Front Brakes rotors and pads removal and lubrication

Note, if your getting under a vehicle always use jack stands, and even if your not its best to use them, if you don't have any place your tire/wheel under the car just in case.

After reading about uneven wear on the front pads I decided to lubricate my front caliper pins and pad guides to try and prevent this from happening to my mirage down the line and get loads of miles from my pads.

1) Loosen all lug nuts while car is on the ground
2) Jack and support cars weight with jack stand
3) Remove tire

4) Located these two 14MM bolts that retain the caliper to the caliper anchor.

Attachment 2317

5) Break loose upper and lower 14MM bolts *break loose both before unbolting

These spin counter clock wise of course, and if your facing the caliper from different angles its easy to mix it up, verify with your ratchet/wrench that your going counter clock wise. I used a 3/8 ratchet 6 PT 14MM, a 3'' extension would be nice for the upper bolts because the brake line needs to me pushed aside to allow the socket to fit. In the above picture you can see the brake line tightly against the socket.

Attachment 2318

Picture of lower bolt being broken loose

Attachment 2319

This is what my lower bolt looked like, awful! Already had some salt or corrosion get into the threads. Unfortunately you don't want to use anti seize here, I used what I used for the pins "Silglyde". Hopefully this will stop further corrosion and hassle.

6) Remove caliper anchor bolts and wiggle the caliper off carefully. Secure caliper to the top of the front strut assemble so it does not dangle from the brake line. Note. Put caliper anchor bolts on a clean surface, they are greasy dirt magnets and you don't want dirt on them.

7) Remove the rotor, if your lucky it will slide off, there is threaded holes to put a long 10MM bolt to help push the rotor off the hub, my passenger came off easily, drive required me to remove the rear pad and push/pull from the rear of the rotor.

8) remove rear pad, the front pad that is clipped to the caliper does not require lubrication as this is a floating caliper.

Attachment 2321


Attachment 2320


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Lubricate the rear pad slides with high temperature lubricant, I use high temp permatex anti seize.
Attachment 2323

There is upper and lower brake pad slides.

Attachment 2324

I also add anti seize to the backs of my brake pads, it never hurts. I also put anti seize on the hub face behind the rotor, and on the front face of the rotor that contacts the wheel (don't put on shiny part of rotor)

Attachment 2325


Attachment 2326

Using the caliper anchor bolt lubricant of your choice (Mine being silgylde) use the caliper anchor bolts in and out of the caliper anchor while applying a small amount of lubricant. When the bolts slide in and out smoothly and you can remove a bolt and have a little glob of grease at the end you've got plenty. Too much grease is bad and can cause difficulty installing the bolts due to the hydraulic pressure.

Make sure your rubber boots are still on and didn't come off, this happened with my driver side.

Attachment 2327

9) re install rotor and caliper (you might need to compress the caliper piston, if your changing pads you will for sure) I didn't have to though.

10) Put caliper back over the rotor and onto caliper anchor while minding the rubber boots (you might need to push it down and slide the l lower in bolt first then swing the caliper up to the top), wiggle it around while inserting the anchor bolts, keep wiggling it around while trying to screw them in, mine became difficult and require a ratchet to get them going, most of the time they will thread without doing this but I couldn't get them to on my mirage. Also be sure your rubber boots are fitting correctly.

11) Tighten the caliper bolts

12) Install wheel

If it wasn't for the caliper anchor bolts being difficult to start this would have been super easy, with their difficulty I give it a easy score.

Tale note that I have done over 500 brake jobs in my past work experience and I am a certified shade tree, well in this situation I did it in front of a Arons retail store, they had the brightest lights after I got off work at 4 am.

http://www.amazon.com/SILGLYDE-LUBE-COMPOUND---8-OZ/dp/B000KXLR5E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423427400&sr=8-1&keywords=silglyde

http://www.amazon.com/Permatex-80078-Anti-Seize-Lubricant-Bottle/dp/B000AAJTXY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1423429812&sr=8-2&keywords=anti+seize


This would be a better option than the anti seize , just didn't have any. http://www.amazon.com/Permatex-24125-Ceramic-Extreme-Lubricant/dp/B0018PSASU/ref=pd_sbs_auto_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=1DZDEMFWEW0AVMGY7 N2C

You can find these at Napa.

Good write up. The caliper looks to be the same design that Mitsubishi have used for a number of years. The one thing I would add is to stress Alexx16's point that you should not use Anti-sieze compound on the pins. There's a several reasons for this:

• Most anti-sieze products (Incluing copperslip, et. al.) are mineral oil based. This makes those rubber bungs you see on the pins swell up and cause excessive stiction.
• The temperature range of most anti-sieze products isn't sufficient. Take copper grease as an example - The anti-sieze is provided by the copper particles, so the 'base' grease can overheat and melt/boil away (in extremis) and you'll still have some anti-sieze properties. On a sliding pin, this wouldn't be sufficient to prevent the pin galling against the bore.
• Anti-sieze is often too thick to allow free movement of the pins if you use too much - which is easily done. Those bungs mean you can easily cause an airlock/hydrolock, as Alex16 says.

