1988 Mazda B2600 Front Disc Brakes

[goodfellow]

Although it doesn't look like much, but I've been working on this beast since 8:00AM this morning, and just finished up an hour ago. The problem was that the front pads had rusted in the calipers and both calipers were frozen on their sliders. So on one side the pads were eating up these rotors like a grinding wheel. The truck sat for nearly a decade so it's not uncommon for these calipers to just rust shut.

First thing was to get the calipers off and free up the sliding pins and bores. Lots of Kroil finally allowed me to free them up for removal and a good cleaning with a wire wheel gave me back some gleaming metal. Silicone grease will let these things slide again like new. Freeing the calipers took a while, but a good soak in the parts washer eventually got them to move.





Once the calipers were off, the manual lockers were removed and the CV joint snap-ring was loosened.







The bearing retainer was next. Most of these kind of retainers are held with Phillips screw, but in these applications it's almost always futile to try a screwdriver because the screw heads usually strip out. Best to go immediately to an impact driver and whack that Phillips head to make it turn.





The bearing retainer can now be loosened with a slight tap of a screwdriver -- it's pretty loose to accommodate bearing free play.





The outer wheel bearing can now be pulled out of the hub and the hub/rotor assembly removed.



The rotor bolts were frozen, but a heavy impact gun pulled them out in no time.



The hardest part is separating the rotor from the hub. Everything is rusted and corroded, so I just grabbed the air hammer and a flat chisel to split the hub from its rust bond with lots of impacts and vibration. It too about 15 minutes, but the hub eventually came loose.







A die grinder with a wire brush cleaned the hub before it was slathered with nickel anti-seize compound.







The new rotor was first cleaned, and then mounted to the hub with lots of blue Loctite on the bolts.



The outer bearing was repacked and the assembly was installed on the spindle.



The retainer and locking collar was replaced, as was the shim and CV joint snap-ring





Lastly the manual locker was reinstalled along with the caliper and new front brake pads.





Done!!! It was a pain in the a$$ to work with all these rusty and corroded parts, but well worth it. The brakes stop like new.