Ok, I hate to admit it, but I have never done my own brakes. I need to do the fronts including rotors. I am not a complete mechanical newbie at all and I am positive I can do it. Having said that is there a good video of a 3rd gen fit you all have found?

 

If you can find a video of a Civic or similar car you will be good. Takes a few hours and just need basic hand tools. 1/2 drive is recommended to get some of the bolts off. Also an impact screw driver for the rotor screws that never come out.

 

Question, do you actually need to do the rotors? Those usually last through two brake pads (or more), assuming there isn't some nasty grooves are other defect forming.

That said, another question is... do you really need a video? Answer this after reading the rest.

To change just brake pads: after taking off the wheels, there's only two bolts, AKA sliding pins, that hold the caliper to the caliper bracket (there should be rubber boot on the other side of the bolt head). Pick one and take it out. Flip caliper out (swing around the remaining bolt) and remove pads. Use your tire iron or anything you can get leverage to push the caliper piston back into the caliper body to make room for new pads. Put new pads, flip the caliper back on, and put the bolt back in.

If you want to do rotors also: Instead of taking off just one sliding pin, take out both and remove caliper and then pads, then take off two more bolts nearby that hold the bracket to the strut (otherwise the rotors can't come out). Knock out the screws that hold the rotor in (like GolNat said, use an impact screw driver and correctly sized Phillips head to avoid chewing the head before it comes out). Pull off the rotor... if they're stuck, try knocking on the rotor to knock rust off the backside... and use those rotor screws in the holes on the rotor to help push it out (if they aren't rusted shut). Clean off various surfaces, then work your way backwards... rotor, rotor screw, bracket, pads, caliper.

That's the short of it... a few other details are to use silicon lube for one or both sliding pins and copper grease for where the pad touches the caliper bracket and piston (do not let it get on the pad material). Of course, cleaning those surfaces before adding lube/grease.

An alternative (in either job) is instead of taking out the sliding pins is to only take off the bolts holding the bracket to the strut. This will remove the whole caliper assembly along with brake pads as one. But this method requires a little bit of jiggering to pull it off from the rotor and then slightly awkward position to replace the pads from the inside (you'll still need to push the caliper piston). If it's just replacing pads, removing one sliding pin is far easier... for the rotor job, it's kinda iffy.

And now, you can do a (disc) brake job on just about any standard automobile.

 

 

I don't imagine a GK would be much different than this... As Ken says, when pressing the caliper piston back in, I would open the reservoir and be careful not to let it overflow...

 

Thanks so much everyone. Goobers, I managed to warp the rotors after 40k of high speed mountain passes

All good advice and I appreciate it. I am ordering the parts up this weekend. I am sure I can do it. I will need to buy and impact driver but I am fine buying a tool rather than spending the money at the dealer for a one time repair.

 

Problem I have with that video is that on re-assembly I never saw anything being torqued. Everything seemed to be just tightened down with an air gun or a regular ratchet. Even the wheel nuts. Even if the air gun had a torque setting built in that was not pointed out to the viewers leaving the impression you just tighten bolts down any old way with any air gun. He did follow the proper rotation for the wheel nuts but again that wasn't pointed out to the viewers and would be easy to miss. And in the initial disassembly he just breezed through nut and bolt removal. Nothing was rusted in place, nothing was difficult to remove. Did he re-use the same hardware or did he replace old bolts with new ones. Couldn't tell.
Not a good video although it did show the essentials.

 

Thanks Woof. I do have a torque wrench and will use it. That is a good point however. Are the torque values hanging around somewhere?