Rear brake pad and rotor replacement

brake reset tool request

I am jumping onto this thread in hopes of findng a piston rewing tool to borrow or rent. Trying not to purchase it for this job. Located near Milwaukee. Plz let me know if you can help

Sounds like a great post, but I don't see any of the pictures. Are they necessary when doing the job?

eats1963 said:

Sounds like a great post, but I don't see any of the pictures. Are they necessary when doing the job?

Click to expand...

They help, but they're not necessary. I PM'd cosmic to let him know his pictures aren't working.

I recently did my rear brakes and also used a c-clamp and slip joint pliers to push the pistons in. When my mechanic did it for me last year (because I was missing my infrastructure after divorce: no house or garage) he said the piston has to be screwed in. I has visions of threaded pistons. I now realize that any direction of rotation is okay. The piston seal is designed in such a way that inward movement from a clamp with enough force will wrench it out of it's slot rendering it useless. Rotation just facilitates them sliding backwards. I hope I'm not repeating what someone else has already said.

2006 Jetta A5 rear brake job

my 2 cents. I have bentley manual and purchased rear rotors/pads from TDIPARTS.COM and since then have purchased multivehical caliper turnin tool and still ran into problem of what VW calls multipoint bolt on rears. After much looking around and trial and error I have purchased 14mm 12pt (multipoint driver) on the Internet. I could not find locally and VW dealers where unhelpful to say the least. Also quoted $450 for brake job from dealers. Hopefully once it gets above 0 degrees I will be able to change out the rotors as I was only able to do pads until I got the driver.

Does anyone have a single rear brake pad from an A4? A decent used one with 5mm left would be great.... I had a caliper slide hang up and now I've got three pads with 6mm and one wafer thin. I'm doing rotors and pads complete once this salt season is over... just thought someone may have a decent take off left from a brake job that'll get me through the winter. Let me know, I'll PayPal some $ to cover postage. Thanks!

I may have one this weekend. I am doing rear calipers on my daughters A4 TDI and putting new pads on. The existing pads are only about a year old. i'll send a pm if i have a good one.

jayb79 said:

I may have one this weekend. I am doing rear calipers on my daughters A4 TDI and putting new pads on. The existing pads are only about a year old. i'll send a pm if i have a good one.

Click to expand...

OK, cool. I can shoot over and get it.

Bob, i think i sent a pm

Yeah, I had a dealer tell me north of $300 to do my rears (still had some pad left, but 85k miles, may as well do it)

Screw that - I ordered a set of rotors and pads, and did it myself.

Surprisingly enough, I had about 1/3rd of the pads left! I was shocked really; they've squealed when cold in reverse lately, and I figured it was about time anyway, given that VWs tend to eat the rears first.

Anyway, not a difficult job at all. Less than an hour a side.

$300+ eh? I think not, given that if you have a pair of jackstands and some basic shop tools this is a "two beer" job.

My rear brakes cost me a total of $220. I replaced everything, rotors, pads, and calipers.

I'm going to do the rear brake job tomorrow (pads & disc) and I just wanted to let you know that Canadian Tire still loan tool for free. They were selling the cube shaped tool, but I asked if I could loan the kit similar to the metalnerd one and they said they don't have a lot of tools anymore but, they still had this one.

Caliper issue

I think I had a caliper freez up as my driver rear wheel got hot. Is it best to replace the caliper along with the rotor & pads on my 03 Jetta with 120k? I'm now getting a shimmy in the car when I apply the brakes. Thanks Bernie

i just want to let everyone know you dont need the metalnerd tool. i did my brakes/rotors saturday afternoon and without reading/checking ahead ran into the piston problem. ran up to autozone and picked up an $8 equivalent to the metalnerd tool, which bent. needed the car for work and wasnt putting on the old brake pad so i got a 5" C-clamp and put the threaded part on the piston and cranked. once you get it a little tight just take an adjustable wrench and twist a little and just twisting the c-clamp should do the rest of the job no problem. total time=45 minutes for 1st side, 15-20 minutes for 2nd side.

Berniem said:

I think I had a caliper freez up as my driver rear wheel got hot. Is it best to replace the caliper along with the rotor & pads on my 03 Jetta with 120k? I'm now getting a shimmy in the car when I apply the brakes. Thanks Bernie

Click to expand...

