Before the first track day in the BRZ, I needed to give the brakes a going over so I knew they would withstand the beating I was about to give them.
I had no idea what the history of the braking system was, what fluid was in it and how old it was, what pads were fitted and how good they were, so I chose to renew the fluid, and replace all the pads just as a matter of course.
Typically, in what should’ve been a nice, easy job, it started badly. With the car in the air, I removed the rear wheels without issue, but when I got to the front, it became apparent that whoever I trusted to put the wheels on after fitting the new rubber had spun the nuts on with one too many ugga duggas. The RH wheel come off with some of my own ugga duggas, but the left was putting up a real fight.
One nut was stuck, about halfway down the stud. After bashing on it with my rattle gun and getting nowhere, I enlisted the help of my wife to stand on the brakes, whilst with my longest breaker bar I leaned on it until this happened.
The best result, really. A snapped stud at least allows me to remove the wheel.
After some running around, I found a lone wheel stud at the local Repco. I would’ve liked to replace one on the RH side too, which I had to clean the thread up on, but stocks were limited.
Thankfully, the front studs are real easy to replace on the Toybaru. I removed the calliper and bracket, and using my handy dandy rotor removal bolt, I removed the rotor
This left me with a bare hub, and a bit of broken stud
Two whacks of my trusty mini-sledgehammer and the remains popped right out
I slid the replacement stud through the hole in the hub and using an oversized nut as a spacer, and spare wheel nut, I wound the new stud in
With that disaster out of the way, I moved onto replacing the rear pads. The old pads looked fairly worn
Flipping the calliper up, the pads were about half worn
This S hook I got off Aliexpress a while ago is super handy
Because the new pads are thicker, the piston needs to be pushed back. A clamp was used to push the piston back, whilst the bleeder valve was open and hooked up to the bleeder bottle (to relieve pressure and not force fluid back towards the master cylinder)
Before fitting the replacement pads, I cleaned up the pad hardware. The little metal clips the pads slide on were caked in brake dust
I scrubbed them with brake cleaner and a toothbrush
They then got refitted to the calliper brackets with some of the brake paste the pads came with
The new pads then get slipped into place, with some more paste on the contact areas
The calliper was then refitted, and all bolts torqued to spec
Moving to the front, it’s basically the same thing. Undo the slider bolts, remove the bottom one and swing the calliper up and secure it
The front pads looked fairly new, so I suspect they were probably replaced during compliance
I removed the pads, cleaned up the hardware and used the fancy Dixcel grease that came with the pads
And the new pads get slipped into place
It’s interesting to note the Dixcel pads have this little spring thing on each pad, I’m guessing to help keep the pad off the rotor when not in use?
Push the pistons back again, flip the calliper down, torque the bolts and away you go.
The last thing I wanted to do was replace the brake fluid, once again, with Castrol React Performance Dot 4 fluid I used in the Alto. This was straightforward, I pumped about half a litre through, starting with the rears and then moving to the fronts until the new clear fluid came through. Once new fluid was flowing through each calliper, I bled each corner.
The fluid proved good (as expected), I had no issues on the track with it, but I cannot recommend the Dixcel pads I used on the front, they cannot withstand track use. More on this in my next post.
As a side note, anyone following along with the Marina, yes it’s been a while since the last update, but things have been happening on that too. Hopefully have a post on that soon too.
Parts Used
Dixcel ES-361055 – Front Brake Pads (not recommended)
RDA Phantom Ceramic RDC2092 – Rear Brake Pads
Nice S453 – Front Wheel Stud
Please note these parts are specific to my car and may vary. Please check before ordering.
Great write up as usual Kelvin.