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 Changing Brake Pads

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My LX Accord has front disc brakes and I am changing only my front brake pads at this time.

Honda OEM brake pads need to be changed when you have less than 2mm of friction material left. Depending on your driving, they could last from 20,000 miles to 70,000 miles. I had my pads checked at 35,000 and 42,000 miles and they still had 30% left. At 53,000 miles I decided to change my brakes myself. I discovered that I still had about 4mm of pad left but decided to change them anyway.

Here are a set of Honda OEM brake pads. which come with new shims and anti-squeal grease so you don't need anything else. On the left most pad you will notice a metal piece sticking off the pads. This is the wear indicator and it causes a squealing noise when you only have 2mm of pad left.

  

I considered upgrading to a grippier pad, but the extra heat created can lead to brake fade and warped discs, especially since I'm still using stock discs, so I decided to stick with OEM brake pads. If I keep the car long enough (100,000 miles) and it's time to change the pads and discs, I may upgrade then.

Anyway, first jack up your car and remove the wheels. In order to jack up my car, I used the front corner tow hooks for the jack point (working on one corner at a time).
  

Once the corner was propped up enough, I slipped a jack stand under the side jack points. For safety reasons, you should always elevate your car with a jack AND a jack stand in case either one fails.   

Now remove the wheels. Check out my wheel/tire changing DIY for details.   

Under your hood, open up the brake fluid reservoir so that you can adjust the calipers. It is located just above the steering column, to the left of the driver side front strut tower. It's a tight squeeze but you can unscrew the cap about 1/4 turn. Then pull the cap up slightly.   

Clean the brakes with brake cleaner, which you can get at your local car store.
Spray the disc, caliper and pad with the brake cleaner. As it drips off it will take the brake dust and other grime off. We'll give it another spray once the caliper has been opened the pads removed.

Because of the potential work with asbestos, you may want to use gloves and a mask. I used gloves when I could but found certain tasks much easier without them. I bought masks but did not use them since the brake cleaner did a pretty good job of washing off the brake dust.
  

Remove the lower caliper pin/bolt. I believe it's a 15mm socket. It's on fairly tight (54 ft-lbs) and in a difficult position so I used my long wrench to loosen it.   

Once it's been loosened, you can probably unscrew it with your hand, then pull the whole pin out. I put the pin on a rag so that it wouldn't pick up any dirt.   

Grasp the outer section of the caliper firmly and you should be able to rotate it up.   

Rotate it all the way up and it should stay there. You may want to clean out the hole for the pin to make sure there's not too much gunk in there.   

Now remove the two brake pads (outer and inner) by grabbing them and sliding them out. Once the pads are out, give the area a quick spray with the brake cleaner to clean up anything that may have been missed before.   

Next you need to compress the piston. A c-clamp comes in very handy. Place one end behind the caliper and one on the piston and tighten slowly. You'll want to keep an eye on the brake fluid reservoir when doing this.

I placed one end of the c-clamp directly on the edge of the piston but that caused the rubber seal around it to fold strangely. It might be better to put the end inside the center of the piston and do it there.
  

Because you are compressing the piston back in, you are pushing brake fluid back into the reservoir. If you do this too quickly or if you have a lot of brake fluid, you could end up overflowing the reservoir.

To avoid this, compress the pistons slowly and keep an eye on the level. If you wait a few seconds the level will drop down a little so I never had a problem. If you have too much fluid, you may wish to siphon off some of the excess before it overflows.
  

You may wish to disassemble the old brake pads and shims. Make note of which shims go on which pads and in what direction and order.   

Here's a set of the old and new pads   

And here's a close up of the old and new pads (new on top).   

Here's a profile so you can see the difference in pad thickness (new on top).   

Preparation | Installation    
     

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