How to Replace Front Brakes 2009-13 Toyota RAV4

What's up guys? I'm Andy from 1A Auto. In this video I'm going to show you how to replace the front brakes on this 2010 Toyota Rav Four. If you need these parts or other parts for your vehicle, click the link in the description and head over to 1aauto.com.

I raised and supported the vehicle. I'm going to remove the wheel. I'm using a 21 millimeter socket and an air gun. If you don't have an air gun, you can use a breaker bar. Just crack the lug nuts free while the vehicle is still on the ground. All right, now I want to take the tire off. This one is stuck on there pretty good, so I'm going to put one lug nut on and just hit it on the back side of the tire with a hammer. Break it free. Reason you leave the lug nuts so the tire doesn't go flying. Take the lug nut off, pull the tire off. Now I want to take the caliper off. I'm going to use a 14 millimeter socket and a ratchet. Loosen up these bolts right here. This one and this one goes out. And if the studs or the slides start spinning, you can use a wrench to hold those. Or even some pliers.

I'm going to grab the caliper. I'm just going to rock it back and forth a little bit. Then I'm going to use this caliper hanger. We actually sell these at 1aauto.com. Now hook it onto the coil spring and slide it through the caliper. This is going to prevent too much pressure on the hose. If you let it hang from the hose, you could damage the hose. Now I'll take the brake pads off. Slide these off. Then I'll take a 17 millimeter socket and ratchet and take these two caliper bracket bolts out. You might need to use a breaker bar. If they're on there too tight. As soon as they're loose, then I'm going to switch to an electric ratchet. Take those out. Just like that and slide the bracket off.

All right, so now I want to take the rotor off and sometimes it just gets stuck on there so you can try to grab and pull it and if not, you can use a bolt and thread into, there's two spots on this rotor right here and right there. Just thread a bolt in there. Just want to a little bit of pressure on that. That one's actually moving, but what am I going to do is just tap it with a hammer. Now, I want to tap in these locations right here, here, here. Just be careful. Don't hit the studs.

Just tighten this up a little bit more, and you can see the rotor's actually moving, which is good. I'm just hitting, give it a tap right here. Here we go. Grab it and slide it off. Here's the old parts. Here's the new brake parts from 1aauto.com. As you can see, the rotor is the same height. The rotor is machined the same way. This one is drilled and slotted for added cooling, better braking. The pads themselves are the same size, same pad material on the backside. Get yours at 1aauto.com and you'll be ready to rock and roll.

All right, I'm just going to take a straight blade screwdriver. Take these clips off. If you have to reuse them, then try to keep them in good shape. Try not to bend them, just push up on there and get underneath there. Then just take a wire brush, just clean some of the rust off right here. Then I'm going to do the same with the other side. Then you can also take these clips. Try to wire brush these if you're going to reuse them. Same right there. You can actually put the clips back on and then wire brush it.

Took these slide pins out. Just grab them, rotate them a little bit. Try to get these rubber rubber dust shields off. This one's being a little bit difficult. What we can do is just take a screwdriver, hook it in underneath here and slide this rubber piece out. Do the same with the other side. Slide it out. Get underneath here and pop it up just like that.

And on one of these slide pins, you can slide this little rubber piece off. You can use a pick, take that off, or a screwdriver. So when we have these guide pins out, it's important to remember which pin goes on which side because this one doesn't have that rubber guide and this one does, and that generally just keeps the vibrations down for when you're breaking.

So we'll start with this side. After you clean it off with brake cleaner, wipe it down, insert this rubber dust shield. Just slide that into position there. Use a little screwdriver or a pick. That looks good. You do the same on this side. A lot of times these rip over time and rubber just breaks down. Okay, those are good. Take a little caliper grease, put it on this pin. That's good.

