First, and most importantly, I went and changed our my rear brake pads this weekend. I was already replacing my rear passanger side caliper because of a faulty worm gear. However the rear driver side may need to be replaced as well, I am hoping someone can provide me with some details regarding my situation.

The rear caliper's boot, the rubber thing that surrounds the piston was pretty bunched up and looked in poor shape. It seemed to have come out a bit in the top, so compared to the new one I replaced it looked terrible. No visible tears in it, but I cant imagine it was serving its propose like it should. I also replaced the Rotor's on my car. Another sign of it not doing so good was that it was VERY hard to get the caliper off of the stock rotor, was on their like a vice grip, I had to pound and pry the sucker off. I was still able to compress the rear piston using the brake tool and a lot of muscle.

Autozone sells remanufactured calipers for 80 bucks (After you return the other core). I dont really want to drop more money on my brakes, or deal with the hassle of taking things apart and bleeding the breaks again. However like I said I just put on new brake pads and nice rotors, last thing I want to do is kill them quickly. Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions? I'm thinking these 2 signs (Hard to take the caliper off the rotor, and poor rubber cover) are the tell all signs to replace it.

As for the exhaust, the dealership says I should replace it. Its not making that much noise, and last summer I repaired a brake in the exhaust, its just a bit louder now (nothing distracting). To replace the exhaust I am assuming I need to take it to a shop. Anyone have any experience replacing the factory exhaust with something cheap? I'm not looking for a performance related one. I havent been to a muffler place before, not sure if they could find the problem and patch it up.

 

Justin,
When I did my rear brakes last time I noticed the same things.
If you cleaned up your caliper's real good they should last and not need to be replaced.
Now about your exhaust, since you just want to replace it cheaply go to Midas.
I just replaced my muffler at Midas for like $250.00 installed. They have one that looks just like the stock on the 2001.
I just like the looks of the two pipes under one silver oval tip, compared to my old two chrome tips on my original 2k3 exhaust. (Just me)

 

Any chance you can shead some light on cleaning the caliper? I know I installed everything correctly, but that rubber gasket, or boot, or dust cover was just in poor shape. How can I clean that? Spray it with something?

If I take a picture of the rubber thing would that help? Everything is put back together, so aside from some pictures with my wheel off I'm not sure what I can show.