STOP!

The brakes on my Jetta started to make noise, this was back in November, remember I'm still catching you up. Disk brakes are wicked easy to replace so I figured I'd do it myself.

In getting it apart I discovered 2 things, first the caliper bolts are triple square. Triple square is also called XZN, imagine a square, now put another one on top of it but rotate the new one 33.3 degrees, then add a third square and rotate it 33.3 degrees the other way, thats triple square. I didn't have any triple square tools and the set from Autozone turns out to be too small. In the end I took a torx socket and beat it into the bolt. It was terrible but good enough. Amazon sold me the proper tool but of course it arrived after the fact.

Then I discovered I couldn't push the calipers back. I've always done this with a big c-clamp but these calipers need to turn as they go in. Autozone sells you a little cube thing which is just about worthless, don't waste your money. After I broke my favorite c-clamp I went to Harbor Freight and bought the right tool.

This is one of those jobs where the right tool makes thing so much easier I wonder why I never bought one before. The way the tool pushes and the thread pitch on the tool make it very easy to push the calipers. I should have bought one of these years ago. I think the list price is $40, I had a 20% off coupon so like $32 out the door in New Hampshire with no sales tax.

Assembly is the easiest part. Should be good for a long while. I ordered the bits to do the front too but  it looks like what actually happened is one of the pads on the driver's side got stuck and ate itself. I used a generous application of slide paste so hopefully it won't happen again. I'll check them when I rotate the tires in the spring and keep an eye out for that issue.