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Heres a couple pics of me fixing my blazer's emergency brake yesterday. A stupid little clasp at the top of the ebrake held in with a phillips head screw (just underneath the top of the brake shoe) was bent back and the brake shoe was not flush against the back plate. It caused all kinds of popping, clicking sounds and vibration while I was driving. So to fix it I pushed the e-brake shoe flush against the back plate and pushed the metal piece back into place and tightened it up. While I was at it, I used a small wire brush and srubbed of a bunch rust build up to make sure the ebrake would work smoother. I then followed it up with a quick clean up job with some brakekleen and an easy reassembly. Simple easy fix that just saved me $80 in labor from a mechanic. These pics show the brakes and rotor off revealing the ebrake shoe:

This is a brief walk through of how to do a front brake job on a 2001 Blazer. If you are using this as a reference to do your own brake job, please keep in mind that all cars are different and not everything will look the same or be the same socket or wrench sizes. Also, if you have never done a brake job before, I highly recommend you have someone help you who has done them before so you don't mess something up. If you mess up your brakes, your brakes could fail and you could die or kill others accidentally. Anyway, with that little disclaimer out the way, get everything you'll need together. Unlike some of my other blog entries, the following pictures precede the instructions that go with that picture. I'm sure you'll figure it out. Everything from left to right: 1) Impact driver that plugs into cigarette lighter. 2) Wheel chocks 3) Tools on the bottom include and pry bar, 1/2 socket wrench, brake caliper clamp (I can't remember the actual name of it), rubber mallet. 4) A can of Brakleen and a bottle of brake/caliper greese. 5) Mechanics tool set. 6) Paper towels. 7) 2-1/2 ton Jack stand 8) 2 new rotors and ceramic brake pads. Ceramics are better and don't have nearly as much brake dust, which means they keep your tires looking much cleaner and free of alot of grime. Tools and items not shown include my 3-ton floor jack, a bottle of "freeze off" for rusted bolts and an inside shot of my tool set. 1) Look in your car manual and locate the correct points underneath your car where you can safely jack your car up. You do not want to jack your car on a part of the frame that you think will be ok, only to have your jack put all the weight of the front end of the car on a part of metal that can't take it and thus it'll fuck up your car. BTW, this is my 3-ton floor jack. Before you start jacking up your car, place your wheel chocks around your rear tires so your car does not move on you while jacking. (I forgot to take that pic.) 2) If you are using the jack that came with your car, jack up your car high enough to place a jack stand underneath it and lower it down onto it for safety. The jacks that come with cars are pieces of shit and you should not trust them with your head or limb under a vehicle. Only jack your car up high enough for the tire to freely rotate, about a half inch off the ground. I have faith in my jack, so I generally keep it up constantly, but I'll place a jackstand underneath in case some emergency happens and my jack brakes. 3) BTW, you should probably check your new rotors and brake pads at the store to make sure they are free of nicks or brakes. 4) Using an impact driver, most are powered by air compressors and are very expensive but this little one was really cheap and only costed me $30. I bought a better impact driver for it tho ($10ish), because the ones it comes with looked like shit to me. 5) If your tire has plastic covers covering the lug nuts, take them off by using a socket on them and taking them off easily by hand. No wrench needed for that. Then use your impact driver to take the lug nuts off. Always loosen the lug nuts first before removing them. Loosen them one after another by loosing the next lug nut opposite the one you just loosened. Never loosen them clockwise or counterclock wise. The lug nuts are on extremely tight, if you take them off one by one or loosen them incorrectly you run a big chance of fucking up your lug nuts and breaking some bolts. 6) Now that the tire is off, you can place it on the ground and use it as a seat to take care of the rest of the job. 7) Your caliper is the outer part of the brake system. It is connected to the car with a brake line. The caliper is only held on two bolt pins. I call them bolt pins because they are connected like bolts, but once you remove them, the length of the bolt is actually a greesed long metal pin. Its made like that so the bolt pin holds the caliper to the brake pad holder but also gives it the slight movement it needs for brake operation. I forgot to take a picture of the bolt pins. Also, if the bolts do not want to come off, you may have to spray them with some freeze off. If you use freeze off, try not to spray the rotor or brake pads with it. It acts like a lubricant and will cause your brakes to fail. Because I'm replacing the rotors, its not as big an issue. Also, remember which direction actually loosens and tightens the bolts. Because the bolts are facing you, you have to figure out which direction to turn them. If