After airing all the tires up yesterday, I walked out this morning and discovered the driver’s side front had gone flat. It turned out the valve stem wasn’t seating properly. Well, when I pulled the wheel off to fix that, I took a look at the front brake pads, and it looked like there was nothing left. Yikes! Time for a quick brake job.
Well, appearances clearly were deceiving. There was at least 50% of the front pads left, but the design of the caliper makes it difficult to tell. May I say, however, that I’ve never run across a better designed brake caliper than these. Two bolts remove the caliper piston assembly (it’s actually a dual piston setup), and then the pads easily slide out of the carrier without removing it! Even better, the pads are identical, so there’s no need to keep track of what came from where. Even in 20F temps today, it was a very painless brake job; about 20 minutes per side including jacking and R&R of the wheel. I did not touch the rotors; I mic’d them and they were good, their surfaces were smooth except for a small ridge at the outer periphery of the inside on both, and I just didn’t see the point of having them machined; they weren’t warped. So it was a $20 brake job. Not too tough to take.
