How to Replace Front Brakes 2000-04 Ford Focus

Hey, friends! It's Len, here at 1A Auto. Today, I'm working on a 2001 Ford Focus, and I'm going to show you how to do a front brake job. It's going to be a very easy job, and I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it.

If you need these or any other parts, you can always check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.

Okay, friends. So, we've got the vehicle supported under all its lift points. We're going to bring the vehicle up a little bit. Try to keep the wheels so it's just barely touching the ground. We're going to break free the lug nuts. 19 millimeter. If you're going to be using an airgun, you really shouldn't have to do this. But if you're using a ratchet, you want to do it with the wheels still touching the ground.

Now that they're loose, we can raise the vehicle, and we'll get busy.

So, here we go. Time to get the wheel off. Use your ratchet, use your airgun, use your 19. Whatever you're doing.

Let me take off the last one. I'm going to hold the wheel. It's nice and corroded on there. Let's put one of these lug nuts back on. I'm just going to give this a little bonk, and see if we can get it to break free. Feels like a no.

Okay, something else that we can try doing is grab a pry bar, or you can use a rubber mallet if you wanted to. I use a pry bar, and I just come from the back side, pry up against the lower control arm and the wheel, use a little leverage, break it free. Easy-peasy. Some people might try to use a hammer, but you could dent your wheel. A rubber mallet could work.

All right, we removed the wheel. Now we have a clear view of what we're working on.

Okay, so what we're going to do now is we're going to take the caliper bolts out. We've got one bolt right there, and one down here. Slider bolts. It's a seven millimeter Allen head. It looks something like that, okay?

Slider bolt number two. Same as the first. You don't have to worry about mixing them up.

You can see that there's a little clip right here. The way that this clip works is you actually have to grab this side and draw it out and away from the caliper right there, okay? So, grab wherever you need to. Just try to go like that. Do the same for the other side.

Generally speaking, if you weren't replacing the calipers, which I am, you would want to push back the caliper first before you go ahead and move any further than this. The way to do that would be to loosen up your bleeder screw, which should be back here. This one is broken, which is the reason why I'm replacing it. Have a little collection bucket down there, or some sort of recycling receptacle for your fluid, because fluid will come out. Once you have that open, and you have something to catch your fluid, you can just stick your pry bar right in between here, which is your caliper and your rotor, or your pad, wherever you can get it in between. Pry it, and it should push back your caliper piston. Once you get it back far enough that you can stick your pry bar in the back side, do that. You want the piston pushed all the way, as far as it can go in. Compressed.

Once that's done, all you would do is move forward to the point that I'm at now. Take your pry bar, and take that off. Easy-peasy. Now we're going to hang this aside, and we can move along. So, let's hang this caliper. I like to just do something like that. You can pull your brake hose off of the strap if you need to. It's just the little thing right there. Easy-peasy. That will give you a little bit more slack.

I'm going to replace the brake hose and the caliper. But as for right now, let's keep going with what we're doing.

Next, what I'm going to do is I'm going to have my lug nut on here a little bit. I want plenty of room so the rotor can move around. And I'm just going to give this a bonk.

I'm replacing this rotor, so I'm not worried about the braking surface. If for some reason you're just taking your rotors off, for some reason, or you just want to look at them, I don't really know why, you don't want to damage your braking surface. But if you're replacing them like I am, you're replacing your pads like I am, and maybe you're doing your calipers, just do it pretty much the way I am, all right?

I'm just going to bonk right here, as far out from the hub as I can. I want to stay away from these studs. The reason for that is because if I damage the studs, I have to buy myself a new barring.

This is on so it doesn't come off and hurt me. My safety glasses and my hand protection is on. I'm going to give it a bonk.

Bonk! Bonk! Bonk! There we are. That's nice and freed up. Get our lug nut back off of here. There's our rotor. It's quality. We'll set this aside. We can move along.

Let's get these pads out of here. We can take a look at what they look like. This one right here, completely missing all of its pad material. That's what it should look like, okay?

To get it out, all I'm going to do ... I'm going to pull this up over that. I'll pull this one up over this, just like that. I'm going to give this side a bonk. There we are. It's broken free. We'll set this aside.

Inner pad, just grip it, and pull it right out. This is where the piston rides.

