How To Change Your Brakes for Under $150 (no experience required)

Getting a set of brake rotors and pads changed at the local shop could cost you $600 or more. Doing them yourself, however, is one of the simplest things you can do on your own car. In the next 20 minutes or less, I'm going to show you every step of the process for doing your own brakes. No experience required. And I'm going to share with you every tip and trick that I've developed over the years and even go over some of the rookie mistakes that I see a lot of people make. I'm Josh. I've been working on my car since I was 16, so I didn't have to pay a shop. We started this channel so I could share my experience and show you how to work on your own car and save money too. One way to do brakes on the cheap is to do them yourself, but doesn't do any good if you're overpaying for parts. Here's how I get them at the best possible price while still getting good quality. For most of us, that means getting these parts online. Now, the problem with buying car parts online is there are millions of brands, millions of types, and 90% of them are absolute garbage. So a lot of people bring me parts to put on their car that they've bought online, including brake parts, and they got a really good deal on it. And when I install them, they're squeaky, the rotors are warped already, and they're just not good and not safe. Here's what I do to order parts online. In the U.S., I use a website called Rock Auto. What I really like about Rock Auto is they break down all of your options into three basic categories. Economy section, the daily driver section, and the premium. I never buy anything from the economy because that's like your really cheap Chinese knockoff brakes that are not good. I usually go for the daily driver section, which is a good balance between value and price. Now, you can order the brakes directly from Rock Auto, but I don't. Here's why. I live in Hawaii, so they charge me an arm and a leg for shipping out here. Sometimes they won't even ship stuff to me. What I'll do is I'll use Rock Auto as a reference to get brands and part numbers, and I'll go to something like an Amazon where they'll ship to me for free, and I'll just get that same part on Amazon. If I just type in the brake parts for my car on Amazon, it's just going to give me so many results. I'm not going to know which ones are good, which ones are bad. It's just going to be a mess. Now, price. On this town and country that I'm working on today, I could get a solid middle-of-the-road set of rotors and pads for the front on Rock Auto or Amazon for about $130. Now, if I were to go and buy the same quality parts at a local auto parts store, I'd probably be paying $250 for that same set, so it does pay to get them online, but here's the caveat. If you do online, you've got to wait a little while for them to ship, and then if there's any problems, like if you ordered the wrong parts or there's something damaged, you have a problem with your order, having them online means you're waiting another week to get new parts back in, whereas if I bought locally, I could take them right down to the store and get my brakes done that same day. So if you're doing this job and you want to save money, just make sure you plan ahead. In addition to parts, you're going to need some other supplies, some brake grease, brake cleaner, and some brake fluid. Now, tools. Great thing about doing brakes is really you only need basic hand tools that you probably already have. There are a couple things that can make the job easier, like this caliper spreader tool. You don't even really need that, and I'll explain why. So E-brake needs to be set. Put a chalk under the rear wheel. It's really nice to have a floor jack. If you don't have one, then you can just use the little jack that comes with your car when you need to change your spare tire. Now, you can see I just lifted up the wheel off the ground just a tiny little bit. I don't want to lift it so high in the air that it's really hard to get the tire off and on. Now, for pulling off your lug nuts, you probably have a tire iron in your car, in your spare tire kit, and that works just fine to remove lug nuts, but you've got an impact a whole lot faster. Sometimes if the wheel doesn't want to come off, you might need to give it a kick, but this one's nice and loose. Now, you have two choices. You can use this tire that's off as your seat to work on, or if you don't want to do that, you can use it as another layer of protection. If the car were to fall, you just shove it under the body of the car. YouTube has informed me that 95% of you aren't actually subscribers of the channel yet, so just make sure to subscribe to Budget Mechanic. It really helps us out. All right, when you're working on brakes, most of the fittings that you need to take off to change your pads are on the backside of the caliper, which is a little bit hard to get to. So, one thing I like to do is turn the wheels of the car so the caliper is sticking out into the open. All right, now we've got everything open. It can be a little intimidating at first, but honestly, it is so simple. We've got three parts we've got to deal with. The caliper, inside, number two is the pad, and number three is this rotor, and this sucker can actually be kind of tricky when it gets stuck on, but don't worry. I've got some good tips on how to make that easy. All right, first we've got to get this caliper off. So, the way that this works is the pistons come out and press the pads against the rotor, and as the pads wear down, the pistons have to come farther and farther out, so then when you put full-size, thick, new pads in, those pistons have to be reset back inside the caliper, and doing that later on down the process when the caliper's swinging around on the brake line