Awesome! Congrats on your success and you're welcome!

I'm glad that after these years the writeup is still being used today.

Richard

 

And I'm glad to see a familiar "face", so to speak. I've been away from the boards for awhile.

Shelly

 

I studied this writeup before changing my pads and rotors on my 2006 R53 earlier in the day. The rotors are not much of a problem as long as you get the torx retaining bolt out ok. This was not difficult on my car. The rotors were stuck on a bit though so the pry bar came in handy for popping the rotors off the hub. It is not necessary to remove the caliper mount/brake pad holder. The rotor will just slide out.

The cheap piston tool I bought was a fail so I used the needle nose pliers method, which was a PITA but worked. One thing I will say is it is absolutely necessary to remove the paneling on the sensor side in order to get to the attachment point. The pics in this writeup were great. My setup had only minor differences. I'm glad the clips on the pads for the piston side were explained here. I can easily see screwing that part up if you don't know what you're doing.

The follow up test drive was a success. Thanks for making this a lot easier!

 

Some people have said the caliper piston can be retracted using a C-clamp and a plyers to rotate the piston. I say NO, do not try it. You are more than likely to rip the piston boot and that will cost you $30 US for the replacement part. This original post says to use http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=40732 but note that Harbor Freight has a slightly different model now (4/15/2012). 18 Piece Disc Brake Pad and Caliper Service Tool Kit - Pittsburgh Professional - item#97143, $39.99 US, http://www.harborfreight.com/18-piec...kit-97143.html The primary tool on the one I bought does not fit by itself; it is necessary to use the adapter with the Z on it.

As I wound the piston in I noticed the boot was dragging on the piston. I sprayed some WD40 on it as a lube to prevent it from tearing.

When I was winding the piston back in, there was excess air under the piston boot that was keeping the boot from retracting flat. I carefully lifted the inside edge of the boot and the air came out; and the boot retracted flat.




Notice that star headded bolt in the photo? I HIGHLY recommend everybody take them out the next time they have the wheel off and put a bit of hi temp caliper grease on the threads. Believe me, you do not want that !#$%!#$ bolt to rust when u need to replace your brake rotors. Also notice that the brake pads are different. The inside one has springs on it and the outside one does not as shown in the above photo. Happy Motoring

 

Hi All,

I am at a bit of a loss....I performed the rear replacement a few days ago, and now I have two issues to resolve:

1. While driving the rear left wheel is making a whining/high pitch noise while the car is moving. Once I apply the breaks, the noise goes away. (I forgot the blue paste, but it shouldn't chirp while driving).

2. My breaking distance is very long and my break pedal seems to bottom out. When I compressed the caliper I had no noticeable return of break fluid to the master cylinder reservoir. I am thinking about bleeding the lines this weekend, but I was wondering if anyone had the same experience and how they resolved it?

Thanks!

CR

 

#1 - This noise might be from not properly seating the inside pad to the caliper piston. The inside pad is held in place with a spring type clip, if the clip is not in the slots on both sides of the caliper piston the pad will not be square to the rotor resulting in a edge drag when the brakes are not depressed. I just replaced my brakes & rotors (F & R) 2 weeks ago and noticed that you had to be really careful to get those clips in place when installing the inside pads, it's easy to miss getting them into the slots since the piston is fully retracted and the boot can get in the way.

 

Thanks Rodder...I'll take a look! It took about 3 hrs to change both sides, and I finished late (like 11 pm) I might have overlooked the spring location.

 

There is a very good pictures by "octaneguy" on page #2 of this thread that shows the brake pad clips and piston slot. You need to slide the brake pad over the piston, starting on the bottom side of the pad pictured, so that the wires on the two sides of the brake pad are in the slot, one each side, until the wire on the top edge of the brake pad is seated against piston.

 

Rodder....Thanks man!!! I totally missed that! I'm guessing that this improperly installed pads may also be the cause of my poor breaking ... I guess I'll redo my breaks this weekend! I hope I haven't caused too much damage to the rotors!

 

This thread is still live! Thanks for the write up. I see you're also in SoCal. I might try the loan-a-tool from O'reilly's to compress the rears. I've done breaks on my old KIA before but this is the first time on the MINI. I was only planning on doing pads but my buddy here at work pointed at the nasty lip on my rotors so I'll be swapping those out too. I panicked last week when my brake sensor light came on. I've never had a car with that before! Luckily after some Googling I noticed it was a "drop everything now" repair.

I assume some steps are a little different for an r56 but I'm a visual learner. Hopefully the spring clips are not an issue. Now I just wait for my new slotted/drilled rotors to get here!

 

Super write up. I have always shy'ed away from brake replacement as a DIY option becuase . But I studied this to a T and took my laptop to the car and went right to work. Without this I'd be out another 100+ bucks.

I was unable to get a Caliper Tool from Habor Freight and the "cube" tool did not work on my 03 Justa (which also did not have any sensors for pad wear). So I used the Needle Nose pliers and kept my eye on the dust boot. However, the dust boot on the right side was torn already as I was disassembling the passanger side. How tough is it to replace and from what I read on this tread is appoximately $30?

Thanks again, Octane Guy!

 

Hi everyone. I just put back on my caliper/pads after having to take them off for some repair work in my suspension. I used the autozone tool to get my piston compressed again. I tried it but it only turned the piston a very small amount and then it wouldn't turn, even when I tried to unscrew it, and screw it back in. I figured it had something to do with the brake line fluid or the pressure in the fluid tank or something like that, so I unscrewed the brake fluid cap located under the hood on the driver's side, thinking it would relieve some pressure in the brake lines, or etc, and I went back to work. The piston started compressing little by little the very first time I tried it after taking the cap off, and I was able to compress it all the way and then was able to put the caliper back on. Hopefully this helps someone who had the same issue I had!

