The Big Red Guy left me a set of Baers and I went out to the garage to put them on and I could not get the stock rotors off. I tried a dead blow hammer and a lot of general looking at it.. Before I break something ... is there a trick? Or do I need to break out the Big Guns and Hammer? :cry :confused:

 

Just have to ask, did you remove the bracket that the caliper was bolted to? If you did just take a hammer and tap around the rotor and it should just come off.

 

Remove caliper and caliper bridge. The bolts on the bridge are really torqued tight and the factory uses lok-tite on them. The front rotor should just slide off. If your car has been driven in wet or snowy conditions and there is rust on the hub & rotor, use penetrating oil between the mounting surfaces. Then firm persuasion with a rubber hammer is in order. Sometimes you might even have to use a torch to heat the mounting surface of the rotor to get it to expand enough to break the rust bond. In the REAR - be sure that the parking brake os OFF !!

 

Thanks CHJ and Tonyh2000, CHJ got it right, lots of wet driving= rust=hard removal. I used PB Blaster and waited about 30 min. and with a little brass hammer they came off AOK. :chevy

 

grntech, A little word of advice is clean, clean, and clean the area where the new rotor mounting surface meets the axle with steel wool or I have a GM (Kent Moore J42450-10) cleaning kit so as to make the new and existing mating surfaces as clean as possible. If you don't do this there is a very real possibility of uneven rotor wear and that can lead to problems. JMHO. I change rotors often and always try to make sure I do this.

 

The shop manual states the caliper mounting bolts and bracket mounting bolts must be replaced once they have been removed. Is everyone changing them when they replace pads and/or rotors, or is the shop manual being overly cautious?

 

I replaced the Caliper Mounting Bracket bolts once. Since then I just put a little blue Locktite on them and put them back in and torque them as best I could.

Biggest worry is getting them tight enough whether or not you use new bolts. You need to tighten to 125 ft. lbs. Doing the job on jackstands does not give a lot of room to swing the torque wrench and it is hard to get the force required from the positions you find yourself in.

As for the Caliper Guide pin bolts I usually replace them every time I put on a new set of stock pads since the GM pads come with a bolt for each caliper. Most aftermarket and race pads do not come with new bolts and I just reuse the old ones by adding red Locktite to them so they look like new ones. I have never used a torque wrench on the guide pin bolts.

Just make sure all of the old Locktite is cleaned out of the bolt holes and off the bolts before you try to reassemble the parts.

Bill

 

PB rust Buster is the ultimate :D :D :D