Mormino123

should the front wheels turn freely, or have a little resistance before bedding them in???

Dave68

Chad is absolutely correct. In fact, I was just reading an auto shop magazine article about just that. I also wanted to comment about this statement:

Having someone pump the brake pedal is acceptable ONLY IF A BLOCK OF WOOD OR OTHER IMMOVABLE OBJECT IS PLACED SO AS TO LIMIT THE MASTER CYLINDER TRAVEL. Popular mechanics warned against pushing the pedal all the way to the floor. Over time, the master cylinder piston seal wears a "ridge" into the bore. Extending the piston and piston seal past the ridge can damage the seal. I know this from experience and advise all you DIYers to use either vacuum or a pressure bleeder. You can even gravity-bleed if you have the time, but avoid having to buy a new MC, do not allow anyone to pump the pedal to the floor!

Oh, and one more thing: Brake dust is nasty, hazardous stuff. Do NOT blow it off your brake components with compressed air. Use brake cleaner and wear gloves.

Johnz02Z06

Great job

nuts105

Glossing over a bit too quickly on the rear rotors, my opinion. In particular, I cannot see how you possibly can tighten the rear mounting caliper brackets with a torque wrench to 125 lb/ft. Since you can't move the rear hubs, you have to reach in there. No way you can get leverage of 125 lb unless you're standing underneath the car. What am I missing?
What I did do is use the breaker bar to tighten to what seemed like 125. That only barely worked because you can angle a breaker bar to more than 90 degrees, while having the car jacked up pretty high.
Now in hindsight, I don't think replacing the rear rotors is worth it, if you're not doing it for cosmetic purposes (not worth it in my book either). They wear 3 times slower than the front rotors, and at 100k miles, mine still had more than half of their life left. So for non/track driving, they should last the life of the car.

nuts105

Actually I take that back. It was worth it: to discover that the unitard at Bowling Green who was installing the brakes only put in emergency brake pads on one side. No wonder I always had slippage when flooring the pedal, because the one side that had the pads appears to have been permanently on partial lock-up. Because it wasn't the differential. That same retard also mounted the front rotors with right and left swapped.

slopoke17

Excellent write up. Don't need any brake work at this time but I'll definitely be saving this one!

bighank

With the rear rotors off I would adjust the parking brake star wheels so the rear drums just contact the brake hub as you put it on or take it off.
While they starwheels look self adjusting they really don't adjust for wear. The procedure pulling the brake lever going in reverse will not tighten up the starwheels. With the rear hubs off do the adjustment as the 125 ft lbs needed to remove the rear caliper mountings is really fun to remove.

bobeast

Just wanted to add my thanks for a great write-up. Just did my brakes today, and the pictures were invaluable.

Evil-Twin

Don't forget to pull the guide pins out. they see a lot of heat and the grease can easily dry out and cause the caliper to **** and stick.
So pull the guide pins out completely, clean off the old dried out grease and re-grease with specific guide pin grease.( very important )
Also the pads have little " ears " that fit into square guide slots. these should also be cleaned and greased using the same guide pin grease.
Bill aka ET

doctorde

Just read the entire thread and wish to thank all for the good advise. I'm sure I will have a better chance of accomplishing a good result as I will be new to performing a brake job. May be biting off more than I can chew by including the SS lines, but feel more confident now that I have gathered the forum info.

Any suggestions on how to proceed when the brake lines are being replaced at the same time?

I was thinking I would hang the old caliper while I was assembling the new brake lines to the new caliper. Once the rotor, bracket, caliper w/pads were back in place, I could then link up to the brake system with the other end of the brake line. Please advise if there is a better way.

Is there a good way to plug the line when I remove the old rubber line?
Not sure how fast fluid will drain and do not want MC to go dry while I'm trying to attach the new line. Does it help if I replace the cap on the MC before I open the brake line?

While I'm new to all this, I wish to thank DeeGee for the time and effort it takes to post this excellent advise.

If possible I will try to pay back with pictures, of how my job goes. This forum is Fantastic!

3boystoys

Might want to add adjusting the E-brake to make it complete.

Macleod52

How do you properly bed in the brakes if you aren't close to a stretch of road where you can get up to speed and stop? I mean I have roads around here but they are either residential or main streets with lots of cars so getting up to speed and braking 20 times is going to be a little difficult without pissing people off.

amlarson2001

I think it would take me longer to read this than to replace all the brake on the car. Im sure its a good write up.

150kWh

Maybe a warehouse access road? If you weren't in such a rough part of the world I'd suggest waiting til after midnight.. Maybe you could have a buddy haul the car to the country, or to a mall parking lot in Schaumburg. ... I plan to turn on my hazards at 11pm and just drive like an idiot in a residential neighborhood.

I'm usually suspicious whether anyone besides a Corvette enthusiast or track racer would actually stop a full 20 times. I'm guessing most brake job places do it about 5-6 times and tell you "take it easy the first couple days". If any grey beards have expert advice re bedding brakes, I'm all ears. Is this less critical for old rotors, or does that make any difference? EDIT: Seat your brakes. This is a great read, seems legit: http://www.stoptech.com/technical-su...nd-other-myths /end EDIT

Suggestion: one post talked about rotors, whether to keep or replace, with a manual mil thickness. Anyone know what are those thicknesses per year for c5 stock brakes?

Macleod52

I have plenty of area's where I could do this (and I didn't really think about night time) but they are all a good 5-15min drive away. So If it's okay to come to a few full stops before doing the 20 then I should be fine, but the way I read it is you want to do the initial 20 prior to doing any driving where you'd come to a complete stop.

150kWh

Yeah, well obviously you need to own your own race track before attempting something so rare and uncommon as a brake job ...

Looks like we were writing at the exact same time. I added a link that I thought was helpful. It talks about not coming to a complete stop--again, really only possible if you live on a race track or in the back woods. There's got to be some middle ground for where the majority of humanity lives now a days..

My crude understanding is that the two goals of bedding the brake pads are to expose the abrasive material within the pad, and to get the ideal level of coating of pad material onto the disc. To do it perfectly requires getting it up to temperature then letting it cool down without the pad touching the disc. I guess that means driving along without any braking at all for 10-15 minutes... or downshifting until you're crawling in first then stop the car quickly & make a phone call. (?) Until they're bedded/seated, the pads won't brake very well. So instructions want you to play it safe and start from 30 to 5, working up to 60 to 5 (or so), 10 total times. I guess the first few times is to burn off some resin, which might make a big difference. If you have racing pads, I guess you have to go even faster than that.. so presumably "normal" or econobox "street use" low temperature pads need less reps. Not stopping helps get the timing right, and helps it get up to temperature. The better pads have got to get pretty darn hot.

Any tips or tricks on how normal DIY people seat their brakes? Do most brake job places just do an initial resin burn off, or do they stop after a few (4-5) bedding slow downs? And where do OEM corvette pads sit on the spectrum from "low temperature normal pads" to "high temp race pads"?

MGuns86

I agree the bracket bolts were insanely tight. On the front I turned the wheel out and was able to use a breaker bar and an extension pipe over the breaker bar and they came loose immediately. On the rear, I used the breaker Bar again and this time leveraged the pipe under the rear end and over the top of breaker bar and they too came loose immediately. I have pictures of where and how I did it if anyone is interested. Like I said once I figured out how to use the breaker bar and extension the bolts came right out.

mpride

I'd be interested in seeing the pics.

MGuns86

I posted the pictures in my Garage. If you go to MGuns86 you'll see the pictures of how I removed the bolts. I'm not sure how to post them so everyone can see them.

DeeGee

Glad to see my post is still helping out