How to Replace Front Brakes 1994-2003 Chevy S10 Pickup Part 1

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 20 plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly, that's going to save you time and money. Thank you, and enjoy the video.

This video is part one of a two part series. We're going to show you how to remove and replace the front brakes on this 2001 S10 pickup and this vehicle is a two wheel drive. In this video, we take you from removing the brakes to getting the new rotors ready for installation. Tools you'll need for this job are jack and jack stands, 19 mm socket and ratchet or your lug wrench, a 3/8ths Allen wrench, a combination wrench for some more leverage and you'll see what I mean, wire brush or some medium sandpaper to clean up some of the bolts, 27 mm socket and ratchet, pliers, a torque wrench, bearing grease and a hammer and block of wood to drive in the seal on the back of your rotor.

Okay, we'll speed up through the first step. Use your socket or your lug wrench and remove the lug nut caps and then remove the wheel center cap. If you don't have the benefit of air tools as I do here, you'll want to loosen your lug nuts while your tire's on the ground first, then raise and support the vehicle, remove the lug nuts and remove the wheel. Okay, so now a quick inspection of the brakes. You can see this pad actually looks pretty good up here. It's got pretty good life left on the outer. Little finger test of the rotor, pretty smooth on this side. Then looking at our inner pad, I'm turning the rotor right there, you can see this is the metal of the pad right here, its right against the rotor. Then you can see right down here the metal of the pad against the rotor and you can hear it.

If you feel on the backside, and I'll show you this after I take the disc off, there are significant grooves worn into this rotor. Next we'll remove the caliper and one thing I'm going to do is I'm going to use a large screwdriver to pry out here and then I'm going to remove two bolts; one here and then one right down here. Here is the body of our caliper and here is the caliper piston. Our brakes are so worn that our caliper piston is way out, so what I'm going to do is use a large screwdriver, put it in there, and I'm prying out. If you watch the piston, it actually starts moving back into the caliper. Looks like I've gotten them to move a little bit. This also helps you to get the calipers off, so you can see now that my pads are not right against the disc.

Next you'll want to remove the two caliper bolts with a 3/8ths Allen wrench inserted into the bolt. Then take a good sized wrench, put it onto the Allen wrench, give you some more leverage, start loosening up that bolt. I'm just going to fast forward here, because I use the Allen wrench and my other wrench for leverage and remove those two bolts that hold the calipers. With those two bolts out, the caliper comes off, our outside pad comes right out and our inside pad will come out. To remove the rotor, take a rag, wipe the grease out of here, and there is a cotter pin right here. If you're going to remove your rotor, then use a screwdriver and hammer and remove your dust cap. Ignore the wheel and tire that's still on there, this was just shot kind of out of order. Take a good pair of needle head pliers, if you can bend it up, pull it out. That's a good thing, sometimes what's easiest to do is just take the ends and bend them, break them off, and that makes it easy to pull out. This one's coming out fairly easily.

This truck has a 27 mm bolt and it's not uncommon to be able to put this on there and just undo it by hand. You don't tighten this bolt up significantly. Take the bolt off. The bearing assembly, the washer comes right off. Take off my rotor, the bearing stays put for now and we'll take that out so it doesn't fall out. Here's my new rotor and hub from 1A Auto with the race installed. I'm going to take a good amount of wheel bearing grease and coat the inside of the hub. I'm going to put a light coat on the race itself. You don't want to have globs on the race, you just want to have a nice, light coat on there. Then I'm going to take my bearing and I'm going to work grease right into the cracks where I can see the bends of the rollers. It's in the front side, we'll work it right into this crack right here and I'm going to kind of coat the roller; the roller's outside. Not quite so much, just a good coating. Then I'm going to take my finger and wipe out the inside here, don't want any big globs of grease in there.

Now drop my bearing right in. Now I'm going to take my seal and drop it all in like that. You can use a piece of wood or something like that, I'm just using a larger block of metal, larger bearing installer, just to make sure that's nice and evenly installed. I'll take the rotor, keep it from the plastic, flip it over, and then we're just going to take some grease and just like on the backside, pack it in there a little bit. Let a light coating stay on the race itself, but not a lot. We'll end this video here, and if you want to see the rest of putting this back together, reinstalling it, just search for the same video with part two.

We hope this helps you out, brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the internet. Please feel free to call us toll free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the internet and in person.