Rear brake replacement

[Wlepse]

So in a previous thread I mentioned that my rear brakes had been squealing for a while and I noticed my rear rotor were cooked and pads looked low. That discussion is here. Turns out the pads were fine, but if you view them from the side the step makes it look low.

From those discussions it appeared as if the rears on all Regals were the same regardless of being fwd or awd. So even though at the time Powers top did not list a rear kit for the TourX they did for fwd Regals so I took a chance and ordered kit K7717 from Amazon. Today I verified they fit and confirmed they updated their site. Anyway here is what you'll need and some pictures I got along the way.



19mm to get wheels off
T45 or 13mm and arc joint pliers for caliper
18mm ratchet and wrench for carrier
T30 to remove the rotor
Torque wrench set to 110 ft-lbs

So the exchange was pretty straight forward but I do have a few comments. First is on the caliper bolts...I also had to use a pair of arc joint pliers to hold the other side of the slide pin since I didn't have a thin wrench to fit. Not ideal but they weren't super tight so no damage was done. Second, I highly recommend against using a wrench since the connector for the electric parking brake is in the danger zone if you slip, so offset is your friend.



Pads came out easy, hardware was in good condition and slides were fine. I did try to use my HF caliper tool to retract the caliper but none fit well enough so I turned it in by hand. So obviously nothing in this assembly was seized.

Third comment is on the carrier bolts, they were tight and had loctite. The bottom is easy enough to get a ratchet on, the top requires a wrench due to clearance with a control arm. This was tedious but uneventful.

Next up was removing the rotor using the T30. The driver side popped right off, the passenger side needed a few shots from a dead blow but nothing crazy. Replacing the rotor was as easy as replacing the screw. I should also mention these rotors are fully zinc coated so there is no oily film. It appears the coat after drilling and slotting so they should hold up well.

The kit came with grease for hardware and slides which I used. Hardware snapped right in and was well formed. Bolting the carrier back was tedious due to the tops clearance. The pads slide right in and moved easily, though I should mention the pads had strange ears that were not present on OEM pads. This didn't affect fit and I can't see that it will affect anything.



As mentioned I turned the caliper in by hand and it wasn't necessary to go all the way back. Not sure if these pads are a little thinner or if the caliper just has a lot of clearance. Either way they bolted back up without fuss.

Reinstall the wheel, properly torque and you are set. I should note the above mentioned torque setting was what I found at one website, I didn't see it in the manual but 100-110 seems reasonable.



I realize there will be no performance increase but they do look nice! One weird thing I can wrap my head around, the passenger side that had a stuck rotor had significantly less pad left. The rotor being stuck to the hub should not make a difference since everything else was free but it is kind of strange. But if you are getting noise and going to investigate try the passenger side first. Hope this helps someone.

 

[Hunter Mike]

That's a lot of corrosion on the rotor. Did you not drive much or does the car sit outside?

 

[Wlepse]

That's a lot of corrosion on the rotor. Did you not drive much or does the car sit outside?

Car is outside and due to the pandemic there was a period of minimal driving but what makes no sense is the fronts are fine. Only thing I can think of is the coating on my rears was crap from the get go. As you can see the fronts only have corrosion on the edge.

 

[Hunter Mike]

It looked like a dormant car. My ‘19 goes 35k miles/yr in the snow belt and I have nowhere near the corrosion.

 

[Rhetoric]

It looked like a dormant car. My ‘19 goes 35k miles/yr in the snow belt and I have nowhere near the corrosion.

Same here. My rears look brand new after having gone through 3 salt-tastic winters and 24k miles.

 

[Wlepse]

Even with the pandemic I averaged 12-15k/year. A normal year would be about double that. I didn't let the car sit for more than a week without driving it mainly because I have had so many battery issues I wanted to make sure it was always getting topped off. So this was not a dormant car. Back in the 90's I used to travel a lot and my old Integra would rust out rear rotors, but I was usually gone any where from one month to 4.

 

[KingDapostrophe]

Thanks for this write-up, I was about to post in the other thread to see if anyone had found a solution. I inspected my rears this morning, found that neither of them have corrosion, but the drivers side has a pretty deep gouge around the whole rotor and the passenger side has a couple smaller gouges. Not sure what the cause of this would be. Still haven't had a chance to throw her on stands to look myself, but the dealer told me I had plenty of pad life left last month. Looks like I'll be replacing pads and rotors following this guide pretty soon here.

 

[KingDapostrophe]

Revisiting this thread because I just did the same rear pad and rotor replacement with the same materials. My comments on the fronts are on the front powerstop rotor thread. Some Notes:

- I have one of those cube caliper retracting tools that fits a 3/8. The tool was made for "most GM and Ford vehicles" however ours is not most. I wish I would have gotten a picture of the piston, but we have 3 slots in ours vs the two that the cube provided on all 6 sides. I managed to get a couple of the sides to poorly fit, and used some leverage to manually rewind the piston. You may have to get creative with this if you don't have the specific tool.
- My passenger rear caliper bolts were on pretty tight. I had to use a breaker bar to get them loose.
- You'll absolutely need a flat wrench to loosen the upper caliper bolt. I had to smack the wrench a few times with a rubber mallet to get it loose.
- I had to bleed a little bit out of the rear passenger side - the piston was refusing to retract. A few drops was enough to release the pressure. The joys of an electric parking brake.
- My pistons had some grime/grit on them, so I used a soft toothbrush to clean them up. Don't use anything too hard or you'll risk damaging the boot.
- I brushed off the hubs and applied anti-seize before replacing the discs.

I still could not figure out why my rear brakes were squealing so much. The pads had more than enough left of them and weren't even close to the levels you'd expect them to squeal at. There was no debris in the pads or really anywhere else for that matter. My rear drivers side had a couple pretty deep gouges, and the rear passenger had some shallow ones. They didn't line up with anything on the pad so I'm not sure what was going on. Either way, the new rears don't squeal after a couple days of driving and they stop fine, so I'm happy.