I was watching that wheeler dealers program on home & leisure and it got me thinking. It feels like my brakes need doing soon, and I saw a fantastic price for discs on the US forum the other day.

So, having never done it before, but possessing a reasonable level of knowledge on how the brakes work and go together, is it worth doing myself?

I forked out a decent amount of cash to buy the car I want, but I'm not happy to go paying a dealer to do something I could do myself on a Sunday afternoon and for a hell of a lot less money!

 

Very easy job!

www.brakeparts.co.uk

Cheap pads & discs.

 

i got these a while back still waiting to put them on the car as i cant be arsed in doing it with how the weather is and as th ecar is now in th ebody shop for a few weeks wont be needing them on any time soon. cost

 

As long as one is not a complete mechanical tyro and has a reasonable quality tool set, it's straightforward. (Burred nuts are a no-no!)

The discs may have corroded on, which might be a fun challenge.

Obviously, clean everything thoroughly and put it back carefully, because it's rather important NOT to fcuk anything up.

 

this had happened to my car...and it was a real pain to shift them, impact driver would not move them - so had to drill and extract the screws,,

 

Thanks guys, I've found this guide to changing the pads amongst a few others on the forum. As per this pic, is it really a matter of undoing the lower of the two bolts in order to gain access to the front pads??



And also this may be an extremely stupid question, but how do I check the discs for wear; what am I feeling/looking for, is there an outer edge I can measure the wear on?

 

Doing the pads is dead easy. For changing discs you will have to remove that pad housing too. Easy to do, just two more nuts which are 19mm. get a good torque wrench to do the job.

 

Pads should be fairly straight forward to check for wear on, but what about the discs though?

 

My mate changed my pads this eve (works for KwikFit, so using ramps etc), took about 15mins if that (with a lot of chatting LOL)! Total cost

 

you need a set of vernier calipers or preferably a micrometer to measure the thickness of you discs and therefore judge the wear. basically you measure the thickness of the disc in the area swept by the pads and compare it against the factory wear tolerances.