joe002

Eventually your disc pads wear out (on JKs, typically the rear ones go first). I ordered some Hawk LTS High Performance Jeep JK Brake Pads from JeepSwag.com, and installed them. Here’s what I did.


There are a few symptoms of low brake pads: brake noise when applying brakes (the brake pads have a tab that makes the brakes squeal when they are really low), a need to press the brake pedal in more, if you look at the pads you'll see they aren't as thick, and/or your brake fluid is low (even though you don't have a leak). Here's a shot of my brake fluid - lower than the stock fill:




I could visually see the pads were low and the fluid was low, so time for a change. The pads were well packed in the box (securely held together so they didn't bang around in shipping), plus they supply plenty of brake grease. Note that you don't get new clips with these pads, so you'll have to clean and re-use the stock ones:




I started with the passenger rear wheel. Block your tires, jack up your Jeep under the axle, add a solid support under the axle, remove the wheel:




Here's a view of the pads and rotor. The pads are to the left and right of the rotor (lighter brown smoother surface - offset to the right). There's still some material left, but I wanted to replace them anyway:




There are a couple of ways to get to the pads on the JK, but the Factory Service Manual recommends removing the two caliper mounting bolts. This is the top bolt (the bottom bolt is at the bottom of the picture with a white marking on it):




You'll need a thin wrench to hold the inner nut, and a wrench or socket for the outer bolt:




Once you get the two bolts off you can remove the caliper:




Do not let the caliper hang by the brake line - you need to support it! Here you can see the supported caliper (I had an old plastic holder), and the old brake pads still in place:




Here's a close up of the outer pad - you can see the stock clips on the top and bottom. I found that it's not a bad idea to use new clips:




The pads should come off easily - slide the top off first then the bottom. Note that you never want to touch the rotor surfaces as any contamination is not helpful. Here are the pads removed. Note that the inner pad has the clip that makes a noise when the pad material is too low (there's about 1/8" of material left before it hits the noise tab):




Next, you need to compress the brake piston in the caliper. If your brake fluid reservoir is completely full then you'll have to remove some fluid as compressing the piston will raise the level in the reservoir. Once you're sure there's room for the fluid in your reservoir you use a clamp to slowly compress the piston. I only had a 3" clamp, and slightly larger clamp would have been a little easier to use. Also note that you may need to put a socket in the piston if your clamp can't reach down far enough to compress the piston:




You can re-use your old clips, but you need to carefully inspect your old clips to ensure none of the tabs are broke or loose. I suggest getting new clips and Permatex Disc Brake Quiet which will help the clips hold to the caliper:




Put the Disc Brake Quiet on the bottom and sides that will come in contact with the caliper - don't get any on any other surfaces:




Carefully clip each clip back in place - note that the side tab points toward the rear:




Since my rotors are good, I'm going to keep them the way they are (if you want to replace your rotors you need to do it now). Next, you need to clean off the surface of the clips and use the supplied grease on the clips (I tend to try to keep the grease away from the rotor edge):




Also put grease on the piston. It's OK with this grease to get it on the rubber boot:




And finally put some grease on the inside of the arms of the caliper. You put the grease on the wear marks:




You can now put your new pads on the Jeep. Put the bottom part in first, edge in the top, then slide the entire pad over until it's in contact with the rotor. Remember that the inside pads has the noise clip. You can now put the caliper back on. Since you compressed the piston it should easily go back in place. The mounting bolt nuts are spring loaded so you need to push against them as you slip the assembly in place. Next, torque (don't quote me, but the Factory Service Manual says 26 ft. lbs. rear, and 26 or 32 ft. lbs. front (different numbers in different parts of the manual)) the bolts back on to hold the caliper. I noticed that they had some kind of thread locker, so I added some blue Loctite:




Here's what it looks like with the new pads installed. In the future you can look for the slot in the pad and when you can't see it anymore you can figure it's time to replace the pads again:




Always finish up with Brakleen. Spray down the inside and outside surface of the rotors to remove any grease, dirt, fingerprints, etc. that you may have accidently gotten on the surface. Don't spray it on the outside surface of the pads as you'll wash off the grease you want to keep:




Put your wheel back on, torque it down and repeat on your other wheels. Here's my brake fluid level after replacing all of my pads. After taking this picture I added a little more to top it off:




After installing the brakes you need to burnish the pads. The Hawk instructions say to make 6 to 10 stops from 30-35 MPH applying moderate pressure, then make 2 to 3 hard stop from 40-45 MPH, and then allow the brake pads to cool for 15 minutes. I did 10 and 3.

Alaska-HWY JK

This is one of my weekend jobs, I just got mine in the mail today. Thats a differant aproach to it I've allways pulled the whole assembly off.

joe002

Yeah, you can pull the whole thing off too, but the FSM recommends the caliper mounting bolts so I figured I would try it that way first. Some minor benefits of removing the caliper mounting bolts is that they are the same size front and rear, your tools reach the caliper mounting bolts easier (though you do need some kind of skinny wrench to hold the inner nut when loosening/tightening), and torquing down the bolt is easy.

Give it a shot.

Alaska-HWY JK

I might try that if I can find a skinny wrench, the rotors shouldn't need to come off so why not. Did you find a torque for the caliper bolts, I didn't notice it in the write up.

joe002

You can break the bolts loose without the skinny wrench, and I didn't try but I bet you only need needle nose pliers to hold the nut when you are taking it out all of the way. When I put it on I held it till the bolt got tight and when I torqued it on I didn't need to hold the nut.

The torque settings are in the write up above the blue screw picture. I don’t know why they had different torque setting for front vs. rear (since they are the same bolt), but I did what they said anyway.

Alaska-HWY JK

Thanks, missed that.

joe002

I just re-checked the FSM and in one part of the manual they say 32 for the front and in another part they say 26 (same as the rear). Maybe the 32 is a misprint?

rubiconundrum

Thanks for the write-up and pics. I've got a set of ceramics that will go on in the morning. Just wish it wasn't going to be 99 degrees!

wasntborn2follow

Did you get any vibrations from not turning your rotors?

joe002

No problem. It was on the hot side here too - I worked in the shade of my garage.


Nope. No vibrations before or after.