I’ve been helping my sister with some car maintenance on her 2011 Subaru Outback. I helped her flush her brakes, and today I helped her replace her brake pads and rotors. She had never done anything like this before, so I mostly let her drive, with me watching her to make sure she did everything right.
My sister taking off the caliper assembly. Her Subaru had the bolts gunned down fairly hard. Whoever worked on her car last just ripped the bolts on as hard as they could.
One of the calipers and rotors completed. We just did a pad slap.
My sister cleaning the brackets off. If you’re going to do a pad slap, you need to clean your brackets up, regrease the slide pins, install new hardware, and grease the new hardware. You should also replace the rotors, or you’re wasting good money and good pads on rotors that will give you lower braking performance.
Compressing the piston. The 2011 Subaru Outback has regular old conventional calipers that you can compress with a C-Clamp. I recently helped a friend with his newer Honda Civic, which had electronic parking brakes. That was a pain.
A few short clips of my sister using a hammer to beat out a stuck rotor, and her torquing her wheels. Always torque your wheels.