Bernie,

When I replaced my rear rotors and rear pads the emergency brake cables were mal-adjusted causing the "new pads" to ride hard on the "new rotors." The rotors got so hot it cooked the enamel finish of the hats.

Needless to say, there are a few issues you should look at when doing a brake job [rears]. Make certain you use anti seize on those caliper pin-sliders and the emergency brake cable are lubed and free enough to allow some room for those pads to lightly ride the surface not forcefully. Another issue, when you get brakes hot, you can boil brake fluide too. Change out the fluide. I changed mine out twice, during the initial brake job and then after my mishap with the emergency brakes riding the rotors toasty.

You probably didn't seize a caliper. Mine have gone 206,000 miles and this was my third pad replacement and 1st rotor replacement since owning the car new. We're speaking rear brakes here.

BrianCT
__________________________

Below:

Here are the rotors cooked and this is what they looked liked before the test drive around the block! No damage to the rotors nor to the pads or calipers. Just freed up the emergency brake and changed brake fluide.

Thanks Brian! My rotors are looking pretty rough-rusty not grooved. But my pads are low & the rotor/pad combo is the only way to go. I can get Bendix-oem pads for $45. & rotars fo $44./set from Advance auto-2yr replacement. I bought some synthetic caliper grease for my last change which helped reduce the squeel that developed. I'm putting a motive bleader together & have some blue fluid to flush through as well. I don't think it has ever been done .B

rear brakes

I just finished my rear brakes & used some synthetic brake grease for the sliders. My old Lf side brake seemed frozen as it wouldn't slide. The new pad was tight as well & I grouned a bit off the side to free it up. All seems good. I always replace rotors as it does a better job with new pads.

Thanks and some pointers:

2006 Jetta TDI:

Just changed out my rear pads at 40K, not sure if they had been changed previously or not, I got the car with 30K on it. I found out I will be doing rotors as well (waited too long to change pads). This thread was a great help, so thanks everyone! A couple pointers:

1. you DO NOT need to open bleed valve when resetting the piston. I am no pro, but the pressure in these brake lines is already so high, a little more from depressing the piston should not be a problem.

2. I did not disconnect anything, no brake cables, no caliper lines of any kind, nothing. You can push the caliper out of the way when changing the pads without any trouble at all.

3. I borrowed the brake tool from autozone, just call them and tell them what you need to see if they have it. The tool was VERY HELPFUL, it made resetting the piston easy. (If it seems hard to turn the handle on the tool, take a 1-2 foot metal pipe of small diameter and slide it over the handle to give you more leverage--I had to do this, but once I did no problems turning it at all).

4. I needed a 15mm and a 13mm wrench to take the caliper bolts off. Make sure you have these before you start.

it's always rcommended to change the rotors and pads together on these cars. Some mechanics will open the bleed valve to express the dirty fluid in the caliper, not needed to depress piston, but a sound practice none the less

Just replaced my rear brakes/rotors this past weekend! I used the Metalnerd tool to wind back the piston (worked great!) and put in the new rotors and pads. Thanks to everyone on this post for your information. Another job made easy thanks to the TDIClub!
Doug

Great work on the how to, saved me a ton of frustration as I would have tried pushing the piston straight back as I normally do with non VW calipers. I live in Kingston and purchased a set of pads at the West end Canadian tire store. The guys there were great, sold me monroe premiums that they were clearing out for $20. They also advised me they had a loaner tool kit for the calpier piston, it worked perfectly and made the job a breeze. I noticed that they have several different types of tool kits free for loan to us backyard mechanics. The only suggestion I would add for someone contemplating this job, who is using an air rachet, use a 13mm deep socket on the caliper bolts, allows you to work around the emerg cable assy without removing it. Real glad I read this how too, would have been impossible to move that piston in the way I had planned originally.

Did this job over the weekend on my '03 Golf and the only observation I had was that the e-brake cable was able to stay in the actuator while performing this R&R.

The positioning screw on the pass. side was a b***h getting out. It was so tight that the head ended up rounding so I was forced to drill it out, so I used two lugs to keep it on and in place while I got the carrier bolts torqued back up.

