It was getting to be time to replace the brakes on the front of my Tacoma.  Although I had not had problems with my brakes, a number of people I know had problems with the rotors warping from heat.   I decided to try out a set of Power Slot Roters that had been treated by Diversified Cryogenics, aka: Frozen Rotors.  To go with the Frozen Rotors, I also got a set of Hawk Performance brake pads.

My truck sees mostly off-road use, so we also installed a set on Kris's truck, as it sees a lot of street use. We will be doing some follow up down the road to see how things are working out.

The first thing that I did before I replaced the old brakes was to go out and do a little test to see how much distance it took me to stop when traveling at about 55 mph.

I got up to a running start and then literally stood on the brake pedal when I reached a place that I had marked on the road with chalk.

 
These are Powerslot rotors that have undergone the Frozen Rotors treatment.
To go with them, I got a set of Hawk Performance brake pads.

Changing out the front rotors and pads is fairly straight forward.

Raise and safely support the vehicle.   Remove the wheel.

Remove the two bolts that hold the caliper in place.   Back them most of the way out but do not completely remove them yet.
Remove the spring clip.  Start by unsnapping the curved end as shown here by the yellow arrow.
You can push it down and it will come loose, allowing you to remove the entire piece.
With the clip gone, this is what it looks like.
Next, remove the wire clip, it simply pops out.

With the wire clip out, you can remove the pins that keep the brake pads in place.

The brake pads can now be removed.

With the brake pads out, you can finish removing the caliper bolts and move the caliper out of the way.  Don't let it hang by the brake line, use a piece of wire or something similar to hang them so the line is not being pulled on.

You will notice that the pads are not quite alike, so make sure that you compare the new to the old to make sure they go in the correct way!
With the caliper out of the way, the rotor just comes right off.   You may need to tap it with a rubber mallet to get it to pop free.
The new rotors are installed.   Note that there is an "R" on this rotor, as the new ones do have a left and right side.

The caliper is put back into place and tech new brake pads are put in.   The pins that hold the pads in place are installed and the snap pin that is put back on.

When you go to install the pads, you may find that you need to push the caliper pistons back in.   Open the master cylinder lid and make sure that when you press them back in that the fluid does not overflow!   Also make sure that you only do one side at a time, as if you press the piston on one side, the other sides piston can come out!   You Don't want it to come all the way out, then you have a real problem!   By doing the brakes on one side at a time it takes care of this problem.   We will look at this more in a minute.

The large clip is put back in place.
You can see that my old pads were almost down to the backing.

Now lets talk about pushing the pistons back into the caliper some.   With some vehicles, you can do this by hand, and other you can not.

First thing I did was to see where the fluid level in the master cylinder was.
It was fairly high, so I removed some of the fluid.

I was not able to push the pistons back in my hand, so I used two sets of pliers.  To do this, put the old pads in place and use them as a place for the pliers to grip.   Use the old pads, as you will scuff them up and you Don't want to do that to you new pads!

As you do this, keep an eye on the fluid level in the master cylinder, you Don't want to overflow it and make a mess!

When you are all finished, do one last check and make sure that the brake fluid is where it should be.

Here is a picture with the new brakes all installed.

We will be doing some follow up on the performance of these new brake rotors and pads in the future!
A shot of the boxes showing the part numbers for the Tacoma.
Back to the Tacoma Page
Back to the Home Page

7-10-2005