September 21-22nd, 2002 (Post #5)

Time to swap the nasty old pads with the new. Not too many tools necessary for this project. Needle nose pliars, flat head screwdriver, wheel chock (two each), jack stand, crate (milk, metal, one each) jack (hydraulic, one each), assistant (female, young, one each). For the assistant I employed my handy-dandy super-bestest daughter RovErica (11 years). She knows just enough to fetch stuff if I tell her where it is. She will primarily fetch drinks for dear ole dad and turn the water on and off
between each wheel for this project.

Erica fetched the jack stand and the milk crate. The milk crate is an often under appreciated item when working in the wheel area of the Rangie. I sit on it so I don’t have to stoop. Got the jack stand under the truck and put the wheel chocks in place. I broke the lug nuts loose with the tire still down. I proceeded to jack the truck up and set the stand in place for safety purposes. With the wheel off I used the garden hose to knock some of the brake dust loose. Maybe a power washer would have been very usable right now. Use number three for a power washer. (#1 clean paint off house, #2 clean cars)

I noticed that there is not a pad wear sensor on the left front. So I will for go putting that on for that side. I will have to look again to make sure the wiring is not really there. I removed the cotter pins from the keeper shafts (names may vary). Pulled out shafts and inspected the pads. Yes quite worn. I took the cap off of the brake fluid reservoir. This is to allow the fluid in the cylinders to flow back up.
I checked this with a few before. I got two major responses, bleed fluid and push fluid back. I don’t like opening my brake system at all so I went with the push fluid back method.

I inserted the flat head screwdriver into a convienient place to push the pad away from the disk to make way for the new very much thicker pads. You have to becareful here. There are two cylinders and I was careful to press them back together a little at a time. I took out the old pads and inserted the new pads. I put the new keeper shafts and retainer coil springs back in and secured them with the new cotter pins. Simple. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The back pads are slightly different. They are held in place with a very large cotter pin instead of a keeper shaft like in front and the anti-rattle spring is different. The back took only 15 minutes to complete both sides. It took longer to jack up the vehicle.

I rate this job a 1 on the 5 point difficulty scale.