If you're not replacing your caliper, you already have it pushed back hopefully at this point, just take a peek. Make sure you don't see any fluid coming out from around here. If you see any fluid coming out, you need to replace your caliper.

So, a hub surface like this is in very bad condition. There's large chunks right here. If you don't clean this up and you put a new rotor on there, it's not going to be a very level surface for the rotor to sit on. You're going to find that you have a brake pulsation, or even a steering shake just driving down the road, because it's so bad.

So, what you would want to do is you could use a tool like this. It's available at 1aauto.com. Just get a little wheel for it, a little sanding disk. Safety glasses, hand protection, of course. Just go ahead. You can go ahead and clean it up, just like that. Okay? Or you can do something else, like another thing you can do is just use a wire brush. Get it nice and clean.

All right, I'd say we got that pretty clean. Now we can move ahead.

So, here we are, friends. A quick product comparison for you.

Over here, we have our original parts off of our 2001 Ford Focus. We just removed them. Over here, we have our brand new quality 1A Auto parts. You can visually see the difference between the two. These are obviously worn. They're plain old rotors. They have a lot of worn spots on them. That's going to create a brake pulsation. It's definitely time to get rid of these. And of course, we have our brake pads here. These are the original ones that we just took off. This one, as you can tell, might be missing a little bit of something. I don't know if this camera shows it or not, but yeah.

So, we'll just match them up. As you can tell, the metal side is the exact same size. It's got the clips. This is your inner pad. This is your outer pad. It should have this little thing on there. It came off when we removed it. Your brand new one comes with it. Awesome.

We'll compare the rotors real quick right next to each other. They've got the same height here, okay? Super important. We'll turn them over. You want to make sure that has the same depth. You can tell that just by turning it over and doing this. That looks good. Now we'll just double check the diameter. It's perfect.

We've got four lug holes. Four lug holes on the old one. And even better than that, we have drilled and slotted rotors. That's great for heat and dust dissipation. Very important. This is going to help keep these rotors going for a long, long time. And in here, you have your venting. This is for airflow. The drilled areas go right through and go into the venting area. Super important. It's going to blow all the dust out of there, and cool down your rotors for you, so you won't have your rotors warping on you.

I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a quality part to install into the vehicle. So, I'm going to go ahead and do it.

If you need these or any other part, you can always check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.

Okay, so from this point on, we're going to be replacing everything we took off with brand new parts. I just want to specify that.

Before we go ahead and mount our rotor on here, I'm going to put on a little bit of copper never-seize. It's going to be important because it's going to help us get the rotor off later on down the line, in case we ever have to take the rotor off to do maybe another brake job. Just like that. Nothing too crazy, okay?

Now we're going to grab our rotor. We're going to have a little bit of parts cleaner on a rag. We're going to clean it off, and we can install it onto the hub.

Parts cleaner on the rag directly. We're just going to clean off the rotor and braking surface. This is just going to get off any film that might have been on there from packaging, and shipping, and all of that, to make sure that it doesn't collect any moisture.

That looks pretty great. I can't wait to install it. Let's do it.

So, here we go. Slide it up on here, just like this. I'm going to take one of my lug nuts. Just going to put it like that. That's going to make it so my rotor can't move around too much. I don't want any rust to make its way in between the rotor and the hub. Super important. You get anything in between there, your rotor is going to be off-kilter, you're going to have a brake pulsation. Okay? Let's do it right.

Let's keep rolling. Now what we're going to do, we're going to go ahead and start replacing the caliper and the flex hose. Maybe you have to, maybe you don't. I'm going to be doing it for this particular vehicle. If you're not, all you're going to do is take your new pads, you're going to take your caliper like this. We can clean out these right here. Just take out these boots, clean up in there. Same thing on this side. Clean up inside there. Make sure you get all your crud out of there, just like that. Once these are clean, you can lube them, and you'll have your sliders. Then you'll just take your new pads, set them all up on there. I'm going to replace all this for my video. So, yeah, keep watching.

We have our 11 millimeter flare-head wrench. It goes right on here, okay? 11 millimeter. I'm going to take a little bit of penetrant spray. Spray that on there, let it do its job for a second. Probably the longer the better. Maybe I should have sprayed it earlier. I'm just going to see if I can get this to break free.

