Decided to do my own brake job From all the posts on here. Not a tech guy but my freind is and We will give it a go.Doing Front pads /rotors. Looked at a few brands and was going to purchased wagner? cannot find anything good or bad about them. Is it better to get pads at nissan dealership and use them. I also need an answer on Brake fluid do i change that or leave it alnoe car is a 1999 with 40,000 Thanks.
After going to a Sears and firestone It was depressing.

 

You shouldn't have to replace the brakes at 40K on a 1999 car unless you beat on them severely. Even if you do replace the pads, I question the need to replace the front rotors. At most, they should perhaps be machined.

Raybestos Quietstop are decent brake pads, although a lot of .orgers just go Nissan OEM for replacement.

You should bleed the brakes all the way around and replace the brake fluid.

I have a 95SE, 5-speed, with 64K mostly highway miles and my front brakes have never been touched, nor will they anytime soon.

I replaced the rear pads and calipers in April last year because the right rear caliper was seized as a result of me not using the parking brake for about 5 years.

Again, I question the need to replace front brakes at 40K.

 

Thank I live in downtown boston and alot of CITY miles on the car. If this helps Can I just replace the pads and leave everything as is and get another 20K out of it then change rotors and pads? The shop will never do it because they want the full brake job price. Thanks for the quick response appreciate it.

 

If you are not hard on your brakes and you don't have any wheel wobble, then you should be able to get away with just changing the pads. If you are hard on your brakes then you might want to take the rotors down and have then turned.. It shouldn't cost more the $20.00 a rotor. And thats on the high side. And what ever you do don't forget that the rear calipers turn back.. don't try and force them with a C-clamp or your going to have all sorts of problems.

Hope it helps.

 

I'd just replace the pads, my rotors were good up until ~77k miles.

 

Unless your rotors are warped and cause your front end to shake when you apply the brake, at 40k your rotors should be fine.

Does anyone know if the parking brake makes replacing the rear brakes more complicated?

Thanks
Mark

1996 I30 Touring 5sp

 

i recently changed mine with this guy that workss on car and he didnt bleed any of the brakes and i am hearing sound from the back its not a scatching but like its rubbing maybe especially when i go reverse what should i do

 

The brake cable is the easy part. There is a 10mm bolt that you will have to remove to give the caliper room to move off the rotor.

The hard part is turning it. Or maybe I havent found the right tool to turn the caliper.

 

I've changed the pads many times without changing or turing the rotors. Works fine.

 

Go to Schucks or Autozone or whatever and get the caliper turning tool. The one I got was a metal cube with different caliper notch patterns on each side. It's designed to use a 3/8" socket extension to drive the tool. I did this a couple of months ago. One side was a ***** and a half to get screwed in, the other side was easy as pie.

 

i just replaced a caliper and rotor on rear passenger side the other day. seized to hell. now i got to look at the other side and see what that looks like. as far as turning back the caliper you can use needle nose pliers; works fine on non seized calipers.

 

Just did all 4 rotors and all 8 pads this weekend.

Like the manual says; do one wheel at a time.

Also, now may be the time to invest in a decent quality breaker bar. I was also glad to have a 3 pound plastic dead-blow hammer around. YMMV.

 

Brake fluid is hygroscopic and retains moisture. It helps to periodically bleed the brakes and replace the brake fluid. At a minimum, the brakes should be bled everytime a pad replacement is done.

 

Rotors last a long time. Unless they are warped, I would just leave them alone. My car has 136K miles and on the third set of brake pads. The rotors are still original Nissan. I prefer Raybestos QS pad than Nissan OEM pad. The rear takes a little more time, but it is not harder than the front.

 

i did the fronts 120k on origional rotors. I bought the crossdrilled rotors and ceramic pads from group deals forum. 10k on the new breaks and no cracking or any problems. I would suggest bleeding the breaks and changing the fluid, i saw black crap come out when i did mine. I wonder if thats the inside of my break line decomposing.

 

I've never heard this before. I have 170K miles and have never bled my brakes....Although I've stocked some synthetic for when I do flush them. What would be the next anticipated problem if left too long (I'm assuming that I've left mine for too long)?

 

I second the suggestion to get the caliper turning tool. I tried using needle nose pliers, and the thing turned fine, it just wouldn't go in. Frustrating as ****. I finally broke down and got the tool (about $10) and it worked fine.

 

Just changed the Brake Pads. Did it ouselves. Thanks for all the help here. Used the Haynes manual . The One part that we did not replace were the ((anti rattle springs)) They were broken. Do I need to put these on or not???????.thanks. The only tool out of the ordinary was the --------C CLAMP__--------- used Duralast Gold from AutoZone 29.95. Done .
Thanks for the help. If you are thinking about doing it yourself do it. took about 2 hours and actually fun. Peace

 

i have a 98 max with only 60k on it i'm not sure about the brake pads but there is no noise coming from them. It's just the cars brakes aren't as sensitive as i would like. Is there a way to make it more sensitive? it just seems like i have to depress my brake half or almost all the way to stop but when i drive my parents cars i barely have to touch them and they come to a dead stop.

 

If you tune your thoughts to what your foot feels, when you depress the brake pedal you can actually feel the condition your rotors are in. I find the Max more sensitive in this respect than any other car I've driven. My own rotors aren't warped, I've got no 'wobble-wobble-wobble' on them, but my foot is sending me messages about how badly they are scored, and I can see that they need turning to fix that problem. How do your brakes 'feel'? Trust the foot.
BTW there is a really interesting piece in the NYT today about brake rotors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/au.../18BRAKES.html for interest.

 

don't ever go to firestone. got a quote there for $600 to change out all the rotors and flush brake fluid. they wanted $139 just to change out the rear pads and 90 to flush out the fluid that actually didn't need to be flushed!!!
so i said **** firestone and ur ridicoulus price i'll do it my damn self.

bought rtp blanks for 195 shipped and semi metallic brake pads.
did the whole installation in about 2 hours by myself w/ no power tools.
went to geralds too get brake fluid flushed out but they found out that it didn't needed to be done so firestone was trying to rip me off

its not hard, remove the 2 caliper bolts, then the 2 bolts that hold the rotors

 

If you want to turn your rotors for $20 each, there is a group deal for Brembo blanks for $96 shipped for new rotors. Not a bad deal if you want to go that way.