DIY Front Brake Job Walkaround - 2007 Dodge Charger SRT8 Long-Term Road Test

Edmunds.comEdmunds.com Member, Administrator, Moderator Posts: 10,316
edited December 2015 in Dodge
imageDIY Front Brake Job Walkaround - 2007 Dodge Charger SRT8 Long-Term Road Test

Our 2007 Dodge Charger SRT8 needed front brakes, so I bought some new Brembo pads and rotors and changed them in my driveway.

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  • iamthestigiamthestig Member Posts: 85
    Great writeup. Thanks! I like the trick for separating the rotor from the hub.
  • grijongrijon Member Posts: 147
    Yes, great writeup!
  • steverstever Guest Posts: 52,454
    Someone needs to buy Dan a box of nitrile mechanic's gloves for the holidays.
  • longtimelurkerlongtimelurker Member Posts: 455
    That is a great trick. Some rotors have threaded holes in the rotor hat that will allow bolts threaded through to contact the hub face...you just thread the bolts in, tighten...and sometimes it helps to give the rotor edge a pop or two 90 degrees out from these bolts while you're tightening them - the combination of steadily increasing force and sudden impact works faster and better.

    Also...Never-Seez is mandatory wherever you are. If this freezing of the rotor to the hub happened to a car that has spent its entire life in SoCal, then it can happen anywhere. Also use it between rotor and wheel...same conditions, and here in most cases you are dealing with dissimilar metal interface, too - cast-iron rotors and alloy wheels. And a very small amount on studs/bolts.

    Any automotive work that involves jackstands, ramps or lifts should also involve a can of one formulation or other of Never-Seez. If you start working on cars at 18 and keep doing it until 85, $50 will buy all of the stuff you'll ever use.

    One other thing is to go in and dress the sliding surfaces of the pad carrier with a file - tougher on these fixed-caliper designs than it is on sliding-caliper, but worth doing - sometimes you get a ridge of corrosion that formed where the back edge of the old backing plate was...then you put the new pads in and the new, thicker pad/backing plate bears on that ridge, and the pads don't want to retract and they end up dragging on the rotor faces.
  • roadburnerroadburner Member Posts: 18,156
    I love fixed calipers; makes changing pads at the track a 30 minute job, tops.

    Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
    Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
    Son's: 2018 330i xDrive

  • kirkhilles1kirkhilles1 Member Posts: 863
    Excellent write up, thank you! I actually hadn't replaced pads with this style of caliper before. Interesting. You should stress doing a proper Bed In procedure anytime you get new pads properly set.

    You could also link to an excellent how-to you guys created awhile ago (unless I missed it somewhere):

    http://www.edmunds.com/how-to/how-to-change-your-brake-pads.html
  • nomercy346nomercy346 Member Posts: 69
    during all my brainless pounding of the rotors and ringing ears it caused I never thought of the bolt trick,- good thing I have an engineering degree, jeez I feel stupid now
  • thecardoc3thecardoc3 Member Posts: 5,842
    nomercy346 said:

    during all my brainless pounding of the rotors and ringing ears it caused I never thought of the bolt trick,- good thing I have an engineering degree, jeez I feel stupid now

    LOL, why would this make you feel that way? It's more than likely the trick simply would not have worked on any number of vehicles that you have worked on. I can list dozens that do not have the bolt holes that would be required to do it. BTW, the idea here isn't new, similar tricks to this one include how we get hub bearings loose on Dodge trucks.

    Just because you have an engineering degree, that doesn't mean that you are smarter than, or even have more education than what a technician requires today. There are a lot of people who deserve to be dropped into a shop as a technician, so that they get to find out first hand just where they really stand when out comes to doing this work. Its more than fair to say that their opinions of their abilities are more than just a little inflated.

    This is a quote of mine. "Anybody can do brakes...........incorrectly". Can you find any mistakes in Dan's story here? REM. It only takes one error, even if it is later corrected to fail. That's the standard that techs are held to.
  • steverstever Guest Posts: 52,454
    It does make sense to only permit factory trained techs to work on cars, and only after they've certified that they've reread the factory issued repair manual for the procedure they are tackling and downloaded the latest errata sheet. A "pilot's" checklist could be required along with video recording to insure that the tech followed all the steps required by the manufacturer.

    Can you imagine trusting an indy mechanic to work on your car when that tech may not have even seen your make and model car for a week, much less have done the repair on a like model that month?
  • roadburnerroadburner Member Posts: 18,156
    Yawn...

    Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
    Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
    Son's: 2018 330i xDrive

  • ayaoayao Member Posts: 27
    Like others I am totally digging the bolts-through-the-caliper-bracket trick to pop off a frozen rotor.
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