Think brake change

[Steve Bigelow]

At just over 41,000 miles on my Think, I decided it was time to change the front brakes.

I purchased a set on eBay. Total was $25, shipped from Australia. 

PEUGEOT 106 205 305 309 405 Front brake pads 

are what I purchased.

Here's how I went about it. I'm not saying this is the right way, this is just the way I did it. It took me about 3 hours to get the job done, but you'll see why. I normally can change out the front brakes on my Blazer in about 20-30 minutes.

If you are a mechanic, you may not want to read. :-)

I started by parking the car in a level area of my driveway. The sky was cloudy, but no rain predicted, so I was OK there. 

I jacked up the front driver's side. Halfway up, I realized I should probably set the parking brake and put a chock behind the passenger side rear tire, so I did that.

I removed the tire bolts with an impact wrench. I use an electric impact wrench from Northern Tools. This was much easier than trying to mess with my air impact wrench. I think it was a 17mm socket. If you aren't using an impact wrench, you'll want to loosen the bolts before jacking up the front of the car. (Just loosen, don't remove, then jack up the car and finish removing).

I then proceeded to take a look at the front brake assembly and plan my attack on it. 

Plan A: There are what looks to be two 18mm bolts holding everything in place, so I tried removing them. This is how I change out the brakes on my Blazer, so it made sense to me. 

First I tried a socket, but couldn't get one to fit. On closer inspection, the metal frame on the brakes is curved such that a socket won't fit. Next I tried a box end wrench. This wouldn't fit for the same reason as the socket. Finally, I tried an adjustable wrench, but I could see it just barely start to round over the head of the bolt as I applied pressure, so I finally gave up on that approach.

Plan B: There is a sliding piece on the caliper, just above the pads, that looks to be held in place by a little pin. I carefully removed the pin and set it aside where I could never find it again, and started removing the sliding bar. To save time, you may just want to throw that pin away....

The sliding bar looked like something I could easily drift out, but it wasn't coming out properly. It was just moving a little. Time to get a bigger hammer and sacrifice a cheap flat head screw driver. 

About this time the weather decided to stop cooperating and it started raining. I dug out a tarp and positioned it over the car. I grabbed my daughter's 10 speed bike out of the garage and used that to hold up the other end of the tarp. I carefully positioned the tarp so that every once in a while, while I was under it, I would get a nice icy cold bit of water down the back of my pants. Heck, if you aren't getting surprised by icy cold water in the nether region while working on a car, you aren't really working.

I managed to drift out the little bar holding the brakes in place, and from there it was easy to lift out the brake pads.

There are some little springs on the brake pads (more on this later), and I moved these across to the new brake pads. Then, I used a bar clamp to push open the calipers so I could get the new brake pads in. Yeah, I know, probably not the right way to do it, but I've got almost 300k miles on the Blazer, with brakes replaced about every 80k miles, and that's the way I've always done it.

I got the new brake pads in place, and I put the little bar back in place. It went in surprisingly easy. 

I spent the next 30-40 minutes looking everywhere for the little pin that holds the bar in place. Meanwhile, it was getting dark, so I set up some lights so I could see in the dark and rain. About this time I was regretting not parking in the garage to get the job done. Finally, I just went and got a cotter pin from the shop and used that instead.

Looking at the brake pads, the little spring on the top wasn't sitting properly. It was just flopping around, and I realized I had put it on wrong. I took everything apart again, and proceeded to put the spring in what I thought was the right position.

Now, though, the little bar that was hard to drift out because next to impossible to drift back in, even with a hammer. I spent the next 30-40 minutes trying to get the bar back out after I had wedged it in place with said hammer. Sometimes you can have too big of a hammer.

Every 10-15 minutes I made sure to get another icy shower down my back, because, well, that's how it worked out. Re-positioning that tarp didn't seem to make a bit of difference.

I finally got the bar out, and went and grabbed something to drink while I thought about things. 

I studied the brake setup on the passenger side through the holes in the wheels, and finally realized that the springs need to go on *last*. This was key for me. I set my drink down by the car (and proceeded to knock it over).

So, the order for install was brake pads, bar to hold them in place, pin to hold the bar in place, and finally, spring to add the final latch in place.

I then jacked the car up just a little more and put the wheel back on (trust me, for some reason, this works). I'm really liking the concept of using bolts instead of nuts. You just pop the wheel onto the hub, then rotate it until the bolt holes line up. Very easy. 

I put the bolts back on the tire, and torqued them down.

For the other side, I jacked up the side of the car, removed the wheel, pulled the springs on the pads, removed the bar pin, easily removed the bar, replaced the pads, then reversed the process. This side took about 10 minutes. 

An interesting note: the brake pads were barely worn on the outer side of the wheel. The pads to the inside were very worn, especially on the passenger side. Given how easy it is to change out the brakes, I'm thinking that every 25-30k miles I should swap the pads around. Get 60k miles out of them instead of 45k miles.

Hope you enjoyed my story.

Regards,

-Steve
http://woodworking.bigelowsite.com