you over tighten them, you will probably shread the bolt head off and that will lead to a costly repair job. Once those pins are off, the caliper may not want to come off because of the brake pressure in the caliper. You will most like have to use a small pry bar to slowly work it off. 8) Once you have taken the caliper off, place it on something so it does not hang from the brake line. A brake line job is extremely expensive and you do not want to damage that brake line by having something that weighs about 5-10 pounds dropping and damaging it. Next, you have to take off the brake pad holder. It has an actual name, but I can't remember it. Its only two bolts like the caliper, but these are actual bolts. And the top one of mine is in a tight spot. I had to carefully turn my steering wheel to rotate it into a position where I could get it all the way out. And even then my socket wouldn't fit on it. I had to go to the hardware store and pick up a 18mm wrench just for this job. These bolts haven't been off in a long time either, so I had to use some freeze off on them and even wack it a couple times with the rubber mallet to loosen it up. 9) Now that that is off, heres what everything looks like separated. You can take off the old brake pads at this point. You may have to use a rubber mallet to wack them off the brake pad holder if they are stubborn. 10) Here are some pics of the old rotor compared to the new one. The thickness isn't bad on the old one, but it has some bad groves in it. Rotors are supposed to be smooth. Also, if you wanted to, you could take your old rotors to a mechanic and have them machined. As long as they still have a good thickness to them, having them machined back to smoothness will make them re-useable. It generally costs about half as much as buying new rotors. It depends tho. 11) Before you put your new rotor on, heavily spray that bastard down with brakleen to clean it. It may look clean, but you must make sure it is free from all oils usually leftover from manufacturing. Brakleen dissolves oil and greese away and drys very quickly. 12) If your brake pads came with clips, follow the directions that came with them and apply the clips. Also, spray the side of the brake pads that will come in contact with the rotor with brakleen. 13) Now prepare your caliper for the new hardware. Your caliper pistons are probably still out a bit. I like to put some caliper/brake greese on them at this point. Next put one of your old brake pads on the caliper and use the brake caliper clamp to push the caliper flush. If your car has two pistons like this one, alternate back and forth between the two until they are both flush around the same time. A C-Clamp can also be used for this if you have one. Once thats done, wipe off some of the excess greese with paper towels. 14) Now reassemble the entire thing. The rotor goes right on. I recommend reattaching the brake pad holder first before putting the new brake pads on. Also, if you accidentally get any greese or grime from your hands on the rotor or the part of the brake pads that touch the rotor, respray them with brakleen. You do not want greese or oil on those parts. Also, make sure you do not get any greese or oil on the lug nut bolts. If you do, spray those with brakleen too. 15) Heres a side view shot. You'll notice I put some brake greese on the two metal nubs where the brake pads are connected to the brake pad holder. The brake pads should have a little movement to them when sitting on there and the greese helps with that small amount of movement. 16) Now put the caliper back on. It should fit on pretty easy now that the caliper pistons are pushed back. When putting the bolt pins back in, I would rub some brake/caliper greese on them first and slide them back into place and then tighten them on. Also, becareful not to over tighten any of the bolts. Tighten them to the point where you can't move them anymore, then give them one last strong tug to make sure they are tight. Other than that, don't over do it. Once the caliper is back on, test your brakes by having someone turn the car on and press on the brakes slowly all the way down. Then release slowly. Do that a couple times and try moving the rotor while the brake is down. If it doesn't move then you did good. Once the brakes are released, make sure the rotor moves again freely. It may be a little harder to move it now, but as long as it moves, then good. Doing this a couple times gets the calipers back into position for correct braking on the road. 17) Now put your tire back on and, by hand, thread your lug nuts on and tighten them. Once they are on, bust out your impact driver and tighten them up in an opposite motion. Once they are all tight, tighten them even more. At least 5-10 clicks on your driver. Then remove your jack stand and slowly lower your jack down. Do not do it too fast. Let the weight distribute itself. Once the tire is down, remove your jack and then tighten your lug nuts again with a socket wrench to make sure they are on really friggin tight. 18) Now repeat all this on the other front wheel, because you must always do a brake and/or rotor job in pairs. Also, whenever you replace your rotors, you must replace your brake pads. Never put old brake pads on new rotors. New brake pads on old rotors are ok as long as the old rotors are smooth on both sides.

