Replaced My Brake Pads Today

[03whiteLS430]

Sorry no pictures but it was a very easy job so save yourself $500 and DIY. My car has 35,000 miles and the original pads had a lot left on them but the Lexus wear sensors were ready to be wore into. My rotors looked great so I just burnished them with an air tool to take the glaze off them. I'll head out early tomorrow morning to bed the pads in and will let you know how they feel. I reused the anti squeal shims, they were good as new after cleaning them with brake cleaner and then put grease on both sides of the inner shim. (New shims are as expensive as the brake pads!)

The longest part of the job was looking for the cap of the brake fluid resevour that slid off the engine and dropped onto the lower plastic pan.

TIPS: Be sure to check your brake fluid level before starting because mine rose about an inch so if it's full it could overflow. Factory spec for the wheel lug nut is 76 ft/lb. If you are going to remove the rotors to turn them, you must buy new caliper bolts.

[03whiteLS430]

I bed the pads early this moorning and everything seems fime. Brakes work well, no squeals, no pedal issues, I'm good to go. Here is the bedding procedure I used and got it from Dave Zeckhausen when I used his pads on my SRT8. How to Bed your brakes

[VBdenny]

The reason the fluid level went up was because as you pushed the caliper pistons back into the cylinder, it pushed the fluid backward into the master cylinder. Yeah, Lexus brakes are pretty easy to work on. Nothing like saving money. I use only Lexus pads which I buy through irontoad.com

[03whiteLS430]

Looks like we do our shopping at the same place. They had the best price by far of anyone out there. I bought the caliper bolts just in case but looks like I'll be hanging on to them for the next brake change.

VB, Did you notice how much pad was left when they are at the wear sensors? I was thinking of tying my sensor up behind the wheel and not reinstalling it, figure I would have easily got another 10-15K miles on the pads.

[curiousB]

Why bother,

pads -> inexpensive (relatively)

new rotors -> expensive

Seems penny wise and pound foolish to stretch pad wear.

There is something about the caliper bolts that they can't be reused. They are some type of "stretch" bolt (not sure proper name for them) that deforms when installed to achieve certain torque conditions. It only stretches once though so you need to replace if you remove them. I cheated and reused and added blue lock-tite but am now reading some people have had calipers come loose and do quite a bit of damage. I plan to pick up a new set of the bolts and install next oil change.

[03whiteLS430]

If the 03 and 04 caliper bolts are the same, if you are interested I'll sell you mine since I did not use them. The front and rear have different part numbers. I paid $5 each.