How to Install Front Brakes Pads Rotors 2008-13 Chevy Suburban 1500

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All right, we're going to start doing the front brakes on this by loosening the lug nuts so we can take the wheel off. Want to loosen it while it's on the ground. Just using a 22mm socket and a breaker bar to get these loose. You don't have to take them all the way out. Just get them loose, because once they're loose, we're going to lift this up on a lift. You can support it on jack stands in your driveway. Of course once these are loose, it's a lot easier to get them off when the vehicle's up in the air.

All right. Now I have it up in the air, and these are already loose. Just going to use a hand ratchet. Once they get real loose, you can just use a socket. We're going to use a C clamp to compress the caliper while it's still attached here. There's two pistons. We’re going to have to just kind of gently compress one side and then flip to the other. As we can see, just slowly pressing it in.

This is going to make it easier when you go to reinstall the caliper to already have the pistons compressed. Get that side a little bit, then on the other side. Already see the upper piston has gone in. Keep working it back and forth. This makes it easier to pull the caliper off, and it's also going to make it easier when we go to reinstall it, because the new pads will be thicker. As your brakes wear, the piston moves out of the caliper to take up that space. When you go to put new brake pads in, it can be hard to put them in because the caliper piston has moved out to compensate the old worn pads. I think that's going to work for us. We're going to go ahead and start taking this caliper off.

We're going to remove this bottom bolt here and this top bolt here. These are bolted into the caliper slide pins. They also have a second hex head in here that you need to counter hold while you're loosening these, that way it doesn't spin. All right, actually I'm going to try removing it without counterholding this first. It might be stuck in there enough that it'll let me go. There we go. Now, it's loose. Sometimes, you can get away without holding that slide pin. Just be aware that if it does start to just spin, you're going to need to counter hold that. This was a 19mm, and that is also a 19mm. We're going to put that back in now that it's loose. Don't have to tighten it all the way. Just give it something so that the caliper won't swing on you, so that you can go up to the top upper one and break that free.

Now, I'm getting the lower one undone. The caliper's going to be loose, so you want to hold onto it. We're going to take it, we'll swing it up. I'm going to take a bungee cord here, loop it around, and just hang it just like that. It's out of your way. It's not stressing out the rubber brake hose, and it's not going to fall on the ground.

Use a small pry bar or a flat headed screwdriver. These are already pretty loose. You just want to pry them out, just like that. They'll come right out. Okay, now we're going to loosen these caliper bracket mounting bolts. They can be on there pretty tight. These are an 18mm. I like to use a dead blow, or a rubber mallet, to break them free. Otherwise, you just sometimes just can't do it by hand. We're going to hit it, and just try to break them free. Once they're free, you can use, again. Just a regular box ratchet or get a ratcheting one, and just spin them right out of there. Leave this one, get this one loose, whichever one you work on first. Get it loose, leave it in there, work on the next one. That way the caliper bracket doesn't spin on you. All right.

Now I've freed these up with the box wrench. I'm just going to use the 18mm socket and ratchet just to spin them out a little faster. To remove this rotor from the hub, you got to take out this Torx bit, which is T30. There might be two of these, but on this one, there's only one. If this rotor was rusted on here and stuck, take one of your lug nuts and just thread it down, so that when you finally get it free, it doesn't fall off. Tighten it down a little bit, but not too tight. You're going to spray some rust penetrant oil into here. Let it soak for a little bit, and take your rubber mallet. Just smack different sides of the rotor, and eventually, it will come free. Another way to free this rotor up if it's stuck, after you've sprayed penetrating oil in here, again, keep a lug nut on here, fairly loose, so it doesn't just fall off if it finally breaks free.

As opposed to trying to hit it with a rubber mallet, you could thread some screws in here. That's what these are for. They push again the hub, and you can evenly screw it in and it should back the rotor off. Then it should pull right off.

On this side, we've got the old rotor, the old brake pads, and we've got the new rotor and brake pads from 1AAuto.com. As you can see, the new ones have the backing plates riveted in, just like the old ones. They patch, this is the inside, and this is the inside of the new pad. These are the outside. Again, they have the shims riveted right to them. They're the same size. Same type of champers on them. Those should fit in the car nicely.

Before we put the new rotor on, just going to clean up some of the rust that's on here. This one's not too bad, but you can just take a wire brush and just knock off some of the heavier stuff. That way, the rotor slides on easily. You're going to notice, I'm going to put it on backwards, because I'm going to take some brake parts cleaner and just spray it down. Get some of that packaging oil off of it. Just spray in here a little bit too. Okay. Now I'm going to flip it around. When you go to install it, there's this hole in the hub here, the threaded hole, that's for that Torx bolt. You want to make sure you line it up with one of these countersunk holes, there's three of them on here.

