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My LX Accord has front disc brakes and I am changing only my front
brake pads at this time.
Honda OEM brake pads need to be changed when you have less than
2mm of friction material left. Depending on your driving, they could
last from 20,000 miles to 70,000 miles. I had my pads checked at
35,000 and 42,000 miles and they still had 30% left. At 53,000 miles
I decided to change my brakes myself. I discovered that I still
had about 4mm of pad left but decided to change them anyway.
Here are a set of Honda OEM brake pads. which come with new shims
and anti-squeal grease so you don't need anything else. On the left
most pad you will notice a metal piece sticking off the pads. This
is the wear indicator and it causes a squealing noise when you only
have 2mm of pad left.
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I considered upgrading to a grippier
pad, but the extra heat created can lead to brake fade and warped
discs, especially since I'm still using stock discs, so I decided
to stick with OEM brake pads. If I keep the car long enough (100,000
miles) and it's time to change the pads and discs, I may upgrade then.
Anyway, first jack up your car and remove the wheels. In order to
jack up my car, I used the front corner tow hooks for the jack point
(working on one corner at a time). |
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| Once the corner was propped up enough,
I slipped a jack stand under the side jack points. For safety reasons,
you should always elevate your car with a jack AND a jack stand in
case either one fails. |
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| Now remove the wheels. Check out my wheel/tire
changing DIY for details. |
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| Under your hood, open up the brake fluid
reservoir so that you can adjust the calipers. It is located just
above the steering column, to the left of the driver side front strut
tower. It's a tight squeeze but you can unscrew the cap about 1/4
turn. Then pull the cap up slightly. |
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Clean the brakes with brake cleaner, which
you can get at your local car store.
Spray the disc, caliper and pad with the brake cleaner. As it drips
off it will take the brake dust and other grime off. We'll give it
another spray once the caliper has been opened the pads removed.
Because of the potential work with asbestos, you may want to use gloves
and a mask. I used gloves when I could but found certain tasks much
easier without them. I bought masks but did not use them since the
brake cleaner did a pretty good job of washing off the brake dust.
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| Remove the lower caliper pin/bolt. I believe
it's a 15mm socket. It's on fairly tight (54 ft-lbs) and in a difficult
position so I used my long wrench to loosen it. |
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| Once it's been loosened, you can probably
unscrew it with your hand, then pull the whole pin out. I put the
pin on a rag so that it wouldn't pick up any dirt. |
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| Grasp the outer section of the caliper
firmly and you should be able to rotate it up. |
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| Rotate it all the way up and it should
stay there. You may want to clean out the hole for the pin to make
sure there's not too much gunk in there. |
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| Now remove the two brake pads (outer and
inner) by grabbing them and sliding them out. Once the pads are out,
give the area a quick spray with the brake cleaner to clean up anything
that may have been missed before. |
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Next you need to compress the piston.
A c-clamp comes in very handy. Place one end behind the caliper and
one on the piston and tighten slowly. You'll want to keep an eye on
the brake fluid reservoir when doing this.
I placed one end of the c-clamp directly on the edge of the piston
but that caused the rubber seal around it to fold strangely. It might
be better to put the end inside the center of the piston and do it
there. |
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Because you are compressing the piston
back in, you are pushing brake fluid back into the reservoir. If you
do this too quickly or if you have a lot of brake fluid, you could
end up overflowing the reservoir.
To avoid this, compress the pistons slowly and keep an eye on the
level. If you wait a few seconds the level will drop down a little
so I never had a problem. If you have too much fluid, you may wish
to siphon off some of the excess before it overflows. |
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| You may wish to disassemble the old brake
pads and shims. Make note of which shims go on which pads and in what
direction and order. |
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| Here's a set of the old and new pads |
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| And here's a close up of the old and new
pads (new on top). |
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| Here's a profile so you can see the difference
in pad thickness (new on top). |
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| Preparation | Installation
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