Just did the rear brakes, and…
They still had quite a bit of meat on them, but it’s a good thing I checked them because the last guy put them on inside-out! As in, the outside pad was installed on the inside and vice-versa. The 2 little bumps on what’s supposed to be the outside caliper had dug into the cylinder and damaged the surface, and the pad was worn to about 3/4 on the bottom and less than 1/2 on the top. If I’d used these until they were much lower by checking the pad thickness from the bottom I’d have torn up my rotors.
Anyway, apparently the rears are a total bitch, and they kind of are, but as with most things, what took an hour to figure out on one side took me 10-15 minutes on the other side. Here what I learned:
* Be gentle getting the clip out from the front, I think I bent mine a bit the first try. It goes back in but it doesn’t sit quite the same. Oh well.
* You need to disconnect the top of the sway bar end link in order to access the lower slide pin. If you use an extension there’s a spot just below the caliper you can sneak it through so you can whack the nut off with an impact. Then put a jack on the rotor and compress the strut so you can get to the slide pin.
* If you don’t have a power tool that can get behind the slide pins, they’re easy enough to get out with hand tools. I then took some curved needle nose pliers and pushed them out far enough that I could get some vice grips onto them and pull them the rest of the way out.
* Remember to take your parking brake off once you have the wheels off… and put it back on before putting the wheels back on… you’ll have to crank it up and down a few times before it grabs.
* To compress the cylinder, there’s an expensive-ass tool for this, but I used a pair of 4” oil filter pliers from O’Reilly’s. You can sneak a jaw through the hole on the calipers, put the other jaw on the far side of the caliper and it’ll kinda just stay there… see the picture to see what I’m talking about. You can then get a pair of vice grips onto the very top edge of the cylinder, being careful not to grab the boot, and twist it clockwise while squeezing the pliers with your other hand and it’ll compress. It’s a bit awkward but only took like 2 minutes once I got in the groove.
* The pad with the spring goes on the inside! I honestly don’t even know how the last guy got the caliper on with them inside-out, the bumps on the pads make it pretty much impossible.
Knowing all of this, I wouldn’t dread doing them again. It’s really not that bad.