I've had to re-lube the pins on pretty much every car i've owned - most of which have been Mitsubishis. So far I've found that Mobilgrease 28 has worked well (and doesn't cause excessive seal swell).

Thanks for the write-up.

Thanks to alex16 from me too!
After seeing the pix of those anchor bolts, i'm certainly going to do mine.

I'd like to add a few thoughts:
I will clean the anchor bolts thoroughly, and not forget to clean the holes where the bolts are inserted to. This can be done with Q-tips or similar, or simply flushed out with WD40 if I'm lazy and dried afterwards

In Europe we use a special kind of clear-coloured 100% synthetic high-temperature grease "Plastilube" for lubricating the bolts, the kind that will never ever decompose. It is neutral to rubber and plastic, so it won't soften the boots. It comes in a small tube with an elevated price tag. I'm almost sure it must be poisonous if ingested. It is nothing like normal lithium based grease, and you should not get it on your fingers nor on pads and discs either. It wrecks the pads 100% if it gets on them or on the discs.

As alex16 said, too much lubricant is no good. Anchor bolts just need to be lubricated, but definitely do not fill up the hole the are inserted to! If that hole is filled up with lube, the brake saddle will not be able to move and uneven pad wear is certain.

There is a groove on either side of each boot where the metal mates the boot. Boots and grooves need to be perfectly clean, and some of the special lubricant needs to go onto the groove and the lip of the boot where the groove meets the lip.
Thats an excellent weather sealant, and thats what you want if it is supposed to last.

Great write up, but hoping someone can help me with step 7. I have about 44k miles and the brakes have been grinding for a few weeks. I ordered replacement pads at the first noise, it just took two vendors and a few weeks to finally get them. I've done the brakes on all the cars we've had for the last 10 years, but am very thankful for this detailed set of steps since this is my first time on a Mitsubishi.

I started on the drivers side, have the front caliper off and (2) 10 mm bolts in the rotor to help pull, but it just won't budge. As I have to order any and all replacement parts since no one in town, not even the dealer seems to have any, and this is my main means of transport, I don't want to damage the rotor so perhaps I'm not being tough enough. Despite driving with noise for far longer than I would have preferred, the rotor looks to be in good shape. Can't really see the back, but the thickness is good and no grooves or anything on the front.

In near desperation, I've wanted to reach for a good sized screw driver to wedge behind to try to leverage it out, but didn't since I didn't want to scratch the back. Any advice or tricks to knock the thing loose?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by imamirage

Great write up, but hoping someone can help me with step 7. I have about 44k miles and the brakes have been grinding for a few weeks. I ordered replacement pads at the first noise, it just took two vendors and a few weeks to finally get them. I've done the brakes on all the cars we've had for the last 10 years, but am very thankful for this detailed set of steps since this is my first time on a Mitsubishi.

I started on the drivers side, have the front caliper off and (2) 10 mm bolts in the rotor to help pull, but it just won't budge. As I have to order any and all replacement parts since no one in town, not even the dealer seems to have any, and this is my main means of transport, I don't want to damage the rotor so perhaps I'm not being tough enough. Despite driving with noise for far longer than I would have preferred, the rotor looks to be in good shape. Can't really see the back, but the thickness is good and no grooves or anything on the front.

In near desperation, I've wanted to reach for a good sized screw driver to wedge behind to try to leverage it out, but didn't since I didn't want to scratch the back. Any advice or tricks to knock the thing loose?

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At this point why pull the rotor? With only 44K I wouldn't worry about. Slap the new pads in and replace it on the rotor. I've never pulled the rotors unless they are warped or obviously need replacing.

Because step 7 says to take the rotor off to get access to the inside pad. I'm not planning to replace the rotor, but I don't see a way to replace the inside pad with the rotor in place. Can the inside pad be replaced WITHOUT removing the rotor??

Quote:

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Originally Posted by imamirage

Because step 7 says to take the rotor off to get access to the inside pad. I'm not planning to replace the rotor, but I don't see a way to replace the inside pad with the rotor in place. Can the inside pad be replaced WITHOUT removing the rotor??

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Yikes I hadn't noticed that both sides of the caliper don't just slide over the rotor. That's a stupendously stupid design. I've never seen that before. Normally replacing front disc pads is like a 10 minute job. Takes more time to jack the vehicle up and remove the tire than it does to replace the pads.