How to Replace Rear Brakes 2004-08 Ford F150

Okay friends, one of the first things you need to do is safely raise and support your vehicle so your wheels is off the ground. Once you've done that, continue on by using a small pry bar or even a screwdriver. We're gonna find the area on this little plate that we can remove it. You can see there's a little cutout and that's all you do. Use your 21-millimeter socket and remove all six lug nuts.

Remove your wheel. If your brake caliper looks like this, obviously, you're gonna wanna clean it down before you proceed. If you were to look on the inside area where the pads/the bracket is right there, you're gonna be able to see the bolts for the slider coming through. I like to try to spray that down on both of them, just kind of as a little helped me out in the long run type of deal. And I'll get this side right there using a 10-millimeter. Let's see if we can get these to break free. There's one. I'm gonna leave it in there just like that. Start the other one the same way. Let's get these mounting bolts right out of here.

Now, we're gonna be replacing this caliper, but if you're not replacing the caliper, you don't necessarily need to remove it from the vehicle. Moving along, you can use your small pry bar. If you were to come right along your caliper and the bracket, you could try to pry a little bit. But what you're gonna see is on the outer pad, it has a little piton that's supposed to hold it from coming off. First, I'm gonna push right on this area. That's a little clip that holds the pad from moving. Then I'll use my pry bar to try to pry this away from the vehicle. Awesome. Once you have your caliper completely drained and as much of the brake fluid off your hands as possible so you don't contaminate your pads, we're gonna take our pry bar right here. And I'm just gonna try to go right in between this area here and here.

And you can see that there's a little piton and that should go through that hole for the pad. Once you get it so it's pulled out of the hole, you should be able to lift out on the pad. There's the piton, there's the hole. Do the same on the other side, and then slide the pad out. We'll do the same for this one. You just kind of grab it, wiggle it. And it should slide right out. These little pitons fit right inside that hole on the piston. Set that aside. With the new caliper, what I like to do is I always try to peel this boot back and push on the slider so that I can get to this portion right here.

We want to make sure that this is well lubricated. The reason for that is because, well, lubrication needs to be in there. Otherwise, moisture can get in, and then it's gonna seize this up and then your caliper won't function properly. We'll get both of these up and ready. Now, we're just gonna take some nice caliper grease here. And we're just going to lubricate the slider a little bit. You don't have to put very much on this area because as you push it in, you're gonna notice that it kind of just pushes it away. But while I'm doing that, I'm also gonna come on the inside of this slider boot. Go like that. And on the inside here, I like to put quite a bit. Make sure it's nice and lubricated right down inside there.

Take your slider, wiggle it, push it on in there. It's gonna start pushing through, just take your finger, go along the lip like that, and then make sure the boot's completely situated. That looks great. I'm gonna get the rest of the lubricant that wasn't used all off of there, and why not just put it on this one? Let me slide that in just a teeny bit. Lubricate the inside of this boot as well, especially up along this area on the inside. That's gonna be one of the main areas to make sure you have lubricant. Go ahead and slide that in all the way up, bring it back and forth. That's gonna work in the grease. That's awesome. Well, now we can't stop just there. We're gonna continue on with that lubricant and we're gonna go right along the piston here.

The reason why we're going along the piston and these ears right along here is to help with vibration dampening and noise reduction. Those look great. At this point, the caliper is pretty much prepped. I just like to kind of clean up whatever mess I might have on there. Make it neat and tidy. So, now that we have the caliber cleaned and prepped, we're gonna continue on by cleaning and prepping this area where the caliper needs to mount to. If you were to look along this area, you're gonna see that there's a metal tin. We're going to have to replace this, or at least clean it up.

If you take a pry bar and a hammer, usually you can get them to break free, just pry it right off of there. If you look inside here, a lot of times you're gonna see rust and build up. If you see rust and build up in here, more than likely, you're also gonna have it on this. So, of course, you're gonna need to clean this area up. We'll do the same to both. Looking all along here, I can see a whole bunch of raised areas. This is a lot of rot build-up. Like I said, that's gonna cause an issue with braking so we need to make sure we get it off there.

If for some reason you have a hard time getting this off and you don't think that you can get it because your hammers just keeps bonking up against the rotor, it shouldn't be too much of an issue, you could just remove the rotor. And now you have a nice, clear area to be able to do anything you need. Sometimes trying to clean up this area with the hammer and the little chisel, you're gonna get off the majority of it, but it's not gonna be nice and smooth and clean. It needs to be. You can get yourself one of these tools with the little sand dIsk and try to clean it up as much as possible, or even just use nice sanding block.