is such a pain in the butt. So, here's what I do. I will actually compress these pistons now while the caliper's still on the car. Just way easier to work with, and all it takes is a flathead screwdriver. I'm going to wedge it in there and pry this caliper over. This actually takes a little bit of force to do, but if you just go slow, it'll slowly start moving. I've already compressed it a little bit. You can see things are getting loose in here, but I'm going to take another bite and push it even more. What I'm looking for is this piston to go all the way back inside the caliper. I have a dual piston caliper, so I'm going to kind of have to do the top and bottom. So, ideally, you don't want to be prying your screwdriver right on the surface of the rotor because you'll damage it if you're planning to reuse that rotor. The calipers are held on by two bolts, one at the top and one at the bottom, and I like to use a wrench and a hammer because you can do that. One at the top, one at the bottom. Now, this is one of the great annoyances with brakes. I'm trying to loosen this, and it's not coming loose because the sleeve that it's sitting in is rotating as well. I find oftentimes I can't ever fit a wrench in there. All my favorite is just to use some vice grips. That way, I don't have to worry about holding it while I crank on the wrench. There we go. Usually doesn't take too much. You don't want to drop this because if you do, you're probably going to tear this rubber line. Now, you're going to replace a long brake line, lose all your fluid, air in the system, and elbowing it. So, what I like to do is run a piece of coat hanger or wire through the bolt hole of the caliper and up to the shock absorber so that it's not going to accidentally fall while I'm working on the rest of this stuff. Now that the caliper's off, you can see these pistons are pushed down flush inside the caliper. So, it's all ready for new pads. Okay, now we can get these pads off, and they just slide out to the side. If you have a stuck one, you can take that flathead and you can just pop out the top like that. Now, these pads actually aren't worn down. That's not the reason that I'm replacing them today. You can see they have quite a bit of meat on them. Like, this is the new one, and you can see they're actually not too worn down. But what's happened is at some point, this brake rotor has gotten too hot, probably from someone riding the brakes. And so, it's shaking the steering wheel, it's squeaking really loud, and you can see the super shiny spots on the pad and the worn grooves. So, this thing is probably hardened and gotten oddly worn from overheating. So, we got to replace both pad and rotor. A lot of shops will disagree with me, but I actually think that you can reuse rotors and just replace pads, as long as the rotors are in good shape. Now, when you check your rotors to see if they need to be replaced, you're looking for, like, discoloration, like purple burnt colors, meaning they got overheated. You're looking for a lip here at the edge. That means that they're getting worn down too far to reuse. Another reason that you'd want to replace them, if there's big pits of rust, they're really rough surface, no bueno. And a final foolproof test that your rotors need to be replaced is if you're braking really hard and the steering wheel is vibrating or shaking, that means your rotors are warped in the front and need to be replaced. So, now we got to get this rotor off, but as you can see, it is trapped by this bracket. And usually, this bracket is held on by two pretty big bolts in the back. And you can use a socket and ratchet, but oftentimes, if they're really tight and it's not enough, so you can put a bar, a pipe on the end of this, or what I like to use is a breaker bar. So, it just gives you more leverage, no problemo. Okay, we got the bracket off. There's a couple things that we're going to need to do to this later on, but we'll get to that later. For now, we can remove the rotor. Now, as you can see on this car, I got really lucky. The rotor is just going to pop right off. However, here in Hawaii, rotors that just fall right off like that are more rare. They get rusty on the backside and they get stuck to this hub. This is where a lot of guys run into trouble and you can spend hours trying to get these things unstuck. Now, if you're dealing with a rotor that's stuck on, there's a couple tricks I want to share with you. We actually made a great video on just that subject. If you really want to get into it, you can go check that in the link above. First thing that you can try is a penetrating product, which you would spray on the studs and then also around this area. The reason I don't generally do this or like it is because to really be effective, you got to leave it on for hours or even overnight. I usually go for a hammer. Now, I can't use the dead blow hammer with the sand inside. That doesn't work. You need something metal that's going to really shock the rotor. Essentially, hit the rotor in between the studs and you're just going to keep going around, smacking it really hard. If you're not confident in your hammering ability, you're going to want to protect the studs with the lug nut. Because if you hit this and damage the threads, you're in a whole world of hurt having to replace that. Now, if that doesn't work, you may need to go to a sledgehammer, small sledgehammer, and just whack that thing really hard in between all the studs. And eventually, that thing will pop off in one hit. In a crazy world where that doesn't work for some reason, a lot of rotors will have a threaded hole somewhere in between the studs. Sometimes they'll have two. This one here doesn't, but a lot of them do. And what it allows you to do is drive with your impact or a socket, drive a bolt into