 

Just did a brake job on my JCW, EBC Redstuff and new rotors.

Just wanted to say thanks to OctaneGuy, and let everyone know that Autozone (the one near me anyway) has a tool loaner program. They loaned me a caliper tool, $60 deposit and you have 30 days to return it, then they credit you back. Great alternative to buying one

And one thing I did learn.

LOOSEN the rear rotor torx before pulling the calpiers! Kind of hard to pull the ebrake once you remove the caliper.

 

I replaced the F&R brake pads with Textar pads and after putting it all together the brake pedal was soft. Mini still stopped fine but I was not comfortable with the pedal travel.

Re-read this post and realized that I did not clip the inner rear brake pads to the lip of the caliper piston plus I bled the rear brakes (lots of bubbles) and now the brake pedal feels great

Only took about an hour to complete the above steps and another 15 minutes to reinstall one of the caliper retainer springs that I noticed laying on the ground just after I finished torquing the lug bolts

Next weekend will be replacment of one of the dust boots that has a rip:(

 

Looking at this and other DIY articles on the rear brakes, the Bentley book mentions removing the rear brake cable. Firstly, no one in their articles mentions doing this and 2nd, the Bentley book doesn't tell you how to remove the rear brake cable. It just says for you to do it.

???

Incidentally, I have a 2011 Cooper S.

 

No need to disconnect the E-Brake cable for changing the brake pads.

Just be sure to have the new inner pads that have the spring clip snapped around the brake piston lip before re-attaching the caliper.

 

Kelly,
Recognize that you have a Gen II Cooper and this post is for a Gen I. The brakes are different. Fortunately the brakes on the Gen II MINI are easier to change. However, in neither model MINI do you need to remove the E-brake cable.

Just curious, you have a 2011 MINI and it needs new rear brakes already?

 

Yeah, I wondered about that too, only 21000 miles on the car. There might be a problem with the caliper on the right rear, we'll see. The pads looked OK to me except the one that bears the brake wear sensor. The sensor was indeed worn down and what looked like bare metal showing through it, so I'm not faulting the computer here. We'll see how this set wears down. I put OEM pads on it. I've not had a car with discs on the back so I didn't know what the expected 'normal' miles were until the rears needed replacing. Anyway, when I was turning the caliper back in it seemed like it would stick for a bit, but I would give it a second and try again and it would go for a little bit more, so I figured it was the fluid backing up. I did the right side after the left.

 

After much struggle and frustration, the rear pads are changed! I have an '06 S and I borrowed the loaner caliper kit from Autozone, got everything all torn apart, and it didn't fit! None of the adapters helped either. So i put the car back together with the old worn out pads. Next, I tried the little cube tool from Harbor Freight. Got the car jacked up and taken apart and voila! Didn't work. At this point I'm quite frustrated. I decided to buy the caliper kit from Harbor Freight, even though it's the same thing as what Autozone loaned me. I bought the kit ($40), took it home, opened it up...SUCCESS! There were 3 or 4 additional adapters in this kit vs. what was in the Autozone loaner! One of which fit perfectly. Then it just took quite a bit of struggle and physical pain, got the pistons pushed in, new pads on, and all put back together. Here's to hopefully not having to do it again for another 100k miles!

But without this write-up I wouldn't have known I needed a tool at all, or the little bits of info that helped along the way, so thanks!

 

OctaneGuy - thanks for this write-up. It is one of the best I've ever read and it did help me in preparing to do my rear brakes.

I was a little hesitant in purchasing the H-F caliper pitson tool because I've heard so much bad about the quality of their products, but found this tool to work well. I can't say enough about how important it is to have the proper tools when taking on a project.

I also saw some videos of people attempting to use the tool and it seemed very cumbersome to me the way the caliper was flopping around and how they kept alterrnating between twisting the handle, stopping to turn a wrench, and doing this multiple times.

I came up with a super simple method that worked great for me. After I removed the worn pads and rotar, I put the caliper back on the carrier bracket and inserted a small spacer (soft wood) between the caliper and axel hub. This kept the caliper from slipping back on the carrier pins. I was then able to use one hand to twist the handle down on the tool and hold a wrench at the same time. The piston went straight in and I didn't have to worry about abrading or stretching the brake lines as I worked the tool.

The piston offered no resistance and set in the caliper housing very easily. I'm not sure I would have continued with this method if it was binding and I was putting twisting forces on the caliper pins, but it worked great for my situation.

Hope this offers some help to this excellant thread.

 

OctaneGuy,

Thanks for your post, I was stuck trying to get the piston back on my MC when I read about the tool needing to both push and turn. With your pictures I was able to make a tool in less time than driving to HF.

Steve

 

why cant i see the pictures? there is a little "broken" image. if right click and try to save the image, give me an error message. any ideas?

 

OctaneGuy, I used your article on how to do the front brakes on my Mini--it was great. Ready to do the back brakes and was very glad to find your post. I'm having trouble getting the images to display. I bet I'm missing something obvious. Any advice? Thanks

 

cannot see the pictures, anyone had luck or anyone who knows the trick? thanks!

 

Hi all my rears are in need of replacement and when I came here to look sadly see that most of the pictures have died. Used the front brake write up to do my fronts last year. I found these links thought I would share

http://www.pelicanparts.com/techarti...eplacement.htm
and a video



I also have a question anyone know the minimum thickness of the rear disks? I think I recall 10mm a validation would be greatly appreciated before I order parts