Brought to you by, 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the internet. Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money, repairing and maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my twenty plus years experience, restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this, to show you the correct way to install parts from 1A Auto.com. The right parts, installed correctly, that's going to save you time and money. Thank you, and enjoy the video.
In this video, we're going to replace the front brakes on this 1998 Chevy Venture, same as any 1997 to 2005 Venture of the Transport, Montana, and old Silhouette. The brakes on this vehicle actually are in good shape, so I show you the new brakes from 1A Auto but I actually just take off the old ones and put the old ones back on. Tools you'll need, flat blade screwdriver, both the regular and a large size, 19 millimeter socket and ratchet or your tire iron, jack and jack stands, a 15 millimeter socket, large C clamp and a torque wrench. OK, start by removing the wheel. Use a screwdriver to pry off your center cap. The wheel lug nuts are 19 millimeters. If you're using hand tools, you'll want to have the vehicle on the ground. Loosen up the lug nuts, then raise it up and secure it and remove them the rest of the way. I'm going to use air tools. OK. We'll speed it up here, while I take that tire off and I will use fast forward sometimes for this monotonous stuff.
OK, at this point you can actually inspect your brakes. OK, right here you can see, that's the rotor over there on the left as I turn it. OK, so this is your inner brake pad and right in the middle you can see is a little, I guess it's an indent in the pad. That's kind of your wear indicator. You can see there is quite a bit of life left on that pad. Then you can also see, here is your outer pad and this little tab here is your wear indicator. That actually is what makes a squeaking noise when it gets close to your disc. So, if you're inspecting, you want to inspect both sides because sometimes pads can wear unevenly, and while this side may look great, the other side may be worn. You always want to replace, if you're going to replace brakes on one side, you always replace them on the other side as well. Before we take it apart, we want to force the piston back in here, and you can do it one of two ways. You can take a nice big screwdriver like this, and slowly pry your caliper out. This is not the way I like to do it. I actually like to use a C clamp, which I'll show you later. But that at least will loosen up your brakes so that the caliper comes off easily.
Now you want to remove these two 15 millimeter bolts. Again, I'm going to use air tools, but they will come off easily enough with regular hand tools. OK, you want to make sure when you put these back in, clean them off and put just a little bit of bearing grease on them. Now your caliper comes right off. Put that up there. Here are your pads. So you can remove the pads by prying the inner ones right out. And these ones come right out. Now your rotors, these actually like I said, the brakes on this vehicle look pretty good. But if you want to replace them, easy enough. What I've done up here, is I actually used a wire tie and just secured my caliper up here because you don't want to have it hang free or fall and then possibly damage your brake hose. Now there are two more bolts, right here and here, and we'll remove those. Again, 15 millimeter. I'll use air tools, but they're easy enough to get off with any kind of tools. That allows this bracket to come off. You can leave the bolts right there if you want to, and then the disc comes right off. Like I said, brakes on this vehicle are the same, but I just want to show you, new parts from 1A Auto, are the exact same as the original. They're going to go on, fit correctly, with no problems. So, if you do need to replace your discs, you know you can get a good replacement set from 1A Auto.
OK and again, like I said, the pads on this vehicle, while they are not new by any means, they still got life left on them, so they're not really worth replacing. But if you were to replace them, you can see the new ones from 1A Auto are exactly the same as the old ones. They're going to fit in there with no problem. What I like to do actually, is before I install new ones, I use a wire brush and wire brush out these stainless steel slides here and just apply, just a little dab, a little bit of grease to the ends of the pads here, and that will keep everything sliding back and forth well. So, we put it back together here ... OK, this does go on the rotor side ... got to tighten these up preliminarily with the air gun ... Now I'm going to use the torque wrench to tighten them up to 80 foot pounds. OK, pads with just a little bit of grease on the ends. Your outer one has a little wear tab on it, which is this tab right here, and then the inner one. OK, now I'm going to pull my caliper down here. If you are putting new pads on, you want to force this cylinder all the way back into the caliper. I do that by using a big C clamp here. You probably should check your master cylinder.
Make sure that your fluid is not over, is not too full. This will force some fluid back into the master cylinder. You can see, as I tighten up, you can see this cylinder go back into the caliper. Now take your caliper and put it back down on here. Make sure that you get these boots in the right place. Here are my pins. See I cleaned them off and just applied a light coat of wheel bearing grease. Just going to use our air tools to start these bolts. Then we're going to torque them to 35 foot pounds. Now that doesn't sound like a lot you say, well if it's the brakes you should be tightening them more, but these don't really absorb any of the braking power. The caliper squeezes the rotor and then presses against this big bracket here. These bolts really just hold the caliper in place. So they don't have to be that tight. Switch to a shorter socket for up here. Put our tire back on.
OK, so I'm going to speed it up here. Put the lug nuts on by hand first, and then I'll use my air ratchet and just tighten them up a little bit preliminarily. Then lower the vehicle onto the ground, and I need a torque wrench to torque them to 100 foot pounds. You'll see I'll use a star pattern. So we go cross, cross, cross and cross. Another very important thing, before you drive your vehicle, make sure that you pump the brakes first. Start it up, pump the brakes four or five times. Then make sure the car holds itself in gear, and then do a stop from like five miles an hour, and then a stop from ten miles an hour before you go out and road test it. Because you need to work the fluid back into those calipers. And then finally, put the center cap back on and you should be all set.
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