that threaded hole, and that will cause the rotor to pop off. So again, I actually do all those things in that video that I mentioned before, including going over some specialty cases that involve the rear brakes. So make sure you check that out. Last thing I'll say about getting your rotors off. Some rotors, I've noticed, especially on Asian cars, they will have like a retaining bolt in them. It's usually Phillips, and it is a bear sometimes to get those out. They love to strip. Some tricks to getting those out if your car has them is you want to use some sort of an impact gun or tool to shock them lefty loosey. In extreme cases, I've had to use a little screwdriver or a punch and actually hammer them counterclockwise to get them started coming out. When I finally get them out, I usually just throw them away. They're not necessary for keeping your rotor on. That's the job of the lug nuts. They're part of the assembly process when they put the car together. So I never put them back on. All right, now we've got our rotor off. We have removed everything we need to pull off, and we're essentially halfway there. Now, a lot of people at this point think that you just put the new parts right back on. That's all that you need to do, but that is wrong. There's a few key steps when you're putting things back on that you need to be aware of, and one of them is actually a safety concern. So one important step that we have to do before we put the new rotor back on is clean this surface right here on the hub. If any dirt or rust especially gets on here, it will actually cause the rotor to be out of level essentially. You get a little wire brush, and you're just going to clean any rust or dirt off of this face. I'm also going to do this outer edge because the rotor sits on this as well. Now, a lot of these rotors come oiled from the store to keep them from rusting. Obviously, that's pretty bad to have on your brakes, so you got to get that cleaned off. If I use brake clean, give it a little douse and a wipe down. Now, the other thing that can happen if you leave the oil on there, not only does it make your brakes work less effectively, it would embed that oil into the pads. They absorb that. It doesn't come out. Having oil embedded in your brake pads can make them heat up and make them wear unevenly. The only real way to fix that is to replace your pads and often your rotors. So now because I just cleaned this rotor off, I'm going to be conscientious the rest of the brake job about keeping this surface clean. So I'm not going to grab it with dirty hands. I'm going to try to hold it by the edges and get it in there without getting it dirty. The next thing to go back on is this caliper bracket, but there's an important thing we have to do before we bolt it on. Now, in this caliper bracket, we have the caliper slide pins. They're usually built in, and you can see how these are allowed to move, which lets the caliper float. If the caliper doesn't float, that's where you get one brake pad worn out more than the other, and the reason for that is these are supposed to be greased, and these ones are pretty dry and sticky, a lot of gunk on them, and when they get bad enough, they won't slide properly. So you want to clean them off. Now we're just going to put on this new grease. Now there's a couple little tricks to this. You don't want to too much. I just kind of goop it around, and you don't want to put it at the end of the pin where it's going to compact and keep the pin from going in. So then you just slide it back in. It should pop back on. You want to make sure it's nice and seated. Now, usually I try to avoid just pulling on this, because sometimes you can pop it out on this end, which is annoying to get back in. So with one hand, I usually try to pull the rubber back, and then I pull the pin out of it. You can see on this one, there's a little rubber section, and you don't want to mix up the two pins. So I usually just do one at a time so that I don't lose track of which pin goes where. A lot of people miss this step. Okay, the other thing that I want to do is check the brake pad hardware. So this is the stuff that the brake pad slides in, and a lot of brake pads come with a new set of hardware. You can reuse the old ones as long as they're not like this, where they're cracked or bent. So it's a good thing this set came with hardware. Pop out the old hardware. Then, before I put the new hardware in, I'm going to use my little wire brush again, and I'm going to really clean out these slots, because if there's a lot of rust or dirt inside there, they're going to keep the hardware from settling down into position properly, which would make the brake pad sometimes stick. You do not want that. You want to really pay attention to the ones that you took off so that you're not putting them backwards. You just want to make sure that it's fully seated down inside that channel there. There. If it doesn't, you'll have a lot of trouble trying to get the brake pad. Okay, now that we have our hardware in, we can reinstall the caliper bracket. Now, you just remember how stinking tight these bolts were, and you're going to put them on the same tightness. So it's time to put the new pads in, and just like the rotor, you want to keep these surfaces clean. You don't want to get them oily and dirty. Now, you'll notice on these pads, there's a little feeler gauge, and sometimes those come in the bag of hardware, and you've got to install those. On this set of brakes I got, each pad came with one. Usually you only have one per side of the vehicle. Ideally, you want that little feeler to be first in rotation. As the wheel's rolling forward, you want it to hit the little squeaker first. If I installed the pad like this, it would go all the way through the pad and then hit the indicator. Honestly, I