Replacing Front brakes

I have to do the brakes on my 2000 Montana this week. I have priced them out and there are 3 different ones I can get. 34.99, 89.99, 130.99. Are the more expensive one worth the price difference? They said they are the noise less ones. I don't really care about noise (as long as it's not the grinding I'm hearing now), I would like longer life or better performance. I am quite hard on the brakes.

Is there any thing I should know about this before I start? Is there special tools I need? (My Contour needed a tool to rotate the piston back into the caliper). Will I have to blead the brakes? I am also replacing the rotors as well (I have a large score in one now) Anything to taking them off?

i will be taking this apart on Saturday morning ... any help would be great.


Thanks.

The front brakes on the Montana are just like most of the GM products. You will need a c clamp or other device to compress the caliper piston back in. As far as other tools you may need a torx bit to remove the caliper from the vehicle. If you compress the piston you will not need to bleed the brakes. As for the pads, the harder the pads the longer they will wear. But they will also cause the rotors to wear too. I usually opt for the pads that are the middle price. Although I do like Performance Friction Carbon Metallics. The wear well and are not hard on the rotors.
I have never worked on a Montana but there are two designs on Pontiacs. The easiest design allows for the rotors to come off after the calipers are off. The others require you to remove a mounting bracket before you can remove the rotor. The mounting bolts are extremely tight and will require either a large breaker bar or an impact wrench to remove. You will also need a torque wrench to reinstall these as they are usually torqued to 150 pounds. You will have to wait until you get it torn apart to find out what type you actually have. Good Luck.

I think they are the ones that have leave the bracket on when you take the caliper off. Torx I have ... Impact gun I have... torque wrench I don't have. Guess I can use this to buy a new one :naughty:

I think I am going with the best ones ... Rotors are only $30 so i usually change them with the shoes. So if my rotors die with the pads... no big deal.

Thanks for the reply

Next month I fix the power door. One of the guide rollers came off the back of the door and the door doesn't close or open.

I just put new front pads on my 2000 Montana (fwd, not awd). It was very straight forward. Standard tools are needed. Two special bolts (normal threads, hex head) will allow the caliper to come off. There looks to be special grease on these maybe. You may want to ask the auto parts store. These are the bolts that the caliper slides on as the pads wear down. There was some black grease on them. I was careful and just set them aside and put them back in as I took them out.

Anyway, once these two bolts are out, the caliper comes off. I put a small tube on the bleeder and cracked it, then used a c-clamp to compress the caliper. The tube ran into a jar to hold the brake fluid. With a tube on the bleeder, you should not suck in any air, because of the piston relaxes any, it will suck in the fluid in the tube rather than air.

There is one bracket that holds the calipers on that would have to come off to get the rotors off. It looked like two standard bolts held the bracket on. Once the bracket is off, the rotor will literally fall off.

Very straight forward. I used ceramic pads at $57 usd. My auto parts store had some cheaper ones at $30 and these at $57. They were Raybestos brand. They guy said the cheaper ones wear faster and keep the wheels dirtier with brake dust because of the high wear rate.

Good luck. Its quite straightforward. Took me two hours, but I could do it in an hour now that I did it once.

Keith

"I put a small tube on the bleeder and cracked it, then used a c-clamp to compress the caliper. The tube ran into a jar to hold the brake fluid. With a tube on the bleeder, you should not suck in any air, because of the piston relaxes any, it will suck in the fluid in the tube rather than air."

Hi Keith,

It isn't necessary to open the hydraulic system in order to seat the pistons in the calipers. The clamp will force the piston to seat and the hydraulic fluid will back up into the master cylinder.

Of course in doing it your way, you got the opportunity to add new fluid to the master cylinder, right?

You might have even let the caliper flush with the bleeder open and purge some of the old fluid out entirely thus flushing the system of old moisture staturated fluid.

Bob

i always go to either Autozone or Advance Auto to buy brake pads.I never go expensive nor cheap. Just but the mid grade and they;ll just fine. I use to buy the Performance Friction brand yrs ago and they squeeled more than anything.

1999 Montana:

Yes, with my way you can add new fluid. The other big advantage is that I have heard the caliper holds the dirtiest, crudiest part of the fluid and doing it my way gets some of that out rather than driving it upstream, past the abs valving where you may run into issues there or even in the master cylinder.

Keith

Always loosen the bleeder valve when retracting the caliper piston on any abs equipped vehicle to allow the dirty fluid in the caliper to escape. The dirty fluid being pushed back up can allow contaminants to get into very expensive and delicate abs components. Brake fluid is cheap and putting in fresh fluid is a good idea anyhow, as brake fluid absorbs moisture that can lower the boiling point of the fluid that could result in brake failure duing repeated or panic stops.

I did it this Saturday. Wow was it easy.

After spending about 30 mins on gathering tools in my father-in-laws garage I spent about 45mins on the first side and 15 mins on the other side.

Before I could get the caliper off the rotor and bracket I had to use a screw driver to pry on the piston to get it to back in so I could get the caliper off off the pads. Just because the pads had little rivits on them that held the caliper on.
After the caliper was off (2 bolts) the pads pop out and the bracket came off (another 2 bolts) then the rotor falls off.
I used a lug to hold the new caliper on while I cleaned it and put the bracket back on. I cleaned up the bracket and the back of the wheel and put the new "shims" (can't remember what they are called. They go between the bracket and the pads on the top and bottom) pads poped back in and the caliper bolted back on ...

It was so easy. On a scale of 1-10 I give it a 1.5. Slightly harder than changing a light bulb, but not much.

When the old pads were out, they were cracked. Only about 2 mm of pad left and on both of them the pad was broken off the backing plate (not good). I can't understand how we were braking at all.
In about 2 weeks I'm going to do the back brakes and bleed and flush the lines (just to get better pedel feel.