Once it's lined up, you take your T30 Torx again, get it started. This way, the rotor doesn't go anywhere while you're working on it. Once you get this T30 screw in here, it's going to be torqued to 106 inch-pounds. We're going to use our torque wrench. You might need to just hold the rotor as you do it. Shouldn't take much, right there.

Now that I've got this screw in here, I'm going to take our brake parts cleaner and just clean the outside of the rotor. We're going to clean up these brake pad clips. These are usually stainless, so they don't really get too rusty. The rust is basically like stains. You're just going to take some brake parts cleaner, just clean them up. If they're real rusty for whatever reason, you should replace them, but we're going to just clean them, take a wire brush. Get all the gunk out. Going to take a rag, get them in there, get them nice and clean.

Okay. We're not going to replace the slide pins in this caliper, because they're both moving freely. But if you need new ones, you can get new ones from 1AAuto.com, they're just like the originals.

To change these, you just get your fingers under there, and they'll just slide off the boot. They're filled with grease. If you need to clean them, you can just take a rag and just wipe them off. As you can see, the replacements are just like the originals. They've got this little flat spot in there.

Those are your caliper mounting bolts, they screw in in the back of those. We're just going to throw a little bit of grease on there, because I wiped it off. Caliper glide grease. Slide that right back in. There might be a little air stuck in there. Can just peel back the boot gently, and just press it in. Just wipe off any excess.

These are your caliper mounting bolts, they go through the hub, they mount into the caliper. They've got factory thread locking compound on them, that needs to be cleaned off, and then you need to reapply fresh thread locking compound before you install them, and then torque them. Use a little bit of brake parts cleaner, spray them down, and take your wire brush and scrub that stuff out of there. Get them as clean as you can.

Before we install the caliper bracket, I'm just going to apply some thread locker to the bolts. That way, they're ready to go. You don't have to go crazy with this stuff. This bracket's going to go this way. Going to start with the top one. Sometimes, you have to play with it a little bit to line it up. You can just get them close with an 18mm socket and ratchet. You don't have to kill them at this point. Once they're close, now we're going to take our torque wrench, 148 foot pounds, and we're going to torque these down.

All right. Now we're going to take the new pads. This is the back pad. It's got this little extra metal bit. It's different from the outside pad. It's got the wear indicator on it. Going to give them a quick spray with brake clean. Try not to touch this now that you've cleaned it. Take a little bit of grease, put it on the tabs. That way, it will slide on the caliper clips. Start at the bottom one. Just flip it up, push it into place.

All right. I'm going to repeat the same steps for the front. The outside pad is different. It fits the contour of the caliper bracket. Okay, now we're ready for the caliper. We'll unhook it from our bungee cords. We'll leave those aside, don't forget them, though. Okay, now we're going to reinstall the caliper, and because we compressed the caliper earlier, it should slide right over. If you need to compress it more, you can take your old pad, just put it in there, take that C clamp they used earlier and then press the pads in. You might have to just push the top and bottom caliper pins in a little bit to get it to slide over.

Hold onto this, because it might shift, and take your caliper bolts and start threading those in. Get the lower one captured. These are 19mm. I'm just going to bring them down so they just start getting tight, because there is a final torque at 74 foot pounds. We'll get those tight. Okay, we're going to torque these caliper bolts to 74 foot pounds. Now, the caliper slide pin can spin, so that's where that 19mm hex in here comes into place. We're going to take an open ended 19, and we're going to counter hold it as we take our torque wrench and torque it. We're going to do the same for the bottom. Now that we're all set, we're going to remove our bungee cord we were using the hold the caliper up.

All right, we're going to put the wheel on. Get your lug nuts all started by hand, so you don't cross thread them. All right, once you've got them started by hand, use your 22mm, it'll just snug them up.

All right, with the vehicle on the ground, now we can torque the lug nuts to 140 foot pounds. Again, it's a 22mm socket. In a cross pattern. When you're done torquing the wheels, you can put your wheel cover back on. This has a little tab here and a little mark here that needs to go to the valve stem.

After your brake job, you just want to step on the pedal. Don't push it to the floor, just about two thirds of the way down, and just slowly pump it up. Just lets the calipers come out to meet the pads, because we compressed them. Nice firm pedal.

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