How to Replace Front Brake Caliper 2000-06 Chevy Tahoe

I'm gonna remove the wheel. Use a 22-millimeter socket to take the lug nuts off. Now, I'm gonna remove these two caliper bolts. I'm gonna use an 18-millimeter socket. Loosen those up. And take those bolts out. Just like that, and slide the caliper off. If you have to, you can take a screwdriver, a straight blade screwdriver and just pry a little bit between the rotor, and then that'll just push the pads in, the piston in a little bit. And take a break caliper hanger, and just hang the brake caliper somewhere. Now we'll take the brake pads off.

Just so the rotor doesn't come off, I'm just gonna take a lug nut and just put it on backwards, just to secure the rotor on there. I'm gonna use an 18-millimeter socket and take these two caliper bracket bolts out. And slide the bracket off. Take the new caliper bracket, just take a little thin coat of brake caliper grease just on that area right there and over here. And take these brake caliper slides, line these up, push those down and another thin coat of grease right there and right there. Do the same for the other side. Take the caliper bracket, slide it over the rotor. You can take the bolts. You can put some thread lock adhesive on the bolts and get those started. And torque those bolts to 129 foot-pounds.

Now we can take the brake pads. Now, the warning indicators on the outboard pad has two indicators and the one on the inboard pad only has one. And for the passenger side, you wanna make sure that indicator goes down and same with the driver's side. You want that indicator on the bottom. Now, take the brake caliper itself and line that up. And you wanna make sure that the brake caliper has the bleeder at the top. If you have the bleeder at the bottom, then you're on the wrong side. And caliper goes on the opposite side. And take the caliper guide pins or bolts. Get those started. You can put a little brake grease on these pins as well.

And this happens to be a different fastener than what we use to remove it, it's a T55. And then torque these two bolts to 80 foot-pounds. Before we transfer the brake hose over, just take this banjo bolt out and there's a couple of washes on here, and we're gonna switch these washers over. And then also the bleeder, just take this little cap off, and loosen this up. Use a 10-millimeter wrench. Now, double-check your brake hose. Make sure there's no cracking in the brake hose itself. And this one looks pretty good. It's always a good idea to replace the brake hose when you're replacing a caliper, but sometimes you don't have a choice. And then I'm gonna use an 11-millimeter socket and take this banjo bolt out.

And make sure your brake reservoir actually has a good amount of brake fluid in it because you're gonna lose some. So take the old banjo bolt off and take the seals off. Now it looks good. And then take the new banjo bolt with one of the washers on one side and put the other washer on the opposite side of the brake line, or brake hose, and get that started into the caliper. And it goes on this way. There is this little square at the bottom, has to line up properly with the brake hose going up. And tighten this down. And torque this bolt to 30 foot-pounds.

Now, you can let this gravity bleed a little bit. Most of the brake fluid's gonna come through the system, push all the air out of the caliper and then you can snug this leader up. At this point, you can bleed the brakes normally. So when you bleed the brakes, you're gonna want someone else to pump the pedal for you as you open and close the bleeder. So if you have, start by having them pump the pedal until it gets hard because it's gonna be a big air gap in between the brake caliper piston and the brake pad itself. And then have them hold it. All right, go ahead, hold it. As they're holding the breakdown, open the bleeder. Some of the air just shot out and then close it up. All right, pump it again. Have them pump it three times and then hold it. And then open the bleeder screw, slowly. Some more air came out.

All right, tighten that up again. All right, go ahead, pump it. All right. And then open it up again. And that looked nice and clean, no air. So that should be good. Snug that up. Go ahead. Pump it. All right. If it feels good, you're all set. You can do the same with the other ones. Put that cap back on and you can clean up some of that brake fluid. You could use some soapy water or some brake parts cleaner. Right now I can take this lug nut off and put the wheel back on. Lug nuts on. And now I'm gonna torque these lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds in a cross pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double check. And check the brake fluid level after you're done and adjust accordingly. You wanna make sure you always maintain fluid in the reservoir while you're doing the procedure.