I have a pretty good feeling that my experience today applies to all Outlanders so I'll share my experience for anyone that might be interested.
I had to change the brake pads on farmgirl's Outlander as the fronts were shot. The rear pads still look good so I'm keeping the pads for a bit and I'll keep an eye on them as these things are EXPENSIVE. Retail is $45 per set (that's x3 for two fronts and one rear plus tax).
The inboard calipers are a bit of a bear to get to so here's what I did to get the pads changed.
First - I put the machine on an ATV floor jack and removed the tires.
Second - I worked at removing dirt, dust and dried grass that I didn't get with the hose the last time I cleaned it. Once everything was loose or removed I used the blow gun to blow everything out removing even more dust/dirt. The importance of this step will be apparent before this job is done.
Third - I tried, unsuccessfully, to remove the star bolts holding the caliper in place with a 3/8 ratchet. This
will not work, no matter how hard you try, so don't do it. Use an air or electric impact to remove them as they are in with blue loctite. You will need to completely remove them one at a time as you must go through the gaps in the rotor to get to these bolts. Since the gaps don't line up with both bolts at the same time, you'll have to rotate the hub/axle to align the gaps with the each bolt, one at a time.
Fourth - use the impact again to remove the two hex bolts at the top of the caliper. This is a clean and quick way to do this as you won't have much leverage to both hold the caliper
and loosen these bolts by hand.
Fifth - now the old pads will fall off/out but do not remove them yet. Instead get a medium C-Clamp and press them into the piston to seat it into the caliper. This way, once you install the new pads there will still be room between them to fit the loaded caliper over the rotor.
That's it, now you can reverse the order and you're done. There are three things that I did that I would suggest for you to do to make this both easy next time and just as safe and secure as it was when it was new.
- lube the hex bolt shaft with high temp grease to ease fitment through the tops of the pads and into the seat in the caliper
- use never seize on the threads of that same hex bolt to make it super easy to remove next time
- use blue loctite on the main star bolts that hold the caliper
I offer this up just because these are a bit different than most calipers. At least the mounting of the calipers is different, after that dissimilar from other calipers.