Looks like not so much. I'm bending the bracket, so I'm going to try something a little different here.

Okay, so I'm going to take my 11 millimeter, I'm going to try to loosen this up. When I try to loosen it, it's just going to bend this bracket a little bit. So, I'm going to take some locking pliers.

I'm replacing this flex hose. That's the reason for doing this. If you're not replacing the flex hose, you do not need to touch this.

There we are. We'll just get it moving a little bit. I like to just keep going back and forth. Now I'm just going to make sure it's snug, and we can move along.

Okay, so now it's time to prep our caliper. These right here are the caliper sliders. They need to be able to slide freely. They should be greased. This doesn't feel like it has any grease on it yet. So, it's ready to be prepped.

If you're using your old calipers, and these are rusted or rotted, you're going to want to make sure that you clean them up so they're a nice smooth surface. And then, of course, put some lube.

I'll show you what I'm talking about. I have a little bit of caliper grease here, okay? All you're going to do is try to get a little bit right in that boot right there. You can even put it directly on the slider if you want. It's completely up to you. It might be a little bit easier to do it on the slider. But then, of course, you're going to get it all over your hands. So, that's something to think about.

So, I'll just leave that like that.

Now I'm going to take these, and drive them through. Get it slipping. Sounds good. Nice and lubed. The same thing for this one. Either way, I guess we get the grease all over our hands. No avoiding that. Cool.

Next thing you want to do, take some more of your caliper grease. First I'm going to clean this off. Take some more of your caliper grease. You're going to go right around the piston right here. This is the muscle of the caliper. When you step on your brake, it forces fluid into this channel right here, in which turn pushes out this piston. It squeezes the pad up against the rotor. Once the inner pad is hitting against the rotor, it makes the caliper slide a little bit on these sliders, and then it presses the outer pad against your rotor. It causes friction. It makes your vehicle stop.

I'm going to put some right along here. The reason why I'm putting this on there: it's going to help with vibration dampening and noise reduction. It's kind of like a little buffer, we'll say.

Some people will say you could just put the grease all over the whole back of the pad. I don't personally think that you need to do that. The reason for that is because that's just more area for dirt and crud to get stuck onto there. So, I don't need that.

Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take these little ears. I'm going to slide them in. Sometimes you just have to squeeze them a little bit and press. There we are.

Make sure you don't get any grease on your friction material if you can avoid it. If you do, just use some parts cleaner.

We've got our other pad, this one right here. It's just going to go right on here, okay?

I'll show you what we're doing. Take the slider, push those back so they're ready. The threaded areas are going to screw into here, so you want to make sure that you have these sliders pushed in, okay? Take our outer pad. I'm just going to get it on here. Put that down on my cart for a second. Just like that. Pull up on that bar. Take our caliper, I'm just going to slide it right over. There we are.

Now, this clip is going to be a little difficult. You're going to want to make sure you're wearing your safety glasses, of course. Take a pry bar, or if you need to use a screwdriver. Whatever you need to do. You do you, boo-boo. Just going to take this, bring it so it comes up and over that way, and it sits inside this channel right here. Once it's in that channel, you should have an ear up against the back side of your hub assembly ... Sorry, your knuckle assembly. And you should have one down here. That locks your caliper in. It's really not going anywhere at this point.

We still have to tighten these up, your caliper sliders on the back side. I'm going to grab my tool. I have a seven millimeter Allen head. I'm going to use that to tighten this down.

We'll leave that like that for a second. I'll go back to tightening that up in one second. I just want to make sure that I have this one started as well, so I can still move the caliper around if I need to.

All right, we've got both of them started. Tighten that up. That's nice and tight. Tight, booyah! We can move ahead.

So, this little rubber plug right here? You're just going to take this, pop it right out of there. You can reuse this. That's going to go right on your bleeder screw when we're done. Just a little bleeder screw cover. We'll set it aside.

I've got my flex hose. Brand new. I'm just going to take it, I'm going to thread it right into the caliper. There we are. Okay, it feels like it stopped.

I'm going to use my 17 millimeter wrench. It feels like it's pretty snug. Perfect.

