Sonata 2012 - Brake Job - What the heck with the rear brakes !?!

[badbrakes]

Bought a 2012 Sonata new. We're not hard on cars but drive quite a bit. So had to recently do a full brake job (100 000 kms on the car).

I'm no expert - just a home mechanic that has worked on cars all my life. Broken enough things to get reasonably good at it.


The brakes are fairly easy and standard to do on this vehicle AT THE FRONT. However, the back is quite frustrating.

The caliper bracket bolt is BEHIND the suspension upper arm. So you need to dismantle the upper arm. But wait. To dismantle the upper arm, you need to take the shock absorber out. (Like WTH aka WTF) Perhaps this is common but I hadn't had the 'pleasure' of seeing this before. Net of it... a rear brake job that could take a few minutes per wheel ends up taking much longer thanks to the rocket scientist engineering from the folks at Hyundai.


Ohhh good news though... bleeding the brakes is totally standard.... no hassle.

So lessons learned. Hopefully can be useful to other folks.

1) If you need to change the rotors, you'll have to take out the shock absorber then the upper arm. You can try to outsmart the thing and remove the bolt hidden by the upper arm but 90% sure you wont succeed. If you do, let us know.

2) The upper arm can be tricky to reinstall. Start with the top bolt. Do the top bolt about 1/3 in and put the upper arm flush with the frame at the top. Only then, try to get the bottom part of the upper arm in its place. I had to use a rubber mallet and gently (not sarcasm) tap it in place. It fits snugly.

3) Start the job with the rear wheels. Then at least when you do the front, the worse is done.

4) If you figure out why the engineered it this way, let us know. I couldn't. Perhaps more stable or stiff suspension... I dont know.