How to service your brakes if you live in an area with snow

This series is divided into five sections:
Introduction: Getting started
Part 1 covers tearing things apart and seeing what needs to be done, which for me is usually a lot
Part 2 covers putting it all back together again, clean, lubed and freed-up
Part 3 shows anything specific to the rear brakes that could not be covered in Part 1
Part 4 wraps it up by showing some ancillary checks you might as well do while you're down there getting dirty.
Part 5 More details on cleaning up severely rusted pins, and dealing with shim/rotor contact. (Addendum to Part 2.)
Part 6 What the corresponding parts look like on a 2003 Accord.
Note: All pictures can be clicked on for LARGER versions!

PART 1: Pulling it apart and assessing the damage

Here's where our journey begins...

This 1991 Acura Integra RS has resided in the southern part of the province of Ontario, Canada, all its life, and as of the date of this picture (2003) had about 210,000 miles under its oil pan. The foregoing makes this vehicle the perfect poster boy for our lesson today.
The weather in my area is essentially identical to that of Detroit, Michigan. We don't get quite the amount of snow that Buffalo NY gets, but ours sticks around a lot longer.

You can't see anything suspicious in this photo, but behind the scenes, unseen by the casual observer, salt and moisture are taking their toll under that flaky wheel cover...

(The tires, by the way, are Yokohama A520s. Noisy as anything; don't buy them.)

First things first: We have to take the wheel off, which we do here. Dig all that rust. Rust is our watchword here, as it intimately affects everything we do from this point on, and is the raison d'etre for this series.

If you live in an area with no snow and/or little rain, count yourself lucky. Rust is NOT fun. Rust is expensive and troublesome, and is the primary reason cars are retired from active service up here besides collision damage.

All the parts you see here, with the exception of the rotors, are original. The calipers have been rebuilt internally by me, but the exterior displays winter's damage honestly. See the rust on the rotors? They are genuine Honda, and are four years old.

On this car, the front and rear brakes are all discs. The procedures for maintaining either are basically the same, so you can consider that these steps are applicable to either front or rear, except where noted in Part 3. If your particular car has drums, that's something I haven't got around to covering yet.

Now we have to remove the two 12mm bolts that hold the caliper to its bracket through the slide pins.

They are accessible from the inboard side, towards the middle of the car, and right at the very top and bottom of the assembly. Each screws into a pin that has a corrugated rubber boot attached to its end, so they're easy to spot. In my car, they're the same size and length, so you don't have to make sure they go back exactly where they came from. If they're different on your car, make sure they go back in the correct places!

Removal of the upper bolt is shown here. Note the wrench: It's a "12-pointer", meaning the closed end has twelve points, so it looks like a sunburst rather than a hexagon. This is important; not now, but when we go to do the rear brakes. A "six pointer" is shown here.

With the bolts out, we can slip the caliper off the pads. It may take some wiggling, and if the brakes have been severely neglected, you might need to pry with a screwdriver or whack the caliper with a nylon hammer to get it to let go. The caliper tends to rust to the anti-squeal shims that are installed on the backs of the pads. Some garages will use silicone rubber anti-squeal goop, which if improperly applied can effectively glue the pads to the caliper.

Get some coat-hanger wire and bend it so you can hang the caliper from the suspension upper A-arm and the caliper upper bolt hole. Do not allow it to dangle by the hydraulic hose, that's very bad practice.

By the way, Web sites written by people who live in warm climates will advise you to simply remove the lower pin bolt and swivel the caliper up out of the way. This site is an example. That is the WRONG approach for cold, snowy areas. That method will mask slide pins that are beginning to seize.

Ideally, the pads will fall off on their own once the caliper is removed. If not, then finger pressure should be enough. If they are easy to remove, then somebody's been doing his job.

If the pads are sticky, or you have to resort to a hammer and screwdriver to knock them off the mount bracket, then we have problems.
(Rear brake is shown here to illustrate that problem. They are MUCH more prone to seizure than the fronts.)

This will likely happen to you every spring, which is why I wrote this series.

Now lift off the slide shims. This is the bottom one. There is a corresponding upper shim at the top of the caliper. Underneath these shims is the source of so much of the trouble we have with Northern brakes: Rust.

And here's how rust damages the pads: The pads are shown in place for this photo, but the caliper and shims are off. Follow the path of the yellow arrows. Rust under the slide shims is puffier than the original metal. The slide shims end up being pushed towards each other, squeezing the pads between them and locking them in place. The inner and outer pads are independently prone to this, and which one gets locked in place first is a matter of chance. The giveaway that they have been seized is the need to hammer or pry the pad off, usually accompanied by a dramatic difference in lining thickness between the inner and outer pads.

Now it's time to check the two slide pins. Grasp each one and give them a push/pull and twisting motion. They might appear a bit sticky, but should free up with a bit of hand effort.

If the pin eventually frees up and slides smoothly in and out, check the seal of the boot to the pin's head for rust in the join. If all is OK, you can leave it alone for this time and check the other pin. If one or both resists all efforts by you to move them by hand, you'll need to clamp a pair of Channel-Locks or Vise-Grips to the pin's head, and rotate the pin back and forth while pulling it out of its hole. Might take a while to wiggle it out it's stuck really bad.

This pin (below) was not good. The seal between the boot and the groove in the pin's head was broken by rust creeping down the pin from head to shaft, which allowed water to enter the boot. Once the water gets in, it stays there for a long time, munching away at the metal of both the pin and its hole in the mount bracket.

This particular pin was not yet sticking, but had I not checked the integrity of the pin/boot seal, it would have seized up soon.

Here's a pin that didn't live through the winter. It was rusted and seized very badly and took me a good minute to edge it out of its hole. However, we can resurrect it, and its hole in the mount bracket...

On the seized pins, pull the boots out of their sockets and check them for cracks and holes. They must be sound, otherwise water will be allowed to enter and cause rust again. I don't usually see damage to the boots unless they've been gouged by mishandling or rotted by use of the wrong grease. They're cheap to replace, like the pins.
Unfortunately, with some vehicles you are required to buy an entire hardware kit to replace just one boot. However, apparently the fit is so similar from year to year that boots from a different year can often be made to work. A good dealer parts man is a godsend in a case like that, as he can save you mucho dinero, knowing which boots may fit your car from years where it's possible to buy a single boot.

We've disassembled the system and are ready to start cleaning stuff up, lubricating it and putting it all back together. Now, go to Part 2.