Dodge Ram 1500 Front & Rear Ceramic Brake Pad & Rotor Kit TRQ BKA11212

Okay, friends, before we get started, let's talk about some hand and eye protection. With that said, go ahead and raise and support the vehicle and then remove all five of your lug nuts and pull the wheel off.

Now that we have the wheel off, we have a clear view of our brakes and the caliper. I'm going to use a nice pry bar, I'm going to come in through the slot and I'm going to try to push back that caliper piston by prying up against the pad/rotor. That feels good. This can move around a little bit. Now, we're going to remove our two caliper slider bolts. Right here and right there. Go ahead and grab onto that caliper, give it a nice wiggle, and remove it. Now, you want to look at this caliper piston area right here and make sure you don't see any moisture. If you see moisture, it's probably brake fluid, in which case, you have to replace your caliper. I also like to give your sliders right here a little push, see if they move. These ones are very frozen, so they're going to be an issue, but we're going to deal with those anyway. Let's set this aside for now. All right. Next, let's remove our caliper bracket bolts, you have one here and one below it, using a 21-millimeter socket. There is our bracket.

The next thing we need to do is remove the rotor. If it's stuck on, just go ahead and take one of your lug nuts, start it on the stud for safety, and now we're going to continue on by bonking along the rotor to try to break it free. There we are. There it is. Now, let's continue on to cleaning this up. I like to have a nice collection bucket to collect any of my chemicals that I'm going to be using. Put it right down on the ground. We're going to try to spray behind this hub area right here because that's where your adjuster is right there. And then, of course, the pivot's going to be down here. So, spray it down. Clean up the surface where your rotor is gonna mate onto. Okay. So, now that we have this nice and cleaned up, let's continue on by using our wire brush along this area right here. You want to make sure you have all the debris out away from this area. Continuing on, at this point, you definitely want to make sure that your emergency brake's working as it should.

So, if you want it to get into the vehicle or get under the vehicle and pull on the e-brake cable, you'd want to make sure that this lower area of your shoes separates a little bit and then retracts. If for some reason when you step on the e-brake maybe it separates and then you release it it doesn't retract, that means that you have to take off your e-brake shoes and free up your e-brake pivot. If it works like it should, I just hit it with a little bit of penetrant/lubricant just to help it along down the line. And then if you were to look up along the top here, you're going to be able to see a little star wheel. That's where the adjustment is. So, I like to hit that with some penetrating as well. And then, of course, this end over here, where it's going to just kind of spin in. Let that sit and do its job and we can move along. Looking down along the top area right here, you're going to see a little rubber boot that comes through the backing plate. I like to just go ahead and push that out now, and we'll set that up here so we can use it later.

Now, we're going to use a little bit of copper never-seize, just kind of coat this hub area where the mating surfaces. Let's clean up the rotor braking surface. Don't forget about this area in here. That's where the emergency brake shoes are gonna ride. Real quick to show you how the adjuster works before we go ahead and put the rotor on there, I'm just going to take my little pry bar, come through that slot in the backing plate, and then as I pivot it, you're going to be able to see this move. By pushing down on my bar and lifting this so it's going around in this direction, that's going to be expanding the shoes. And if I go in the opposite direction, it'll contract the shoes. Let's go ahead and get this rotor on here. Now, at this point is the best time to go ahead and adjust that e-brake. When you do that, you want to make sure that you don't have the rotor sitting off-kilter or at least at an angle, and it's easiest to do it while the caliper's off as it is now. Go ahead and use your bar, come from the backside, and start adjusting that. You want to continue spinning this at the same time as you do it, and you want to just kind of listen till you hear a slight amount of drag.

The teensiest bit, that means that it's touching and that means that it's close enough. If you have a bunch of drag and/or it's too hard to be able to turn this, you know you went too far. Now that we have it properly adjusted, let's go ahead and make sure we put our boot back in. Now, we made our way over to the bench and we need to start stripping down this caliper bracket. Let's go ahead and get the pads out of there. That was frozen in pretty good. Get these tins off of here. Perfect. Now, we need to clean these down. Make sure they're perfectly clean so there's no debris or buildup on them. Okay. So this looks great. I did both sides. Let's continue on with a little bit of caliper grease. I'm going to coat all those areas that I just cleaned down. Perfect. So, now looking at your tins, you're going to notice that they're different. You might find that if you took two out of the package, they look identical. If that's the case, you need to go ahead and grab one of the other ones. Because essentially what you need to find is if you hold them both so they have the little flippy-dos coming off to the side, you're going to have one with a long area here and then the other one will have a long area on the other side.

