You can clean this out with brake parts cleaner as well. Wipe that down.

Take a little brake caliper grease, and just reinstall it, and do the same with the other side. Now, take the caliper bracket, and line it back up. Brake caliper bolts, get those started. Now, I'm gonna torque these bolts to 122-foot-pounds. Now, I'm gonna put the brake pads on. Now, the warning indicators are gonna go to the top. So, on the inboard pad goes at the top and same with the outboard pad. Just slide them into position. That's good.

Now, I'm gonna take the brake caliper off the hook. Now, I'm just gonna take the old brake pads and a caliper compressor tool and just compress the pistons. You need to push them back into the caliper, and just slowly compress it. You don't want to do it too fast. It's just gonna push the brake fluid through the hoses, through the lines, back up to the master cylinder, and into the reservoir.

All right. That's good. Fully compressed, and just slide it over the brake pads. Put the caliper bolts in. And take a 17-millimeter wrench, and torque this bolt to 30-foot-pounds. Do the same on the top. All right. Put the wheel on, and put the lug nuts on. Now, I'm gonna torque these lug nuts to 140-foot-pounds in a cross pattern so that it tightens the wheels down evenly, and just go around and double-check.

Just take this center cap off. Use a straight-blade screwdriver. Get behind here. Use a 22-millimeter socket to take the lug nuts off. Take the wheel off.

We're gonna take these two caliper bolts out. We're gonna use a T55 socket. I'm just going to tap them in, because this is pretty rusty. There we go. Cracked it free. I'll use the gun. That one came right out.

Slide those up. Take a straight-blade screwdriver. Just pry out on the caliper a little bit. Compress the piston and slide the caliper off. We have to flip it over. Good idea to attach it somehow, so it doesn't fall. But if you can get it to sit right there, that's good. And just take the old brake pads off.

Use an 18-millimeter socket. Take these two caliper bracket bolts off. These are normally on there pretty tight. There we go.

All right. Those are broken free. Take those out.

Grab the brackets. Slide it right off.

Grab the rotor. Slide it off. If it doesn't come off that easy, take a hammer and just hit in these areas. Just try not to hit the studs.

Now we're gonna clean up this bracket. Just take a straight-blade pocket screwdriver. Get these clips off. And there's a lot of rust underneath here. Take a wire brush, clean this up. If you have to you can use a file. Just be careful. You don't want to take too much material off.

And take some brake caliper lubricant, and just wipe that down. Brake caliper grease, right there and right there. And take the new caliper slides or anti-rattle clips. Put those on there.

Line it up. Find the right one. Put it on there. Then put a little more brake caliper grease on here. Just a thin coat, just where the pads are gonna make contact.

We ended up replacing the hub, but if you have your old hub on here and it's rusty, take a wire brush. Just clean these areas. Make sure it's smooth.

Take a little bit of anti-seize. Just go around the hub, mostly around the center here, and spread it out, a nice, thin coat.

I'm just gonna take the rotor, put it on backwards. I'm just gonna clean this surface. Use a little brake parts cleaner. I'm gonna wipe it with a rag. There's just that protective coating on there to prevent it from rusting. And flip it over. Do the same on this side and wipe it down.

Now take the old caliper bolts. I'll just put a little thread-locking compound on there, and line the caliper bracket up. It goes this way. And put the bolts in. Get those lined up.

And use a torque wrench and torque these to 129 foot-pounds. Good.

Now install the new brake pads. Now, the warning indicator on the inside is gonna go at the bottom, in just one, not one at the top. And just slide that into position, and the outside one will have both.

That's good. Now I'm gonna compress the caliper. Use a caliper compressing tool. If you have to, use the old brake pad to help you. And just go slow. You don't want to push these in too fast. This is gonna push the brake fluid through the hoses, through the lines, back up into the master cylinder.

All right, those are compressed. Take the tool out. Just make sure the seals look good, the dust seals. And those look good. Now put the caliper back over the pads. Line it into the bracket.

Take the brake caliper pins. Just use a little brake parts cleaner on them. Wipe them off. Get some brake caliper grease. Grease them up and slide the pins back in position. Get them started and tighten them down.

Now I'm gonna torque these bolts to...these caliper guide pins to 80 foot-pounds. There we go.

Then put the wheel back up. Put the lug nuts on.

Now I'm gonna torque these lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds in a star pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double check.

Install the center cap. Now just pump the brake pedal. There's gonna be an air gap between the caliper piston and the brake pads. Pump that up. Just go slow, and once it feels good, then you're all set.

And double check your brake fluid level in the brake reservoir. The max line is right there. If you give it a little shake, our fluid is right about there.