How to Replace Rear Brake Pads - Removing the caliper mounting brackets

MARK BLOCKER: In this segment, we're going to cover part two of removing the brake pads and caliper mounting bracket. We've already got the brake pads off, so part two will be removing caliper mounting brackets. Once the pads are out, to remove the rear caliper bracket, we use these 214mm bolts that are located on the backside. I know that it will be hard to see from that camera angle, but they're pretty much directly behind where the top portion of the caliper bracket hangs over the rotor there. And these are considerably tighter than the calipers themselves. Require a little bit of extra torque to get them to break free. But once you get them, as you see, I kinda brace myself and give it a good solid, hard yank on the ratchet. And that initial good yank is kinda what's required sometimes to break the bolt initially free. And when I did so, I positioned my body back from the car because when I yank that hard amount of force, if you happen to move the car or want a tendency to slide it off jack stand, my body is set aside from the vehicle. So if it should go down, I'll have adequate clearance to not be in the path of injury. Once I break it down free, I just want to come down and get the other one before we try and get them both off. Now, the next bolt down has a little bit of a clearance issue with the rear trailing arm. Now, the trailing arm is what centers that actually hold it in and gives it the ability to have the suspension movement up and down. And behind where the bolt is located, there's a limited amount of clearance between the nut or the bolt itself and the trailing arm. It makes a little bit difficult to get the socket and ratchet in there. Sometimes, you have to come at it a couple of different angles until it slide on easily. And once you're on it, you just gotta go ahead and break it free again. Now, this awkward situation, although in this side of the car I don't have much movement, room to apply any torque, and I can't get my body weight behind it, this would be one of the times where you get to switch position and use a pushing force on it. And as you could see from this position, I've got more available space in it in order to get some torque applied to the ratchet. I mean it's easier for me to break that bolt free. In this particular situation, my hand or the ratchet will come off of the bolt should go forward. I could easily smack my fist into that inner thin wall, damaging my knuckle. So, while pushing forward, I'm going to keep an open hand. In that way if anything slips, I've got an open hand to just push out and grab contact. And I could spread the force of that impact across the whole open hand rather than just placing it on a very small area of my knuckles which damage easily. Okay, now I've got that broken free, I'll just go ahead and remove both the bolts with my fingers. And I'm going to switch back to the other position because it has better accessibility for camera angles. And, again, as before with the other bolts, it's easier to--once you've got them broken free, if they move freely with your fingers, you get a little bit more clearance in there so it's easier to do it and faster with your fingers than it is with a ratchet. And they have lock washers on the bolt as well, and I just want to make sure that each one of them got it and you keep it with the bolt. And I'll just continue removing this second bolt with my fingers. And this is one of those applications where one of the newer styles of ratchet wrenches, where one end of the box wrench is enclosed and it's got a ratchet device in it where the wrench will slide over the nut or socket or a bolt that you're using. It allows you that ratchet movement back and forth, whereas the old style box wrench, you would have to put it on, you get so much turn, you have take it off, and re-grip and get another bite to make a certain amount of movement again. The ratchet wrench went in there usually in the space area that we had to work with, and it could have made the job easier. And that's the difference. We can get the job done with this minimal amount of tools, but there are always specialty tools of that design that can make the job easier and faster for you. And if you do a lot of your own home maintenance and auto repair and stuff of that nature, some of those specialty tools can really be a good asset to your tool set. For most practical, extensive or for the bare minimum to get you by, a basic tool set will do the job. As you go along and see, there are a lot of tools that can make it easier and faster but they're really not required to get the job done. Okay, after removing the second bolt, once again, make sure the lock washer is there, keeping the bolts together. We'll set them apart from all the other parts in here in just a minute. After both of those are removed, the caliper mounting bracket comes right off. It just slides out. That will conclude the caliper mounting bracket part two. Please watch our next segment on rotors.