So I finished up the front brake job with no real problem. The only thing I forgot to do was spray on some anti-squeal on the backs of the brake pads, but thats only because I didn't have any at the time. Anyway, the front brakes are good, but we've been getting some vibrations in the steering wheel and the ABS is randomly kicking on. So I decide to check out the back brakes again. Seeing as I paid Midas to do my back brakes about 6 months ago, I never really looked at the job all too carefully aside from messing with the back left e-brake as I mentioned in another blog post. So, I start on the back right, I start taking it all apart and checking the work they did and thats when I realize one of the caliper pins is completely seized in place and the other one has limited movement. It took me about an hour to work that fucking pin out with my socket wrench while constantly spraying it with freeze off. wtf. I get that out, cleaned it, greased it. Ok. I go to take the rotor off and its locked in place on the e-brake. I had to whack that sunofabitch off with a rubber mallet. The rotor comes off, and so does the e-brake. After looking it over, the emergency brake was such a tight fit in the rotor, once its in place, it was causing a constant rubbing on the inside of the rotor. So I filed and sanded the damn e-brake down so it'll have a cm of breathing room. I cleaned everything up, re-assembled, tested thoroughly and its now in good shape. Roughly 5 hours on Saturday. It took me about 5 hours to get that pin out, clean everything and sand down that e-brake. So I figured the back left couldn't be as bad... Yeah. So yesterday (Sunday), I took the back left off and even tho the rotor came off easily, the brake dust on the inside of the rotor showed the e-brake was rubbing too. And of course, another seized pin in the caliper. WTF did I pay those guys for? Another 5 hours later and this side is now done. I took it for a slight test drive yesterday and the braking felt better than ever. I didn't get a chance to drive that far to see if the vibration problem is fixed yet, but I would assume the stuck caliper pins and rubbing brakes was the cause behind all that. I will never go back to that Midas again. Fucking rip off bastards.

I've been having some problems with vibration, noise and pulsating brakes with my blazer for a while. Since I replaced the front brakes, the problem hasn't improved much. Its mostly because the back e-brakes need to be grinded down more and the brake lines need to be bled. Hopefully once I finish those things, my brake problems will be over with. If not, it'll be time to take it into a shop. x_x Anyway, I did some more front brake work on the blazer last week. I cleaned off the rest of the leftover grease from the calipers, sprayed disc quiet on the brake pads to stop the annoying squeaking noise (which it did take care of) and I cleaned and liberally re-greased the caliper pins and rubber boots they fit into. Disc quiet works by acting as a sticky adhesive on the back plate of the brake pad. It causes the brake pads to stick to the caliper so that when the brake pressure is released, the caliper pulls the brake pads away from the rotor and holds them in place so they don't bang around or continue to slightly rub against the rotor while you are driving. Heres a pic of the sprayed on disc brake quiet on the brake pads. Always remember to spray brakleen on the sides of the pads or the metal nub ends if you spray them by accident. The brake pads put back on, with grease applied to the connecting points. This is the caliper bolt pin I mentioned in my other blog post for the front brake job. I wiped it down and mostly cleaned it up. Here it is greased up and ready to go back into the caliper/brake pad mounting piece. And if anyone is interested, here is a pic of the hand goop that I use to clean the grease, dirt, oil and grime off my hands. This crap works amazingly well.