And then we'll take this new rubber guide. This will just slide right on here, just like that. Take a little caliper grease. I like to not put too much grease on the end of it because then sometimes it's hard to push that back in. Slide that back in position. Give it a little twist and make sure that boot seats and those look good. Now, just take a little caliper grease. Just put it on these locations right here. That's just going to prevent a little bit of the corrosion from underneath these rattle clips.

Now these are directional. They do go on a certain way. So this clip goes here, and this one goes here, so that the spring side of the clip is on the outside, not on the inside. So you wouldn't want to install this clip here. That one can go on there. Now we'll do the same with the other side. Little bit of grease. Install this clip here, and this one goes right here. It's good. And we can take a little more grease. Just put a little grease on the clips. It's just going to help the pads slide back and forth easily. They're in there.

Now we're going to install the squealers. Now this squealer is going to go on this side of the brake pad. Just slide it on like that. And then this brake pad goes on the inside of the car. So this one's going to go on this side. So you're going to have two on the opposite sides, just like that. Let's go install it on the car.

Now take the rotor off, I'm going to slide the rotor on backwards and take some brake parts cleaner. There is a protective coating on the rotor that you want to wipe that off before we put the rotor on the car. Then just use a rag. Flip it around. Do the same on this side. A little brake parts cleaner and a rag. Because this rotor is so loose, what I'm going to do is just put a lug nut on just so it supports the rotor while I install the brakes. All right, that's good. That'll keep that good and tight.

Now I'll take the caliper bracket, slide it over the rotor, take the caliper bolts, get those started. We'll just tighten these up by hand and then we're going to torque them. Now I'm going to torque these caliper bracket bolts with a 17 millimeter socket and a torque wrench. To 79 foot pounds. It's good.

So we have our brakes. We have our squeal clips on there, warning clips. Now when you install them, what you want is the rotation of the rotor. You want the clip at the beginning of the rotation. Because that's what's going to wear out faster. This part of the pad's going to wear out faster than this part, at least on the outside here. Just slide those in position. And then same with the inside. So you want the clips at the top on this. And install those, just like that.

All right, now I'm going to take the caliper off the hanger. I'm going to slide this over here. And now I want to compress this caliper. I'm going to use this caliper compression tool. We actually sell this at 1aauto.com. This is a ratchet style tool, so slide this in here and it ratchets to tighten and also to loosen. As I do this, it's pushing the piston back into the caliper, which is pushing fluid through the hose, back through the brake line, back up to the master cylinder, into the brake reservoir. And if you do it nice and slow, you won't have any problems. Just go slow. And then it's always a good idea to check the fluid level after you've done a brake job, just to make sure you don't have too much or too little.

Compress that piston all the way down. All right, we'll ratchet that down. Loosen this up, spin that, tighten that up. It's good. All right, slide the caliper over the pads like that. Take these caliper bolts, they started here and here. Now we're going to tighten these caliper bolts down. I'm going to use a 17 millimeter wrench to hold the guide pin from spinning and then torque these with a 14 millimeter socket and a torque wrench to 25 foot pounds. Just like that. And then do the same on the top.

That's good. All right, now the brakes are on. Now I can take this lug nut off before I put the tire on. Now, install the tire. Take the lug nuts. Install the lug nuts. Now I lower the vehicle down to the ground so that the tires are just touching the ground, and I'm going to torque these with a 21 millimeter socket and a torque wrench to 76 foot pounds and I'm going to do this in a star pattern. The reason you do it in the star pattern is so that the wheel gets tightened down evenly.

And then I always like to go around again just to double check. And you're good to go. Now we want to make sure we pump up the brake pedal because there is going to be a little bit of an air gap between the brake pads and the rotor and this is going to eliminate that air gap. Just pump it up, it's going to squish the piston into the brake pads and it's good. Make sure it feels good.

And last, under the hood, you want to make sure you your brake fluid level and make sure it's not too high, if it's above the max. You want to empty some out, use some kind of fluid transfer pump, and then if it's too low, you want to add the appropriate brake fluid.

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