Hey,

I have a 95 civic dx that I'd like to change the brakes for. What tools are needed and how do I go about doing this?

Thanks.

 

Front or rear? If its the front discs then all you have to do is take off the caliper and the pads should just slide out and then you just slide in the new ones. Atleast for my 93 Ex thats how it was and i think the bolts were either 10 or 12mm.. i don't remember exactly.

 

they are front brakes.
can you be a little more specific maybe with some pics or diagrams?

 

If you've worn the pads down to the metal, or the friction area of the rotor is heavily rusted, you'll need new rotor(s). Otherwise just buy new pads if your rotors are clean and reasonably flat..

The replacement is reasonably simple. Make sure the car can't fall on you while you have the wheel off. You need to push the piston in the caliper back in because the new pads are thicker than the worn out ones. This is easiset to do before disassembly. Put a large C clamp between the center of the outside pad and the top of the cylinder inside (the tallest part of the caliper) and tighten it. Note that you are pusing the brake fluid out of the caliper and back into the reservoir. This has two implications, first the reservoir can overflow, second some people would rather bleed the old fluid out and replace it at this point. For a beginner though, this isn't strictly necessary and a lot of people just do the "pad slap" and have no problems.

Now after retracting the piston and removing the clamp, you'll have a big gap between the pads and the rotor. Remove the two slide bolts (12 mm heads I think), which go thru the caliper and the rubber bushings, and pull the caliper off. Do not let the caliper hang by the brake hose. Set it up on top of the knuckle by the strut, or hang it with wire.

If you are replacing the rotor, also remove the two Philips head screws near the hub and take the bad rotor off, clean the friction surfaces of the new rotor with brake cleaner (very important, new rotors have oil or varnish on them that will mess up your pads), and put the new one on.

Remove the old pads and put the new pads back in exactly the same way. Then put the caliper back on. Go over to the other side of the car and repeat the same thing. Never replace the brakes on just one wheel.

Before driving the car, pump the brake pedal several times until it is firm. Then test-drive carefully. Make two or three moderately hard practice stops to "seat" the pads before full brake performance will be attained.