find that 90% of the time these don't really work anyway, so just don't rely on these dumb little things. So this brake pad will go on the inside, because if I tried to put it on the outside, this little feeler would be on the bottom. The one on the outside is this pad, so that the feeler's on the top, and I just got to work it in to these little springs here. These springs pull the pad away from the rotor when the brakes aren't applied. I usually start at the bottom and then swing the top in. If that doesn't go in nice and easy, there might be something wrong with the hardware you put in. The pad should be pretty loose and able to slide when you install it. The inside is always a little more difficult, because you can't see the top, but it should go the same way. Sometimes I'll push on the center of the rotor just to center everything up. All right, now it's time to put this caliper over top of the pads. So I unwire it from the shock and then from the caliper. This is a part of the brake job that a lot of people struggle with, and that is compressing these pistons back inside the caliper so that it'll fit over these new pads. However, we already did that step earlier on. Remember the screwdriver we used to compress these pistons? So now life's easy for us. People have used C-clamps and blocks of wood trying to clamp these back in. Very difficult and annoying, because you're connected with this brake line, so it's just a pain in the butt. You can get a specialty tool kit for various different sizes of calipers. You could use it to screw those pistons back in. This is free. I got this for free on the tool loaner program at a local auto parts store. What I use is this little tool. I've had this thing for like 10 years, costing 15 bucks, I think. You ratchet it, and as you pull that, it spreads the part. This is way easier than clamping or the screw-type methods. I really like this thing. One caveat to all this is there are some types of calipers, specifically on the rears in some cars, that actually have to be screwed in as they're pushed. You can't just push them. And if you have one of those, that's where you'll need a specialty tool like this that will allow you to rotate as you compress. Or I've also done some videos in the past, you can get those little brake cubes that fit inside the slotted pistons and allow you to screw them in. But hopefully, you did the screwdriver method, it's all good to go, and now this just slides right over the pads. Just keep in mind that these slide pins have to be pushed in oftentimes to allow it to fully seat. Now again, don't drop this thing, so keep a good hold on as you get your caliper bolt in. All right, now I just tighten these bolts up. Use a little tap of the hammer. These bolts, you cannot put as much tension on as the big fatties underneath, so you just kind of want to give them some love, the same amount that it felt like when you took them off. And sometimes this wants to spin on you like it did when we were trying to remove, and you'd have to hold it again with pliers, but I think it's going to hold just fine now. Often when I'm doing brakes like this, I will take this opportunity to check and potentially change my brake fluid. We made a video all about this, how to do it, why you want to do it, but essentially brake fluid is always absorbing moisture and breaking down, and if you let it get really bad, it'll destroy your brake components internally. Now the reason that I often will think about it when I'm doing a brake job is because you want to change your brake fluid every 30,000 miles or so, and that's usually about when you're changing brake pads anyway, and when you've got the wheel off and you're right up in here, the bleeding nipple is right there in front of you, it's a great chance to do it. So take this chance, check your reservoir, if it looks dirty, if it doesn't look clear, it's a good time to change your brake fluid. All right, before I put the wheel on, I'm just going to give this thing one last clean, make sure that any fingerprints or greasy oil gets cleaned off, at least the outside of the rotor, which is the most likely to get dirty. Now before you move on to the next brake, there's something you want to do first, you want to sit down in here and pump the brakes until they get firm, because what's happened is you've spread the caliper out and there's a big gap, it's actually raised the level of brake fluid in the reservoir, and if you go to all four corners and spread those calipers out, there's a good chance you're going to overflow your reservoir all in your engine bay onto your garage floor. So after every corner, I come in here, I pump the brakes, which lowers that level back down in the reservoir. Once I've done the front two or all four, whatever I'm going to do, I pump it, then I go and check the brake fluid level and top it off to make sure it's at the full mark. All right, now that the passenger side is done, I'm going to get to work on the driver's side. Now today, I'm just doing the front brakes on this van, and it's pretty common just to do the front. You don't have to do front and rear all at the same time, because the fronts actually wear out two or three times faster than the rear, because that's where all the stopping power is up front. And actually, I've had a lot of clients come to me straight from the mechanic with a quote, so we're doing all four corners for like $1,200, and then when I inspect the brakes myself, the rear has plenty of life left. They just need the front done. So that would definitely be a waste of money doing all four. And if you really want to maximize this brake job and exchange the brake fluid like we talked about before, you're going to want to check out this video where we go through it step-by-step, or you do it by yourself. Super easy.