Now what we're going to do, we're going to grab a collection bucket. We'll have it underneath us. We're going to loosen this up with our 11 millimeter. We already broke it free. This is a little clip right here. This just slides into the slot on the flex hose. So, the flex hose is going to sit in here like this; and then the clip that I just indicated is going to sit in that slot. This line right here screws up into this once it's in. Then we're going to take this, and slide it right in there.

So, right here is a clip. We're just going to grab some pliers, and try to grab onto that clip. Wiggle it. It should want to pull right out. I'll show you what it looks like here. Come on, baby. Almost there. Oh, yeah!

So, that's what the clip looks like, okay? Just a U. It slides right in like this, and it sits inside the groove. Just like that.

Okay, so you want to make sure you have everything ready now. We've got our bucket under there. Once we break this line free, fluid is going to start coming out due to gravity. As the fluid comes out, it's going to go into the collection receptacle down there.

You don't want to wait too long having this open, because if you lose all the fluid inside your master cylinder, you're going to end up having some brake problems. You're going to have to bleed it out. It's a pain in the butt.

So, here we go. I'm going to take my 11 millimeter, and try to turn this out. Yeah, we've got some brake fluid coming out. You want to make sure you're wearing hand protection, eye protection. You don't want this stuff on your skin, especially in your eyes. If you do happen to get it on either, make sure you wash it as soon as possible.

Okay, we'll get this out of the way. Here we have our line. You can check the threads. It looks good. Let me get this lined up. Now I'm going to try to turn this in. Hopefully, I can get it started fairly quickly here. Okay, it's threading in nice and easy. That's always nice.

Snug it up. Perfect. If you happen to have any brake fluid on your hands, now is the time to get it off. At this point, we're not in much of a rush.

I'd say we're clean enough. We've got our clip. This just slides right in, and it's going to sit in that slot that I showed you before. You can give it a couple bonks. It's nice and locked in. That line is not going anywhere. We'll take our hose, just going to bring it over. It's going to slide right into this bracket right there. There we are.

Now we're clear to pump up the brakes and bleed out the caliper.

Okay, now that we have this side together, you're going to go over and do the same to the other side of the vehicle, right? And then you're going to go ahead and check your master cylinder fluid. Your master cylinder is right here. You want to top that off with fluid. Make sure it's nice and full, and then you're going to go ahead and start bleeding the brakes.

You can watch the video on how to do that. Basically, you're just going to pump up the brake, give it like three to five nice slow pumps, let it sit for a second. You can come out here, open up this bleeder screw. It's an eight millimeter. Let it trickle out. You want to see no more air bubbles coming out. When you have regular, just solid fluid, close it up. Go ahead and pump it again. It's always good if you have an extra person. You can have somebody in there doing the pumping, holding the brake pedal for you while you open it. Okay? There's a bleed sequence for that. Or you can go on 1aauto.com, and get the self-bleeding kit, and watch the video on that. It's very simple.

So, let's continue. I'm going to use my eight millimeter. I'm going to loosen up this bleeder screw. Here we are. We're going to let it do its thing for a second here. The fluid is going to take a little while because the ... We replaced the flex hose in the caliper, of course. So, it could take a minute for the fluid to start coming out. If you have a vacuum bleeder, you could help it along with that. Not everybody has access to that, so I'm not going to worry about it for this video.

There we go. So, we've got the fluid trickling out of here. If you shake the hose around a little bit, sometimes you can get a little extra air. And also, give the caliper a couple little bonks.

So, this is called gravity bleeding, at this point. I would say we've got a pretty good trickle going. We can go ahead and close this up. And at this point, you would want to continue with a regular bleed.

Now that we've got this bled, I'm just going to clean it off a little bit. I've got my little boot, right? We took this out of the hole in the caliper. I'm just going to slide it over that. That covers up the inside hole in there. It prevents moisture from getting in and freezing up. What happens is moisture gets in, it starts corroding in between the bleeder screw and the caliper. You go to open up your caliper bleeder, and it breaks. So, that's just going to help protect it. We're clear to move along.

Let's take off that stabilizing lug nut that we threw on there. Okay. We'll grab our wheel. Bring it over. Just going to lift it right up with our leg. Use our ab muscles. Hold the wheel, put our lug nut back on here. I'm going to grab the other three.

Time to go ahead and tighten up these lug nuts. 100 foot-pounds. We're going to go in a crisscross pattern, never around in a circle.

Let's do it again.

Tight.

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