2011 Acura RDX Rear Driver Side Brake Caliper with Mounting Bracket Raybestos Element 3 FRC11852N

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

Going to take our 19 millimeter socket and breaker bar, and while the vehicle is on the ground, we'll loosen our lug nuts. Raise and support the vehicle. With the lug nuts loose, I can just take the socket and finish taking them off. Lug nuts loose, we'll take the wheel off and tire and put it aside.

Before you remove the caliper, you need to unbolt the rubber brake line from this bracket here so they have more space to move the caliper. I'm going to spray some rust penetrant on the backside of it and a little bit here. This is a 12 millimeter bolt—we use a socket and ratchet to remove it. Pull the bolt out, let the hose out of the bracket. Before you remove the lower and upper caliper slide bolts, make sure the e-brake is released because the parking brake or e-brake on this car works through the caliper. So if it's tight and pulled you're not going to be able to remove this caliper because it's going to be gripping the brake pads, the rotor, so just make sure that's released first. These are 12 millimeter bolts.

You may also need to counterhold the slide pins. These are 17 millimeter. I'm using a 12 millimeter box wrench to release these. That one I didn't need to counter hold the slide pin, it didn't turn. I'm going to leave that in there and then work on the top one. Remove the bolts. And I have a bungee cord ready. I'm going to hang this caliper up on the spring. May need a large flat bladed screwdriver or a small pry bar and just pump this caliper up and off. Take a bungee cord and hold that off to the side. Pop our old brake pads out of here with the pry bar and remove the lower and upper caliper bracket bolts. These are 14 millimeter—use a 14 millimeter box wrench. They can be on there pretty hard. I'm going to use a dead blow mallet to tap on the wrench to break it free. Work on the top one same way. Those loosen. I'm going to switch to a ratcheting wrench to make this a little quicker. The top bolt removed. Pull the caliper bracket off and put that aside.

Need to remove the retaining screws that are holding the brake rotor on. Spray a little rust penetrant in here. You need a big Phillips head screwdriver. The problem is when you go to turn it, it's going to want to turn the whole rotor. I'm going to throw a couple lug nuts on here. Take a pry bar and counterhold it and turn. I'm going to have someone help me and hold these with a long breaker bar and then, if you've got a decent screwdriver, you can actually put a wrench on here sometimes to give you a little extra leverage. Set up and try to turn this off. Push in and turn just like that. Let's try this one. If you wreck these taking them out I wouldn't worry about putting them back in.

All they do is hold the rotor against the hub when you've got the wheel off the car or whatever, it just keeps it from being loose, but you could use lug nuts to hold it in place while you reinstall the brake parts. I wouldn't worry about it. I'm going to take off these lug nuts I was using. The rotor is now loose. Careful not to drop it.

Here's the original brake pads from our vehicle and our brand new ones from 1AAuto.com. It has the same solid style brake rotor and same style pads. This would be the opposite side, but matching pads with the little pins that go into the piston and the wear indicators. Already come with shims installed. Same amount of lug holes and same holes for the mounting screws. These should fit on there and work great for us. Going to grab our caliper, unhook it from the bungee cord, just kind of move it over here. It’s still attached to the parking brake cable and the brake hose.

This piston can't be pushed in, it needs to be turned in. I'm going to use these needle nose pliers, there are tools for this but I'm going to use these pliers instead, and basically just turn it clockwise because when you pull the parking break it pushes the piston out, and part of that mechanism to retract this piston for our new brake pads, it needs to be turned in, so we're going to turn it clockwise. You don't want this boot to get twisted up that's around the cylinder in the brake caliper, so I'm just going to spray a little bit of rust penetrant. I'm going to take a bit and I'm very carefully just cleaning some of the rust from the edge, and hopefully what happens now is I can turn this piston clockwise and it won't twist the boot. Just using the pick to free it up and the oil to help it slide. I keep turning it. There we go, that's better. Alright.

So, once you get it turned down, just make sure that this is basically vertical. Maybe turn it just a little bit, because the inner pad has a pin on it that's going to sit in this slot. So, that looks pretty good like that. We're going to reuse our caliper bracket hardware. We need to clean it. These are just stainless steel. We’re just going to clean the dirt off. Spray some brake parts cleaner and use a wire brush. Repeat that for both sides. Now is a good time, while you have the caliper bracket off, to check that your slide pins are moving freely. That one feels good. That one also feels good.

If the clip pops off, don't worry about it, just get it cleaned up and clip it back into place. Take our new rotor. I'm going to put it on backwards first, take some break parts cleaner, clean off the oil that they come shipped in, wipe off any excess. I'll grab them by the edge, flip them over. I'm going to line up the counter sunk holes with those threaded holes there. I'm going to find them and line them up. If you've got these screws you can install them, if not, you can leave them off. You can just put a lug nut on here to hold it tight until you get the whole brake assembly back on. We'll put them back in. Just snug them down, they don't have to be super tight. All they do is keep the rotor from moving around when you're installing all the brake parts and taking the wheel and tire on and off.

Now we'll take brake parts cleaner and clean down the face of the rotor. Let's reinstall the bracket. Place it over the rotor, capture top bolts, might have to move the bracket around to get it to line up. That's threaded in. Capture the bottom one. I'm just going to switch to a ratcheting wrench so I can finish installing them and then I'll torque them afterwards. I'm going to torque the caliper bracket bolts to 54 foot-pounds. I'm just going to make sure the brake pad surface is clean. Just hit it with some brake parts cleaner. You don't want to have any grease or dirt on there. Take a little bit of break caliper grease, put it on the ears, and don’t have to go crazy with this stuff. This is going to be the inside pad, it has the wear indicator on it. It's going to sit in here just like this. Repeat that for the outer pad.

Take our bungee cord off, don't forget to take it out of here. Place the brake caliper back onto the bracket. You'll know pretty instantly if you didn't retract the piston far enough because the caliper won't want to go on. So that slid right on. I'm going to reinstall the bolts. Tighten this one up. Might get to a point where you're trying to tighten these caliper slide bolts, then they'll start to spin in the slides. The slides are 17 millimeter. You can use that to counter hold it. I'm just using a 12 millimeter socket and ratchet and I'm just going to tighten this up. The torque on these is 17 foot pounds—it's pretty light.

I'm just going to do it by hand. Just repeat that for the top one. This bleeder screw makes it a little tricky to get a box wrench in here but the socket and ratchet works perfectly. Don't forget, after you're done putting the brakes back together, put the bolt back in holding your rubber brake hose. Tighten that down. Alright. Put the wheel back on the car. You want the lugs caught, get them caught by hand first, we'll torque them with the vehicle weight on it when it's on the ground. Really just need to bring them down until they're seeded. The vehicle on the ground. The lug nut torque is 79.6 foot pounds, so we're going to do it 80. Do this in a cross pattern.

And the final step to push the caliper pistons back out to meet the pads. We're going to gently press in the brake and pump up the pedal pressure, and you'll feel it start to get harder.

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