2004 Buick Century Front & Rear Ceramic Brake Pad & Rotor Kit TRQ BKA11572

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Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

In this video, we're going to show how to service the front brakes on this 2000 Buick LaSabre, pretty much the same for any 2000 and 2005. It ends up this vehicle has very good brakes on it so we do just take them apart and put them back together for you. New brakes are available at 1AAuto.com.The tools you'll need are jack and jack stands, 15mm and 19mm sockets, ratchet with a pipe or breaker bar for some extra leverage on some of those bolts, large flat blade screwdriver, wire brush, some grease, a large C-clamp and a torque wrench.

On this LeSabre, you want to remove this center hub cap. Just pull firmly and you want to loosen the lug nuts. If you don't have air tools, you'll want to loosen your lug nuts with the wheel on the ground then raise and support the vehicle and then remove the lug nuts and the wheel the rest of the way. I'll fast forward here as I use a 19mm socket with an impact wrench and remove the lug nuts and the wheel and tire and then just turn the suspension so I can get a good look at the brakes.

It would appear that the brakes have been done recently on this vehicle. I can tell because here's the metal of the brake pad, here's the brake pad itself and then here's rotor and you can see there's a good probably 3/8 of an inch of pad there, which is plenty of life. Then on the outer pad, it's same thing. It's nice and thick. For the rotors, you want to try and do an inspection, run the back of your fingernail along them and you'll feel very, very small grooves but you shouldn't feel any large grooves. Then the condition of the rotors up here looks pretty good, a little bit rusty but not too bad, still nice and thick. It looks like these brakes are good but we'll show you how to take them apart and put them back together just so you have the information.

To get the brakes apart, first you're going to remove two 15mm bolts, here and here. You should be able to use a 15mm socket with a ratchet and these should come apart with some force but they should come apart pretty easy. I'll speed it up here as I loosen the top one and take both of those bolts out and I'll show you them in a minute. The bolts are actually the items that the caliper slide on, as well. So, I'll show a little close-up to you. These are slides. When you take them apart you want to note their condition. These probably should be cleaned up and put a little bit of grease onto them. We'll speed it up here again as I just finish removing the upper bolt out of the top. Take a large screwdriver, put it right in here, and pry out, and that actually forces the piston back into the caliper a little bit. You can see I use a screwdriver to pry out on the caliper a little bit and that loosens it up enough so I can get the caliper up and off. Then I hang it up on the strut. I'll show you that right there. Brake pads, really easily, just pry out. As I said, there's plenty of life left in these pads. For the back one, do the same thing. It pulls right out the back side.

If you did need to replace the rotor, you'd want to remove these two bolts here. I'm using my socket again and a ratchet, use a breaker bar or a piece of pipe. A piece of pipe helps you get some extra leverage and just push nice and firm until you start getting them loose. I fast forward here as I use the ratchet and pipe to loosen up the top one and then take both of the bolts out. Now your rotor comes right off.

Now, we're going to show you how to put the brakes back together. As you can see, there's a nice new hub on this vehicle that actually turned out to be what the car needed so we actually did a hub replacement and you can see that video on our other videos. We decided to do this brake video to help you out as well while we were doing the hub. The rotor goes back on. Before you put this caliper bracket back on, take a wire brush and make sure these are all nice and clean. In particular, you're cleaning the grooves where the brake pads sit and slide. This part goes between the rotor and the steering knuckle. The bolt goes to the steering knuckle first then into the caliper bracket. Start my lower one. Start my upper one. Speed it up here as I just preliminarily tighten those two bolts up. Now we'll torque these to 80 foot-pounds.

Bring your caliper down. You'll need a large C-clamp and put it into the piston and this just resets the piston all the way back into the caliper. Just make sure it's on the flat part of the back side, that it's not on the hose or anything. As you tighten it up, it forces the piston back into the caliper. I'll just speed it up as I back the C-clamp off and remove it. Put it down, and make sure your hose isn't twisted. You might want to pull these grommets in a little bit, put your caliper down on, and make sure those aren't bunched up. Here are my slides. I cleaned them up, and put a light coat of grease on them. The lower one came out with this sleeve so I took that off, cleaned it all out, put a little grease on the inside and the outside of it. Put our brake pads back on. The back one just slides right in. This front one you push down in a little bit diagonally. Put it in. Put the top one back in first. Start it a little bit. Now do our bottom one. I'll fast forward again as I just preliminarily tighten those bolts. Torque these to about 50 foot-pounds. I apologize for the low volume. Fifty foot-pounds is what you want to torque those to.

Speed it up here as we put the wheel and tire back on and then just the lug nuts by hand and then tighten them preliminarily with an impact wrench. Torque your lug nuts to 100 foot-pounds using a star pattern. We'll speed up the tape as we torque up the lug nuts.

Anytime you take the brakes apart, make sure that you pump your pedal a whole bunch of times until it gets firm and then do test stops from 5 and 10 miles an hour, make sure the brakes are working correctly before you road test your vehicle.

We hope this video helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. Please feel free to call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the Internet and in person.