foofoomaru

Changing brakes tomorrow. Reading up on things tonight and tomorrow. What are the sites that you would tend to reference for help or suggest to others.

Appreciate the help

LawDog88

THIS ONE!

foofoomaru

I knew it was coming. Hah. I went to howstuffworks.com and from what I've read through, nothing too complicated came passing by.

HHR's doesn't require some crazy brake tool that's expensive or at shops/dealers only does it? I changed my brakes once, in 2005?, on my saturn so I remember basics. Just hoping there's not some sweet tool that I won't have.

hmm hmmmmm

working on it

I agree. If you are not experienced, only do one side at a time, that way you can refer to the other . Make sure you have enough tools and supplies to complete the job before you take it apart. Or have alternate transportation. And, like a competent surgeon, checkt make sure you have all your tools at hand when you are finished. I drove 20 miles with a coat hanger still hanging from my right strut!

foofoomaru

Haha snap. Coat hanger sounds thrilling. I'm driving to my friends garage and taking everything apart, then biking to town with the rotors to have them checked. Good ol' 8 mile bike. Getting my exercising in whilst working on my car. hah

843de

Here's a good video on front brake replacement for you to watch, its 9 minutes long and easy to follow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XftXW...eature=related

foofoomaru

Much thanks. I just got done with the install. NAPA took about 3 hours to give me my rotors back. Other than that, everything went smooth and loverly. Appreciate the help and guidance. Yay stuff.

843de

That's what we're here for foofoo, glad to hear that everything went smoothly, enjoy those nice smooth stops.

Grizzly old man

Being a fairly competent wrench myself, when the passenger side rear brake on my ‘06 HHR stopped working right I went to AutoZone and bought a new set of shoes.

I should have picked up the hardware kit with new springs as well. I thought the lining had broken loose from the shoe like on my Neon’s but the spring had broken and was laying loose in there and would sometimes get in a tight spot and make the wheel drag and sometimes stop turning.

I watched the video 834de linked to before I even went for parts so I felt confident I could handle this task.

It didn’t go nearly as smoothly for me as it did on the vid. Guess I’m not as strong as I used to be but at least I didn’t cut the parking break cable and all seems to work just fine now.

The little buggy seems to roll a lot more freely than it did when we first got it too. I’m starting to think that brakes were always dragging on that wheel because the lining on lead shoe is quite thin as compared to the drag shoe.

I have been tracking the mileage on the vehicle since we got it this spring and I’ll bet I see a pretty good improvement when I calculate the mileage this time.