How to Replace Front Brake Pads Rotors 2005-14 Subaru Outback

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

Before we jack up the car, we're parked on level ground, and we're going to set the parking brake because we're jacking up the front of the car, we're going to leave the rear wheels on the ground.

Loosen the lug nuts with the vehicle on the ground. We're going to use a breaker bar and a 19-millimeter socket. If you've got a socket like this, it potentially might not fit inside of the lug openings. This particular car has very small lug openings, so I'm just going to use a basic chrome 19-millimeter socket because that fits great, and I'll use the breaker bar to break these free. Go around, get them all loose.

All right. I'll roll our jack underneath, I'm going to find the jacking point, just behind the oil pan, make sure you don't jack up the oil pan, get the jack set up here. Make sure you're doing this on level, flat, ground. Get this lined up. Bring the car up. Get the wheels off the ground. All right, set our jack stands up right here. Right between these two notches in the pinch weld. Put our lock pin back in. Set the jack up the same way on the other side. Put our lock in. Slowly lower the floor jack. I'm just going to leave the floor jack in place, just take some of the weight off of it, but the majority of the vehicle's weight is on the jack stands.

I'm just going to use the socket, finish taking off the wheel. I've already loosened the lug nuts, these should come off by hand. Take our wheel off, put it aside. I like to put the wheel underneath the car here, that way if the jack stand gets knocked out, the car will land on the wheel. I'm going to take our caliper and try to pull on it a little bit.

Turn the knuckle, that's fine. Basically, I want to try to compress the piston ever so slightly. Sometimes you can get a pry bar in here, or a large flat-bladed screwdriver. I'm just trying to compress the caliper ever so slightly so that when I go to take it off, it comes off the pads easier. If you can't get it, that's okay.

I'm going to remove the upper and lower caliper slide pin bolts. Use a 14-millimeter wrench, loosen them up. Get that one loose, and get this one loose down here. This caliper a little bit stuck on the pads. Just work it off. If you need to, you can use that pry bar, help you pop it off. Don't let it hang by the brake hose, so lift it up. Take a bungee cord, loop it up over the spring and put it right through here and right through here, and just push it back over here. Slide it out of the way.

Pop the brake pads out. Remove the upper and lower caliper bracket mounting bolts using a 17-millimeter socket, short extension, and a ratchet. Get the top one loose, and work on the bottom one. Lower one is on here pretty tight, you may need to use a breaker bar to get them loose. Breaker bar is set up here. That's all it needed, was a little extra leverage. Get this one out with my fingers, and I'll take this one out. I'll hold on to the bracket so it doesn't fall. Pull the bracket out, put that aside.

We're pretty lucky, this rotor is not frozen to the hub, it's nice and loose, so we're just going to pull it right off. It does have a couple holes in here, if you can appropriately sized bolts, you can thread them in here and help push the rotor off, or you can tap it off with a hammer if you had to. If it was loose, you can tap it from behind. We got lucky, this one's going to come right off.

These are our original pads and rotors we pulled from our vehicle, and our brand new set from 1AAuto.com. Same style pad. The wear indicators, just like the original. Same style rotor, same style lug holes, ventilated rotor. This will work great and fit great in your vehicle.

We can clean and reuse these caliper hardware. They're made out of stainless. Take some brake parts cleaner, and a wire brush, knock off all the heavy caliper brake pad grease. Take a rag, wipe them off. Repeat that for the other side. Now is a good time to just check the operation of your slide pins, make sure they move in and out freely. That one's pretty stiff. Let's see how this one goes. That one moves nice and freely. Pop this one out. Carefully pop it off the boot, come right out. It's in pretty good shape. Just wipe off the grease. It's in good shape. Take a little bit of brake caliper grease, apply it to the slide pin. Nice, evenly coated, put it back inside. Slides nicely.

