How to Replace Brake Kit 1998-2004 GMC S-15 Sonoma

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In this video, I'm going to show you how to do a front brake job on this 2003 GMC Sonoma. This truck has perfectly good brakes, so you don't see me replacing them, but I do just take them apart and put them back together so you can understand how to get the new parts from 1A Auto and install them correctly. Brake job on this truck is the same as any GMC, the Sonoma S15 pickup or the Jimmy as well as the Chevy S10 pickup and blazer. Tools you'll need are jack and jack stands, 18 mm and 19 mm sockets, ratchet handle, and a pipe or breakup bar. You'll need those because you'll probably need some extra leverage on some of those bolts. An 18 mm wrench with an additional wrench and you'll see how I use that, a large C-clamp, and a new pattern rotary kit available from 1AAuto.com, as well as a large flat blade screw driver.

Start by raising and removing the wheel entire. If you don't have access to impact tools, you'll want to loosen the lug nuts with the tire on the ground. Then raise it and support it with the jack stand and they can remove the lug nuts and remove the wheel entire. With the wheel off, you can check the condition of your brakes. The rotor, you want to just check the service. Run your back of your fingernail up along it. If you don't feel any deep grooves, that's what you want. You can see that there's still a good lip on this rotor, so we know the rotor is still plenty wide enough. You can look here. If you look back in here, you can see there's the pad and you can see there's plenty of life left in the pad, so these brakes are in good shape, but I'm going to show you how to take them apart and put them back together. Next thing you want to do is take the cap off, which you remove, these two bolts here. Before you remove those bolts, what you can do is loosen the caliper up from the pads and rotor, take a large screw driver and put it right into this hole and pry out slowly and that forces the pistons back into the caliper. These bolts are 18 mm.

I'll speed it up. You can see it takes some force to get them going, but it shouldn't take too much. They shouldn't be on there too tight. I'm just using the regular size ratchet and removing those. Now the caliper comes right on off and then put it right up here. Here are your pads. They should just kind of pull right out. Screwdriver, pry this back one out. You can see right here this is kind of a wear indicator. Plenty of life left in that pad. The pad comes out. If you need to remove and replace your rotor, you'll need to remove this caliper bracket, which is two more bolts, one there and then one up there. These bolts are 19 mm as well. I'm going to use my ratchet and put a piece of pipe on here. It's going to help me get some more leverage. This one's so close to the control arm, you'll have to use a wrench, so I put my 18 mm wrench on there, put another wrench on here like that, gives me more leverage. That should loosen up. Speed it up here again. After I get them loose, I remove those two bolts the rest of the way. I take the bracket off. I lift that bracket off and the rotor comes right off and again this one is in good shape so we can put it back on. Put this back and you put it between the rotor and your steering knuckle. Put the bolt back in at that top one, the bottom one in, start it up.

Again speed it up here as I just thread those bolts in and get them preliminarily tightened up. Since you can't get a conventional torque wrench on there, what I do is get it about as tight as you can with your first wrench and hook your second wrench on here and just probably pull it another 16th or a turn or so. The bottom one, we want to tighten it to 100-ft pounds. You want to reset the pistons in your caliper. What I've done is I've put my old pad back in there on the inside and then I have a C-clamp. I'll tighten up this C-clamp and that will force the pistons back into the caliper. Then I can remove the C-clamp. Remove the pad and you can see my pistons here are back down into the caliper. I'm going to put my pads back in. They have these little metal tabs on them that have to be there. That's how they slide back and forth in the cast iron. Front ones, same thing. You can see pads are in. You want to make sure the pads can move back and forth nice and freely.

Now let's take a caliper and you want to push the boots in and put it down that way. Then pull this boot down here and put down in place. Make sure these bolts are nice and clean. A little light coating of grease on them. They go right in. Speed it up here as we just thread those bolts in. Then you want to torque these to about 55-ft pounds. Speed it up against as we mount that wheel entire. Then you thread the lug nuts on by hand first, make sure you don't cross thread them. Then we'll use an impact wrench, just tighten them up preliminarily. Lower the vehicle down on the ground and torque them to 100 foot pounds, using a star pattern as you're tightening them. Then most importantly, before you road test your car, make sure you pump your brakes a bunch. That will reset the pistons into the right spot. You can test stop at 5-10 miles an hour, and then go out on the road.

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