Thursday, April 30, 2009
Brakes
After hearing squealing coming from the rear of the Land Cruiser for a little while and suspecting it was the brake pad wear indicator, I have finally got around to replacing the brakes. Due to a few factors, I have broken with my fashion and gone non-OEM. And not for something better, just something cheaper. I need brakes that aren’t about gone, I can’t afford local dealer prices, and don’t want to wait for a CruiserDan order. So for now, and until our cash flow is stabilized, I’ll be running a cheap NAPA set of pads. They seem to stop the Land Cruiser, and the awful noise I was hearing is gone, so I’m happy for now.
It was actually a very easy job doing the rears. When I did the fronts before (the only brakes I’ve replaced so far), I did not have the right tool to compress the cylinder(s) and get them far enough to slide over the fresh pads. On the rear caliper, there is only one cylinder, so there is no need to fight pushing one in as the other goes out. I also now have a big C-clamp, so I put an old pad against the cylinder, and just kept clamping it down until it was in all the way. After that it slide right on over the old pads.
When checking for the noises that I’ve been hearing, I went out and found a neighborhood street with no cars parked along it. It was a straight road, with a slight up-hill. I put the Land Cruiser in low 4 (due to a modification this no longer engages the center differential lock automatically, so no reason not to use low-4 on pavement). Put the transmission in drive, made sure it was crawling forward straight and then hopped out and walked around the car some listening for any rear end noises. After a 100m or so of the car driving along at a snails pace and hearing nothing unusual, I got back in it, spun it around and did the same in reverse. I have no idea what those neighbors though, a car driving slowly down the street while the driver got out and walked around it.
Anyway, new brakes and I did what I could to set them without burning up the fronts.