The Impala brake job

These are photo’s of me doing a front disk brake job on my 2000 Chevrolet Impala a few month’s back. For whatever reason I never got around to posting photo’s. It’s not really meant to be a “how to” as this was done a few month’s back and I didn’t take any note. This will give you an idea of what you’ll see if you should attempt to do this yourself. It’s not very hard to do if your mechanically inclined. I’ll be changing both the brake pads and rotors.In the old days one might get the rotors turned but, I know of no one that actually does that these days.

If you haven’t guessed it this is how it looked when I first pulled the the wheels off. This being the first time since owning the car for five years these brakes don’t owe me anything. They’ve performed as they should without problems until now.

 

If you can see it in the little window you can see the back plate(steel) of the pad is in contact with the rotor. This is bad and should be replaced.

As you can see I applied a liberal dose of spray lubricant. There are four bolts to remove and they don’t like coming off.

After removing the two outer bolts I removed the inner part off the caliper. We now have access to the brake pads. We can now really see how bad these pads were.

As you can see there isn’t much left of these pads.

The second part of the caliper is removed. This is the first vehicle I’ve done with this type of caliper.

What the inside of the rotors looked like.

My nice new rotor from AutoZone(Duralast Part No.55034)  is installed.

Brake Pads(AutoZone, Duralast Gold Part# DG699)are now installed.

Everything is now back together. That was fun wasn’t it? The next side was pretty much the same. This will at least give you an idea of what lies ahead should you try this yourself. Thanks for coming by and have a great day!

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2000 Ford Windstar : Changing a brake light

These are just some photo’s of me changing a brake light bulb on my wife’s 2000 Ford Windstar. It’s a fairly straight  forward task. It took me about 15 minutes to do(and that’s probably stretching it). The only tool you’ll need is a Phillips screwdriver, well maybe you’ll need something to pry the light housing off too.

You’ll need to open the rear tailgate to access the housing. The bulb I used was a Sylvania Part No# 5157LL. I think different manufacturers may make them so check at your friendly local auto parts store for your vehicle.

 

At the top off the taillight you’ll find to Phillips head screws. I think you know what to do here.  Once the screws are are off you’ll have to pull the housing off. It’s held in by two tabs that have small metal clips that grab onto plastic tabs. Take care pulling it off as to not break the plastic tabs. Here is where I used a flathead screwdriver to pry it off. I did it because someone had put two of the metals clips where there was only suppose to need one. Obviously I think this taillight was replaced sometime prior to us owning the vehicle as I doubt this came from the factory like that.

The brake light is located in the middle socket. A simple turn off the socket and you’ll have access to the bulb. Pull the old bulb off and replace with you new bulb. I tested it before putting it back together again just in case I had a dud. It worked great and I put it back together(without the extra clip) and all was good. Like I said before It only took me about 15 minutes to do and is a fairly simple job to do. Well I just thought I’d share this in case someone out there was wondering how this was done. Thanks for coming by and have a great day!

Technorati Tags: ford,windstar,2000,tail,light,brake,how to,change,replace,remove

Rear Disc Brake job on 2000 Impala

I’ve finally gotten around to uploading the pictures from my task of replacing my rear disc brakes on my 2000 Chevrolet Impala LS. They had been scrapping for a few weeks until I got to them. This more of a pictorial of my job than a strict “how-to” post. Partly because I didn’t take any notes as to exact sequence or tools used. This was actually done two weeks ago and I’m going by memory so forgive my lack of foresight in taking notes. I’ll give a play-by-play with the pictures as best I can. Here we go….

In this picture is the rear disc brakes of Impala. As you might guess they’ve been on there quite awhile. This is the first time I’ve done these since buying the car just over 5 years and 86,000 miles ago. They don’t owe me anything as far as I’m concerned. From the normal surface rust they don’t look that bad, just you wait.

 

No “uber” special tools needed for this job. A basic socket set, some hand wrenches and perhaps the the only “special” tool you may need is a disc pad spreader which are easily purchase for less than $10 at a parts store. These GM brakes are actually two separate parts. One holds the caliper piston(inside) and the other(outer) holds the brake pads. You’ll need to remove 4 bolts. Two for inner caliper and two for the other. I’d advise to drowning these in your favorite spray lubricant. A rubber mallet (or striking device of your choosing) may be needed to break these loose. I got lucky on one or two that came loose fairly easy but some others didn’t cooperate. 

It looks as if I’m using a 14mm socket in the top picture and I was loosening the bolts to inner caliper. The outside caliper uses a slightly different size socket.

Advisory: Small children should not be close by as they may accidentally learn some new words.

Here can see a little of the pads. Doesn’t look like much pad left at all.

These are what’s left of my rotors. The outer part of the rotor actually didn’t look bad. When you turned them over it was a different story. This is what happens when your pads run down to bare metal. They were scored pretty bad.

This my nice new brake rotor from AutoZone. They are Duralast Part# 55039, they were about $42.99 a piece(plus tax).

Here we can see that the old pad was down to the metal pad. These were scrapping bad before I changed them.

The pads were Duralast Part #MKD814, also used was a liberal application of disc brake quiet lube(in red).

Pop my wheel back on and I was done. Well I was done on one side. The other side went pretty much the same way. I did make note of some stuff that would have made this job a bit easier.

• Floor Jack – I had to use the regular car jack from the trunk. It’s not the recommended way to do the a brake job. I did have one car(not this one) almost fall on me from a car jack and it certainly got my attention.
• Creeper seat – My rear-end was sore from the milk crate I used for a seat.
• Breaker Bar – To break loose those stubborn bolts.

In all I think this took me about 2-1/2 hours(for both sides) and, I was taking my time doing it too. If your handy with some tools this shouldn’t  be a tough job for most do-it-yourselfers. Thanks for coming by and if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave a message below. 

P.S. I also have pictures of my front disc brake repair I did in the spring time. I’ll be publishing those very shortly.

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