first brake job on 2007 LGT

[Eville Rich]

I popped my cherry with my first significant maintenance effort on my 2007 LGT. Front pads and rotors were replaced. I bought the car about 10k miles ago, with about 50k on the odo at this point. Brakes were making some funny sounds recently and the feel wasn't so hot. Turns out I had only about a 1/4 inch of pad left on the fronts (I'm guessing they were the originals).

 

I've done brake jobs before, mostly on older BMWs (E30 and E28 chassis). The Subaru was slightly more complex, but not too bad. The major piece I miss from the BMWs was the rotor set screw, which holds the rotor in place, making reconnecting the calipers and brake pads a bit easier.

 

I decided to go cheap this go-round. Bought a pad and rotor set from Brake Overstock on Ebay:

 

They shipped very fast, though I'm only a couple of hours from their warehouse. For $110 I think this is a pretty sweet deal.

 

They did screw up the initial shipping, sending me two sets of pads, with one set not even being for the LGT. But after calling them, they sent me the rotors right away, no questions asked.

 

I've got much better pedal feel and a feeling of a bit more Thor in my braking. Probably just getting it back to the stock feel. I did not use the stock shims on reinstalling. The pads came with a backing plate, which I did apply a very thin layer of silicone grease to, along with a thin layer on the anti-rattle clips per the service manual's recommendation.

 

Next step is to address the rear pads and rotors. After that, hopefully not for some time, I'll probably replace the calipers with rebuilt units.

 

I'm fairly pleased with how the whole process went and the end result. Hopefully this post is useful for someone.

 

Eville Rich

[bluesuby]

What surprised me is the small rear pads, and they wear out when the fronts are gone. On older cars I would go through 2 sets of fronts before replacing the rears.