How to Replace Front Brakes 2001-06 Dodge Stratus

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality auto replacement parts and the bets service on the internet. Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing and maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20 plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly, that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

In this video, we're going to show you how to do a break job on a 2004 Dodge Stratus, the front disk brakes. It ends up, this vehicle has the breaks are in fine shape. We just take them apart, put them back together to show you how to do it. The tools you'll need are jack and jack stands, 18 and 19 millimeter sockets. Also, you can use your lug wrench to get the lugs off on the wheel. You'll need a breaker bar or ratchet with a pipe for extra leverage. A T45 Torx bit, large screwdriver and a large C-clamp. This vehicle has hub caps; some of them will have aluminum wheels. Just a screwdriver, pull that cap off. These lug nuts are 19 millimeters. If you don't have air tools, you'll want to leave the wheel on the ground, loosen the lug nuts first then raise it and secure the vehicle then remove the lug nuts. We'll speed it up here as we remove the lug nuts and then remove the wheel and tire. You can inspect your brakes. Two things you'll want to inspect. The pads as you can see here. You can see that slot right there. That's a wear indicator.

These pads are fairly new on this vehicle. We're just going to show you how to take them off, put them back on and then your rotors, you'll want to check for the width of them as well as how they look. A little bit of rust scale on here, not a big deal. You'll also want to check the back of you panel winding up the disk and you want to feel for any large groves. You're going to feel a lot of small groves like a vinyl record but you shouldn't feel any large groves. If you do, you'll want to replace the rotors. Again, it looks like on this vehicle, your rotor, disk brakes were done pretty recently. Now, to remove the calipers from the bracket, there are two bolts. There's a little dust cap back here. You can see in here there's an Allen bolt. I actually use a T45 Torx bit. It goes right in there. I can get a ratchet on there. I'll speed up as I remove up as I remove those two Allen bolts. You take a good sized screwdriver and put it in and depending on how worn your breaks are, this would be in different place but use a screwdriver and just kind of pry in here and pry out on the caliper and it just kind of helps to loosen things up.

Basically what you're doing is you're pushing this piston back into the caliper. Pull your caliper up and off. You can see the outer pads stayed right there. The inner pad is clipped into my caliper. There's the clip right there. Now, I secured my caliper up here with some wire ties. I'm going to show you, if you wanted to remove and replace your rotor, the next you're going to do is take off this caliper bracket. To do that, you remove two large bolts, this one here and one here. To remove these bolts, you're going to want an 18 millimeter socket and I have a breaker bar here. If you find you can't do it with that, a piece of pipe gives you even more leverage, slow and controlled. If all you have is a ratchet, I recommend using the pipe. It's really no problem getting them off, the breaker bar as well. Remove these. After loosening them up with your breaker bar or ratchet with pipe, I just switch over to my ratchet and I'm removing the bolts the rest of the way. Once those two bolts are out, this bracket comes off. Simply enough, the rotor comes off.

If you want to replace it with a new rotor from 1A Auto, it's going to fit on there exactly as it is. You can also have your rotor's machine. This rotor is in fine shape so I'm going to put it back on. It gives you kind of falls off a little bit. I'll put a lug nut on. Just tighten it up in place. Take your bracket, put it up on the rotor. It bolts in from the back side. Fast forward as I just preliminarily tighten them by hand and then with my ratchet and socket. Here's a torque wrench, 18 millimeter socket and torque it to 95 foot pounds. I'm going to bring my caliper down here again. Put it here like this. Now if your brakes are worn, this piston, watch it come out of your caliper or it will work its way out some, when you use the big screwdriver, you are working the piston back in there. If you didn't get it all the way then, what you'll want to do is use a big C-clamp, put on your caliper. Use a clamp to tighten that. It pushes the piston back in with the caliper. You can remove the clamp. Make sure that your inner pad is all in. These bolts, you want to make sure that they are pushed out. Put our outer pad back on here.

With your outer pad in place and your inner pad in place, make sure, start pushing this on. This retainer should go in there, pull it out and down, push your top in and down. You just kind of push on the caliper a little bit, start the bolts in clockwise. Put some pressure on there and they'll go in. I'll use a torque wrench to tighten these between 15 to 17 foot pounds. Replace the dust caps over those bolts. Fast forward here as I straighten the wheel. Then remove that one lug nut that I put on. Install the wheel and tire again, thread the lug nuts on first by hand then preliminarily tighten them with my impact wrench and then I'll put the vehicle down on the ground and torque them. You'll want to torque these lug nuts to 100 foot pounds. Speed it up again here. Torque them up again to 100 foot pounds and kind of draw a star pattern as you're torqueing them and then reinstall your hub cap. Make sure the brakes are working before your drive it. Pump them up. Do a stop from 5 miles an hour and 10 miles an hour before you take them out on the road.

We hope this helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality auto replacement parts and the bets service on the internet. Please feel free to call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that serve you on the internet and in person.