Now, let's go ahead and install our tins. I'm just going to put it on just like this. And if you were to look at it, you can see that I have this little dimpled-out area right there facing towards the front, okay, or outward. I'm gonna do the same thing on this one. And you can see I have the dimpled area facing towards me, which would be the outward position. Okay. So, now let's make our way back over to the vehicle and we need to deal with these sliders. Like I said before, they're kind of stuck in there. If they're frozen, you might need to peel back the boot a little bit, put a little bit of penetrating in there, let it sit for a second. Otherwise, if you didn't want to go through that, give it a couple of loving bonks with your hammer. Just see if it breaks free. If it does like ours is, I'm just gonna work it back and forth a couple of times. And then I can go ahead and use a punch and continue driving it through. Do the same thing to the other one. And it's actually working really good. Let's go ahead and pull out these sliders at this point.

Now, we need to perform a quick inspection on it. You want to make sure it's not rusted or rotted in any way that's going to cause it to be stuck inside this area. You also want to double-check up inside the groove up here and one right there and just make sure it doesn't have any crud inside there as well. That's where the boot's gonna ride. It needs to make perfect contact so moisture can't get in. Now, I like to take a nice rag and I'll put it up inside the boot right here. Give the boots a couple of little squishes around there. Try to get out any grease or debris that might be still left inside. Do the same thing to the other one. Take a little bit of grease and go right inside that boot. Put as much right in there, get down into here as much as possible. That feels good. Go ahead and grab your slider. Put a nice coating on that as well. Just keep in mind that the majority of this is probably going to get pressed off of there. That's why I tried to put some grease right inside actually. I'm going to make sure I get inside the lip right here. And then once I get it down far enough, I'll make sure I get inside this lip as well. Now, let's go ahead and start this in there. There we are. And start pushing it in.

There we are. Perfect. This can move around nice and free. If you happen to find that your sliders just don't want to move inside there even though you just cleaned and lubed everything, what you'd probably want to do is take the slider back out, and then you fully remove the boot from inside the caliper. You'll notice that there's probably a rust or rot buildup inside this area. Clean that up, put your boot back in, re-lubricate everything, and then down the road you go. Now it's going to be time to clean up the threads on our mounting bolts. It's time to put on our caliper bracket. I've got my two caliper bolts with a little bit of thread locker on them. Bottom them out and torque them to 100 foot-pounds.

So, now we're just gonna push in our caliper piston so it's all the way bottomed out. Let's take a little bit of that caliper grease, just go right along the piston area. And, of course, along both these forked ends, which is where the pads are going to be touching up against. Now, it's gonna be time to install our brand new pads. That's one. Same with this one. Up on the tabs, squeeze them in. Perfect. Now it's going to be time to install our caliper. Pay attention to this area right here. That needs to kind of hook in underneath this area of the caliper bracket. So, as you come in, come at a slight angle, put it down and under there, and then rock it right in. Perfect. Start in your slider bolts. Now, let's go ahead and snug these up, and then we're going to torque them to 22 foot-pounds.

All right. Let's get the wheel on here, center cover, start on your lug nuts. We're going to bottom them all out, and then we'll torque them to 130 foot-pounds. All right. With the wheel touching the ground, now it's time to torque these. Torqued. Just keep in mind that the process for the other side would be the same as this side. Okay, friends, so now all that's left is to go ahead and pump up that brake pedal so it's nice and firm, and then go ahead and check that brake fluid. After that, take it for a road test.

