grinding noise is a bad thing

So said Proud Hillbilly in comments the other day.
Yes.
Yes it is.


Wait, there's still a little friction material on that pad.  Belle didn't quite get 100% of her money's worth out that one. This is what's left of the outside pad from the driver's side of the vehicle.
The pad is sitting on wood boxes that originally contained pecan pies.
Mmmm pecan pie.  They were long ago re-purposed for brake caliper support during brake jobs.

Did a number on the rotor as well.
Interesting thing is the passenger side rotor was smooth and shiny as a mirror, and the pads still had quite a bit of friction material on them.
If you, as the driver, are the sole passenger in your vehicle 99% of the time, your front brakes will wear faster than the back, and the front left will wear the fastest of all four.

Belle's '07 Malibu has a caliper assembly I've not seen before. The caliper is separate from the bracket.  The brake pads fit into slots in the bracket.  When I removed the caliper, the pads stayed put. My first reaction was, "hmmmm, this may be much worse than I thought."
Two bolts mount the caliper and two bolts mount the bracket. Caliper bolts were torqued to 26 ft. lb.s, no problem.
Bracket bolts were torqued to 85 ft. lbs., wherein my forward progress was delayed.
I finally managed to maneuver a 24" breaker bar with a socket onto the bolts.


The first wheel always takes me 3/4 of the total time for any shade tree brake job.  By the time I get to the second wheel, I know which socket, wrench, cheater pipe, hammer, etc. I need to get the next step done.
I almost look like I know what I'm doing by that point. ;)

So far the disassembly requires nothing more than a combination of metric sockets and wrenches..and pie boxes to set the caliper on so as to not strain the brake line.

Everything removed, ready for new parts.
Almost.









Next step, pop the cap on the brake fluid reservoir and check the level.  The fluid level needs to be drawn down in preparation for the next step.
A turkey baster and mason jar work great for this, as long as you can make it out of the kitchen with the turkey baster in hand without getting whacked with a rolling pin.

To get the caliper to fit over the new brake pads, the caliper piston has to be depressed to zero.  A great big C clamp does the job just fine.
If you failed to do the previous step, you will have a corrosive mess in your engine compartment.
Fortunately, the dust seals on the pistons on both calipers were in serviceable condition. So the calipers were not replaced and the brake system did not need bleeding.






And POOF!, just like magic, there it is all put back together with no extra parts or bolts.
I did not have sufficient room to get my big torque wrench on the caliper  bracket bolts with only one wheel lifted at a time. So, I snugged them up as best I could.  When both wheels were back on the car, I drove it up on my rhino-ramps and crawled up underneath to torque the bolts to spec.

$124 in parts and four hours including the trip to the auto parts store.
Hey, I've never claimed to be a fast shade tree mechanic. I apply the Hippocratic oath, well part of it, "first, do no harm".
I go slow and don't force things. (pay no attention to that hammer in the pic).
Doing harm can turn a four hour job into two days.*








* or a turn a twenty minute light fixture change out into two days if you happen to drill through a water pipe :(
Fools tread where angels fear to go.