I did notice a minor thumping sound this morning on the ride into the office this morning, though the brakes seem to stop evenly, the e-brake pulls fine, and all the bolts are visible and tight? (Note: This is coming from the side where the positioning screw is now absent, but I know it isn't related as it's purpose is only intermittant while aligning the lug holes from the wheel and rotor/axle. Any thoughts? Seen some reference to rear sway bar bushing contributing to this (replaced the fronts a few months back) and wonder if this could be the culprit, although I didn't hear this prior to performing this job?

count me as another satisfied user of cosmic's how to. replaced my rear pads yesterday, only took about an hour and a half because i basically read the post until i memorized it.

one weird thing i found when removing my old pads was that my LR pads were almost nothing whereas my RR pads had significantly more life left in them. any ideas on why this might have happened?

Re-Torque your lugs after a test drive! Not sure if others ran into this but after a 10-15 minute drive I noticed my lugs were very loose.

2005 Jetta TDI - can't remove rotor

I'm in the middle of a passenger's side rear brake job (pads and rotor) on my 2005 Jetta TDI. I've got the pads off, but I'm having trouble getting the rotor off. I took the calipers off with no problems, but there's a bracket thing (the carrier?) that the calipers/pads fit in that's preventing me from removing the rotor.

Near as I can tell, that bracket thing is attached by two bolts on the other side of the rotor. I can't tell if I should be using a star bit or a hex bit, but I've tried an 8mm/10mm/12mm hex/allen bit, and T55/T60 star bits. The 8mm/10mm are too small, and the 12 mm is too big. The T55 is too small and the T60 is too big. (Feel like Goldilocks looking for option number three...) Any suggestions on what kind/size bit I should be using? If I don't need to take the bracket off, is there something I'm missing that'll help me get the rotor off?

Here are a couple of camera phone pics that might help:

Here is a shot of one of the bolts. Because it's on the other side of the rotor, and it was already dusk, I had trouble getting a decent pic. Sorry it's so blurry:



Here's a shot of the bracket/carrier that's preventing me from getting the rotor off:

BrianCT said:

Here are the rotors cooked and this is what they looked liked before the test drive around the block! No damage to the rotors nor to the pads or calipers. Just freed up the emergency brake and changed brake fluide.

Click to expand...

I did my rear brake job today. The pads lightly touch the rotors when I spin the wheel by hand. I'm not sure if this is normal, how long did it take for your e-brake cable to heat treat your rotors? My rotors still look brand spanking new after a bunch of highway driving this afternoon so I probably have nothing to worry about.

mtltdi said:

I did my rear brake job today. The pads lightly touch the rotors when I spin the wheel by hand. I'm not sure if this is normal, how long did it take for your e-brake cable to heat treat your rotors? My rotors still look brand spanking new after a bunch of highway driving this afternoon so I probably have nothing to worry about.

Click to expand...

Actually on a job I did in March 2008, the rear rotors spun about one turn freely after installing new pads. I was a little worried about the resistance until I called Keith, [Meganuke]. Keith said that the pads should touch slightly, its how the brake system adjusts itself [they'll always rub].

My issue with the Golf a few years back was new rotors with a different thickness and pads that were thicker too. The combination threw off the Emergency Brake cable OEM setting. In this case the pads were VERY tight on the rotors, especially the right rear. It was a short drive around the block that caused the rotors to heat up sooo much they burned the paint on the hats.

Believe me, if your rear brakes were dragging heavily ....you'd know it by smell alone.

You're in the clear I'd say for the most part.

BrianCT

RaleighRob said:

I'm in the middle of a passenger's side rear brake job (pads and rotor) on my 2005 Jetta TDI.

Click to expand...

Entire thread is located here.

http://locker.uky.edu/~jowens/public/tdiclub/rearbrakes/carrier.jpg

Thanks Brian.

Now my fight moves to the tie rod end that won't budge. I'm starting to regret my decision to go with VR6 front brakes.

cosmic,
Great article. Rented the piston wind-back tool at Autozone. Worked like gang-busters. Could not have done the rears with any other tool. Did brakes all-around this past weekend, rotors & pads on all four corners. Took about 7 hours to do all four. Had to adjust the parking brake tension, that took some time removing the center colsole to do the adjustment.

Thanks again for the great write-up!!!!