just did mine yesterday. havent been able to test it as i still need to bleed it all. fronts went on in an hour.. the rears tho.. omfg.
CAUTION on the rear discs.. major PITA. Mine would not come off.. tried the 2 bolts, sort of worked, cracked both rotors / stripped the threads they were so stuck on. took 30 mins / side with a 5 lb sledge and LOTS of pblaster (yes on the parking brake shoes) to get them to come off. they didn't seem to drag, but i'm guessing the rotors were original. the rotor surface where the shoe contacts didn't seem THAT grooved but they did not want to come off. there is SUPPOSED to be a hole thru the rotor to access the parking brake adjuster but not on mine. windows went nowhere. this is a bay area ca car its whole life - no rust anywhere. east coast guys.. get out the plasma cutter.
The parking brake mechaniism is a NIGHTMARE and i had to completely disassemble / reassemble both sides since it fell apart whacking the rotors off. it eventually went back together but it was HOURS of fiddling, cursing, doing, redoing, re re doing, cursing some more, thowing tools, etc. and now im sure the adjustment will be off on the parking brake so it will go to the dealer to get fixed and negate any savings of having wasted an entire saturday crawling around in the driveway.
never again
fwiw i went with all centric. parts are nice. in hindsight i'd get facory painted caliepers at any cost. i used the g2 brush on kit and it's also a colossal PITA. you have to do it in 1 shot since the paint wont keep, and trying to get all the nooks / crannnies of the calipers painted made me want to strangle a kitten. tape / hang / aerosol would be much easier.
HOLY HELL!!! We may as well have done them together. I did mine with a friend. The DAMN rears rotor took us about 20 min each to take off. We thought it had crazy rust. Turns out, the ebrake shoes wouldn't let the rotor go. Just like you, one of the springs from the ebrake assembly popped off and that supposed "window" was Waaaaaaaay too small to see what you were doing in order to properly reinstall them. With both rear rotors and reinstalling the springs took us about 2-3 hours. Of course we didn't have the special tool to do this.....What a whore!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After installing everything, I went to pull out (test drive) and hear something loose in the rear passenger wheel. Back to my friend's garage and to take the wheel off and sure enough, the stupid goddamn spring sprung loose and was dancing around inside making noise. Luckily no damage to the rotor, but WOW............ we were not happy. I felt bad for my friend who did most of the work. So there is a special tool to get those springs and plate into the ebrake assembly nice and neat, but we didn't have it. We had to improvise and it took hours. UUrghhh.
I, too, used G2 paint and originally thought there was too little to completely cover all four calipers. I was wrong. There is plenty. Yes it was a pain to paint every nook and cranny on the calipers, but I manage to do it. I was listening to music on youtube while I was painting, so I relaxed with it. I had great results.
Getting back to the ebrake dilemma, I ended up leaving my rig so that Toyota original parts can be ordered and replaced. I don't trust the $30 ebrake kit AutoZone offers. Also, we have a better idea on how to install ebrake shoe spring thingie. I think we "fudged" when we reinstalled the spring, plate and pin. The end of the pin goes through the other side of the axl and to leave it stay in place, we hammered it bent so it wouldn't move. After all this came apart, we couldn't trust it again.
Bleeding: My friend did the pumping AND gravity method. Even still, my brake pedal seem to travel further down and "with less force". It wasn't squishy/mushy, but it didn't feel 100% right. Returning to this thread I see that you have to give it time for when doing the "gravity bleed" method. Note: the loud "beep" coming from the dash seems to indicate a warning that there is little pressure in the system.............. am I right???
Anyway, some pics:
painting with G2 silver. I liked the product alot and had great results.
Hospital bed
New rotors/calipers:
Axl SS lines were a little long. They were touching the fuel tank so we zip tied them so they dont touch.
found that my frond end links were not in good shape. Replaced them.
As I type this, we are waiting for the ebrake parts. Even though this project hasn't concluded, I'm happy, but wow. Murphy's law took over this project.