Ok, This took me most of my afternoons all last week and two weekends, including this past saturday and sunday. I took some pics, but I'm not posting them in this blog entry. I just wanted to get the work done and messing with a camera took too long so I didn't get many pics at all. Parking brake/emergency brake/e-brake update! After grinding the brake shoes down a bit so they'll fit inside the rotors smoother, I realized the adjustment pins were rusted to all hell and wouldn't function correctly anymore. Whenever I pushed on the e-brake inside the car, the shoes would only move a centimeter. $20 at advanced auto for the parking brake hardware kit and I got everything swapped out except for the metal pivot piece. The replacement piece for that was rediculously small and would no way in hell work in my opinion. So I got the old ones cleaned up, greased everything with a lithium grease instead of caliper grease so there would be lease junk in there to mess it up, and after a long while I got it all working good again by holding everything in place while smacking the shoe into place. And after that, I put in the new retaining clip and those shoes were held in place tight and when applied, they moved a half inch. Yay. All done with that. After fixing the e-brake, the car still pulsated when braking. Everyone says its rotors. Seeing as the back rotors looked like shit since the back plates tore one up and the caliper pins caused the pads and rotors to wear uneven, I replaced the rotors and pads. I bought the parts from Napa this time. I had to file down my brake pad holding brackets to get some rust off. I also had to lightly file down the ends (not the nubs) of the brake pads so they'd have movement once they were in the bracket. And get this, the NAPA brand rotors and pads were a higher quality than what I got at advanced auto parts or autozone and where a little over $100 cheaper! I'll only buy parts from NAPA from now on. BTW, the NAPA back rotors were different on the inside than the wagner ones I originally got from autozone. Inside the NAPA rotors, it was a smooth tapered gradient inside the hat, compared to the hard edged line of the crap rotors that kept smacking my e-brakes. I may not have had to grinded my e-brakes at all if I would have had these rotors from the beginning! Fuck you autozone! Also, after doing the backs, I bled the entire brake system. After the back rotors and pads were done, the e-brakes fully done, brakes bled... The car still pulsated while braking, but! All the noise in the back end is now completely gone and the braking was a slightly different pulsating now. Now that all the rotors and pads are all brand new, I noticed scuff marks on my new front rotors from the pulsating bullshit. So I figured it must be the calipers. The front wheels were a bitch to move compared to the rears with the brakes off. So I picked up the front calipers with bracket for $54 a piece at NAPA, $90 a piece if I remember right at advanced auto and autozone. Fuck both of them. I replaced the front calipers, just like I replaced the ones in my Saturn blog. Turns out the front calipers were not fully releasing. After getting the new calipers on, the tires moved much much easier when the brake was off. Guess what tho! The brakes still pulsated.. But once again, it was a slightly different pulsation again and this time with all the noise from all the bad braking parts gone, I was able to hear a distinctive electric motor noise kicking in with the pulsation. Turns out I have an ABS problem on top of everything. I pulled the two ABS fuses, (the ABS light comes on on the dash now). With the ABS disabled, the damn thing brakes perfectly fine now. YATTA! I've let the blazer sit the past couple days so I can check the brake fluid level to make sure theres absolutely no leaking going on at all. Other than that, I'll give it another test run this weekend to some local stores to see if all my vibration problems were fixed too. If not, then theres something else going on with that, but I'll get to that some other time if its a persistent problem. As far as I can tell, the ABS problem is probably one, if not both of the front ABS sensors. Each costing about $70 piece. As far as I'm concerned it can wait until we're closer to winter because I don't want to fuck with this truck anymore.

The brakes have been pulsating pretty bad for about 2 weeks now. The pads looked good, so it must have been the rotors. I replaced the front rotors, brake pads and brake hardware clips yesterday and now it seems to be braking good again. I still have to give it a longer road test, but it is braking pretty solid now. BTW, rotors at NAPPA were $18 a piece while Autozone was $38 a piece. But for some reason the brake pads were actually cheaper at autozone than either NAPPA or advance auto parts. Surprised me. I'm not surprised I had to replace the brakes tho, they were the same pads and rotors that sat for almost 2 winters with the car. The bolts that held the caliper bracket on were rusted to all hell. Freeze off, an 18mm wrench and a rubber mallet and bam. I'm lucky the damn bolts didn't break.