So, we've got this area nice and cleaned up on both of them. That's great. Now, assuming you took your rotor off, if you were to look behind it, you're probably gonna see a whole big mess at this point. There's probably going to be a lot of rust and everything inside this area. You wanna make sure you get out as much of that as possible, because if any of it falls out and just kind of comes inside the rotor, you're obviously gonna hear a brake noise. While we're in here cleaning this up, I always like to spray down this area right here. That's the area where your e-brake is gonna pivot from the backside and it should spread the e-brake shoes. If it doesn't pivot here, obviously you're gonna have an issue.

Continuing on, it's time to clean up the hub area of the axle, where the rotor's gonna ride. Looking at the hub area of your axle, you can see where it's going to go into the differential. Make sure you don't see any fluid coming out of here. If you do, your differential seal's leaking right there. Once you have this hub area cleaned up as much as possible, I always like to use a little bit of copper never-seize. Now, using a little bit of the caliper grease, we're gonna coat the area where those tins are gonna ride. I always like to put this on there. It's gonna help with rust and everything. You don't want any more rust building up under there.

And, of course, the inner edges there. Now we're gonna put on our tins. You'll notice that they're both the same. You look at the backside, you've got the slot where this is gonna go. Go ahead and slide it on over that. If for some reason it just doesn't wanna fit on there, you can use a small hammer and just help it along. Do the same to the other one.

Before you go ahead and put your brand new rotor on the vehicle, you always wanna make sure you clean it down first. It's gonna come with a nice coating on it that's gonna help prevent rust or anything else. So, a little bit of parts cleaner, a nice clean rag, clean down those braking surfaces. You're gonna notice on the front side, you have a braking surface. On the rear side, you're gonna have your braking surface here, but you also need to pay attention to this area along there, which is where the e-brake is gonna be. Clean down all that area.

That's perfect. Let's get it on the truck. Before we go ahead and get the rotor on there, you wamma inspect your e-brake adjuster. Make sure it's nice and clean and spray it down with some penetrant so you can adjust it. Next, we're gonna grab our rotor, put it on there. Test the e-brake to make sure that the e-brake shoes hold up against the rotor. Now taking your nice rotor, let's go ahead and get it up on here. Should just slide right on. There we are. Give it a little spin, make sure it's not dragging on those e-brake shoes.

You also wanna test your e-brake real quick just to make sure that it is actually gonna grab the way that it should. If it doesn't, you need to adjust it a little bit. Looking at our old pads compared to our new pad, what you're probably gonna notice inside your kit is that it has a pad that looks like this with a little piton. One's gonna be on this side and the other one will be on the other side. Just compare it to your original pads that way there you know which side you're dealing with. Now that we've figured that out, let's get the caliper off of here. We'll set it right up top there where we can easily get to it.

You're gonna start by installing your inner pad. Take the inner pad with the three prongs and go ahead and put it right inside that caliper piston. Should slide right in. There we are. As you start sliding this in, you wanna pay attention to those ears right here and then, of course, the pitons. Those pitons need to line up with the holes and the ears will hold it against. There we are. Double-check to make sure it's seated completely. If it looks like it's kind of off at an angle, you probably just don't have your piton inside the hole there. This looks great.

Now we're gonna continue on by installing the caliper, starting with the bottom area first because if you look at the outer pad, you'll see that it has the double ear. Slide that right over both sides of the bracket area there, and then be careful for your slider. Slider area right here needs to be pushed so it's all the way facing towards the inside of the vehicle as much as possible. Slide it right down on and over, and then give it a nice loving bonk. And it should pretty much lock in. Now we're gonna put in our slider bolts. Now that we have both of our slider bolts, I'll call it your prerogative if you wanna add a little bit of thread locker. Once you've done whatever you needed to do, go ahead and slide them both in and then start them both in by hand. That's super important. Once they're both started, go ahead and bottom them out and then we'll torque them to manufacturer specifications.

Let's talk these caliper slider bolts to 22 foot pounds. Now, it's time to get our wheel back up on here. We're gonna start on all of our lug nuts. We'll bottom them out and then we'll torque them to 150 foot pounds. Let's get these torqued to 150 foot pounds. Now that we have them all torque, it's important to make sure you get your cover back on there. There you are. Okay, take it for a road test.