Okay, friends, one of the first things we need to do is safely raise and support the vehicle. We're going to remove all of our lug nuts and take the wheel off. Now that the wheel's off, the next thing we need to do is access to the caliper slider mounting bolts here, remove the pair. Let's go ahead and get the caliper off of here. There we are. Remove the caliper. And now you want to take a look at this area right here. This is where the piston boots are. If you see any fluid, you know the calipers is no good. Put the caliper up onto the control arm here. Now, I'm going to use a caliper depression tool that pushes back both the pistons at the same time. Awesome. Check your pistons, make sure that they're not leaking. This looks perfect. Now, we're just going to take a little bit of caliper lubricant. We're going to go right along these actual pistons here on the caliper. There we are. That looks decent. And now along all three of the ears. And let's set this aside. Now, let's remove the pads. Now, let's remove the caliper bracket by removing these two bolts. Remove the rotor. Now, we need to clean up the mating surface of the hub, so that way there when we put on a new rotor, it's going to be nice and clean.

So, now let's make our way over to a workbench so we can start cleaning up our bracket here. If you were to look at it, you're going to see these areas right here. These are your sliders. Sometimes there'll be frozen in the bracket and you'll have to work at getting them apart. Other times you can kind of grab onto it, give it a twist and separate it like that. Once you've done that, we're going to continue on by removing the boot. Take it apart. Just like that. Set it aside to its corresponding side. This one is a little sticky, but it comes right out. Slide that off as well. At this point, you want to look at your caliper sliders. Look all up along this area right here. If you see any debris or it looks like it's rusted or rotted in any way, that could, of course, cause this to not slide. So, you need to clean them both up. Let's do that now. Now that the sliders are done, let's go ahead and clean our boots. Just take a nice rag. Slide it through. Just like that. Now we'll open it up, just kind of run it like this. Just drag your hands right across it. That's going to get out the majority of the junk that's inside there. Take a nice peek. Make sure it looks like it's in good condition. Do the same to the other.

Now that we have those done, let's go ahead and put this over a nice collection bucket. Put some parts cleaner inside each of these ports. Now, let's use a nice little bore brush and clean them out. Get that out. Oh yeah, that's nasty. You might have to do that a couple of times. Now, looking along this area of the ports, you might see that there's some buildup. You need to clean that off as well. That's where the boot's gonna ride and it needs to be clean. Those look great. Let's move along to these areas right here, that's where your pads are gonna ride. There we are. Now that we have all four corners, nice and clean, let's just apply a thin coating of grease across them. This is going to help keep moisture away. Now it's going to be time to continue by lubing our sliders. Take some of that grease, go along the entire shaft of the slider ad then all the way up along that little ridge where the boot's going to ride, that's going to be very important.

Let's do the same along the ridge on the caliper bracket where the boot's going to ride. Also important. Take your slider boot, slide it onto the slider. Just like that. Give it a nice spin, that works all the grease in there. Slide it into your caliper bracket, put the boot so it's sitting on the lip all the way around, a nice spin. Clean up your mess, and then do the same to the other side. It's important to make sure you clean up the braking surface on your new rotors. Before we go ahead and put our rotor on there, let's put a little bit of copper never-seize on the hub itself. Let's get the rotor on. The next thing we need to do is get our bracket on here. To do that, you want to make sure your bolts are clean and, of course, a little bit of red thread locker on there. Start them both in and then we'll snug them up and torque them to manufacturer specifications. Now, let's torque these to 130 foot-pounds. Now it's going to be time to install our pads. But before we can do that, we need to make sure that we put a little bit of lube along the ears of the pad, and then we need to install our little tins that came in the pack.

Looking at the tins, what you're going to see is they have a little ear that comes off. That ear needs to face out towards the back of the pad. Just like this. Do the same to all ears. I'll get the pads on there. As you push it in, you might notice that when you release, it tries to pull away. That's because of those tabs. Just kind of hold it in there so it can't fall. Let's grab our caliper, bring it around, slide it up on here. There we are. Two calipers slider bolts, start them both in, and then we're going to snug them up and torque them to 24 foot-pounds. Okay. Let's torque them. Let's get our wheel back on here. Start all your lug nuts on there and torque them to 130 foot-pounds. Torqued. Okay, friends, so now all you want to do is go ahead and pump up those brakes so they're nice and firm, check your brake fluid, and then take it for a road test.