Now take one of the slide pin bolts, thread it in here just to give myself some extra leverage. Try to pull it out of here. I'm going to carefully use a punch here, just try to gently tap this out. Turn it, try to hit it on a different side. So I'll go underneath here. This one's really seized in there. You might be able to save this, or the car might need a new caliper. So that's pretty dry and corroded. I'll clean it up. Let's spray some brake parts cleaner on here, and take the wire brush and just clean it up. There is a rubber grommet here on the end that you want to be careful of, but otherwise just clean this up. Wipe it off with a cloth. It's a little corroded but it's pretty smooth and we'll reuse it.

Spray some brake parts cleaner on here, clean out some of the old junk that's in there. Just wipe out some of the brake parts cleaner. Take our caliper grease, put a nice, even coating on here.

Back into our caliper bracket. There it is. Just had to get it over. So now it's moving nice and freely, so when the brake caliper moves, it'll slide in and out evenly. Perfect, this is ready to be reinstalled on the car.

I'm going to put the rotor on backwards first because these are packed with oil so they don't rust in the packaging, and I've been touching it so I've got some greasy hand prints on it, I don't want that getting on our brake pads. I'm going to put them on backwards, and I can use the brake parts cleaner to clean it off. You can use a rag to wipe off that grease. Now I can flip it over, install it the correct way. I'll take one of the lug nuts, this way the rotor doesn't fall off. Use the brake parts cleaner on the outside surface. Rotor hat is not as big a deal, you just want to make sure that this actual braking surface is nice and clean.

Reinstall the caliper bracket. Grab one of the bolts, get it over the rotor, and you might have to wiggle it around to get it caught. Top one caught, now get the bottom one caught. Usually once you get one caught, the other one's a little bit easier. I will come back and torque these. Torque the caliper mounting bolts to 88-1/2 foot-pounds. I'm going to torque them to 89, it's just easier on the torque wrench. I'll get this lower one. Once it clicks, it's all set.

I'm going to put the pad with the wear indicator on the inside, so just give it a quick spray with brake parts cleaner, clean it off. Put some caliper slide grease on the ears. And just a little bit on the back. Place it into the caliper. Make sure the curve of the brake pad matches the curve of the rotor. Do the same for the outer pad.

Taking an old brake pad, using a large C-clamp, this way I can compress both caliper pistons at the same time. Just going to go slowly, and make sure they're going in evenly. And they should go in just about to the edge of the boots, and I'll take this off. Take the old caliper out. Take the bungee cord off, don't forget to unhook it from your suspension. Put it aside. Make sure you don't tangle up your brake hose here. Slide it over the new pads. These have little, on the slide pin bolts, they have little flat edges. The flat edges will line up there, make sure this bottom one's lined up, push it in a little bit, and get that in place. Reinstall the two caliper slide pin bolts. Just snug those up a little bit. Torque on these is 19.9 foot-pounds, I'm going to torque them to 20, it's just easier. Once it clicks, you're all set, do the same for both. You don't want to over-torque these, they're small bolts. You break them off if you over-tighten them. That's all it takes.

This procedure will be the same for the opposite side.

Now I need to go inside the car, gently press on the brake pedal, because we need to bring that piston out to meet these pads. But you can see when you step on the brake, caliper goes in, it clamps the pads against the rotor. That's what stops the car. Take this lug nut off. Reinstall the wheel. Lower the vehicle to the ground. And when you're done with the other side, gently pump the brake pedal.

Reinstall the wheel. Start the lug nuts by hand. The thread went down pretty far. And then get an opposite one caught. Use the socket to thread them in.

We'll jack up the car, take it off the jack stands. Push the locks out. Do the same for the other side. Get this one out. Lower the vehicle to the ground.

I'm going to torque the lug nuts to 89 foot-pounds in a cross-pattern. Once it clicks.

I'm just going to gently press on the brake pedal, don't slam it to the floor, and push and you'll feel it get stiffer. Now the pistons have come out to meet the pads. Your brake job is complete.

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