2004 Toyota Prius: First Brake Job at 86K Miles

Awesome post. Nothing like bringing parent and child together over a brake job. Gets them used to working under pressure too. I can still remember replacing a broken exhaust manifold on my mom's Sentra while my dad stood by arms folded and turning redder by the minute. Still can't figure out how reverse donuts breaks exhaust manifolds....

Brake pad wear seems to be skill-related. Some drivers use their head, plan ahead, conserve momentum, use engine braking, etc. People like that usually don't change their brake pads until after 100k miles.

Prius (and other hybrids) do some of that automatically (like regenerative braking) and also force a certain driving style.

Aggressive drivers driving cars with ESP usually wear out their rear pads (and rear tires, he-he) relatively quickly (20-30k miles) because ESP mostly uses rear wheel braking to control oversteer.

Most cell-phone-yapping, makeup-applying drivers driving automatic equipped cars in urban/suburban setting seem to wear out their front pads every 15-20k miles. They use binary approach -- they are either accelerating hard (looking at you, Mr. Riswick) or braking. Nothing in-between.

One surprisingly annoying problem I once came across was that large C-clamps were ridiculously hard to find in my area. I tried three small hardware stores and all they had were 3" ones for like $7--wtf? And they wonder why Home Depot is eating their lunch! I wound up just slowly pushing the pistons in by hand. Not easy but doable.

bemanix88, my local Ace Hardware has a nice selection of various sizes.

Yeah, this was at my parents' house which is in suburban CT. I don't think anyone works on their own cars out there....

Children and teens pick up skills easily. This pad change is a skill that Philip's son will remember for many years, and doing this with his dad he will remember forever.

Great post Philip.

I've got 72K in my MZ3 with still plenty of pad left. I wouldn't consider myself easy on my brakes but I do plan ahead, conserve momentum, use engine braking, etc. most of the time. They must be pretty hard pads on the P with the regen braking.

Phil- I think its great that you spent time with your son teaching him a valuable lesson, that truly is priceless and when my son is old enough I too will do the same.

Kudos for showing your son how to do one of the easiest of the DIY car maintenance jobs. Such basic repairs are remarkably satisfying to do.

The pads on my '81 Saab 900T and '96 Taurus SHO shared the same annoying feature: the pistons retract be screwing in rather than pressing. The piston has 2 dimples and a special tool is supposed to be used. It can be done with bent nose pliers, but it's a serious pain in the behind. Two of the best investments I have made in basic tools were a pad spreader (no more c-clamps for me) and a spring tool for the springs that hold together shoes on drum brakes (although this is increasingly less useful as 4-wheel discs become more common).

$64 for factory pads on your well out of warranty Prius? That's just a waste of money.

Great post. If I remember correctly, aren't the back brakes drums? Were those replaced? Isn't that a more difficult task than disc brakes?

Thanks for the comments everyone. Yes, pushing back the pistons was the hardest part. Dan recommended using the wooden handle of a hammer to lever it back. I used a c-clamp I got at Pep Boys with a quick release switch on it. But to get it to work I had to put something across the opening in the center of the piston. I used one of the old brake pads and it worked fine.

My Dad is a Phd but he always did his own work on our cars (including a complete rebuild of our '65 Chevy wagon)because it liked it. Just seeing him doing it was a good example. I like doing brake jobs because it's a HUGE money saver. It's almost as good as brewing your own beer -- but that's another story.

Philip Reed

Does anyone else find it ironic that the new brake pads for this Prius are GREEN?!

bankerdanny, those pre-88 SAAB 900 brakes were a huge pain. The special tool makes it easier but you definitely need to have a feel for it. Also, Haynes manual has a mistake in their brake pad change procedure for 900, which does not help matters.

@vvk

Interesting observations. I just had to replace the rear brake pads + resurface the rotors @ 37k (almost all city) miles. The fronts, however, still had a lot of life on them. Guess the ESP/ESC must have worn down the rear brakes. I was completely perplexed as to how an AWD w/FWD bias + front-engined small SUV could run down its rear brakes first.

Only reason I didn't try this DIY (other than the frigid Chicago weather right now) is I'm under warranty for another year or so. Hyundai is notorious for trying to deny warranty repairs so I just wanted to document the job having been done professionally. Hopefully I'll get the chance to do the fronts myself (first DIY on this car!).

vvk: I nearly broke a clamp (or the caliper) trying to press the piston on the right side in before I finally decided I was doing something wrong and called the local dealer This was the pre-internet days and I was borrowing my father's garage and didn't have a repair manual with me.

With the Taurus I broke down and bought the proper tool. It was still cheaper than having a shop do the work.

Did you use a torque wrench for the sliding pins? Does anyone use a torque wrench on the sliding pins?

I ask because I didn't use them on one of my brake jobs and it fell off while driving.

"I was completely perplexed as to how an AWD w/FWD bias + front-engined small SUV could run down its rear brakes first."

dragonflight, I think rear pads are worn down faster because now days cars use the rear brakes more that the front in order to avoid from diving during hard and medium braking...its called distributed braking or something like this...

yellowbal, I use a torque wrench. Most manufacturers specify thread lock compound on caliper bolts but not on sliding pins because there is not much force acting on them. Some sliding pins are not even threaded at all -- they are held in place by a cotter pin.