How to Remove Brake Bolts & Calipers

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is Nate McCullough on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this clip we are going to talk about the appropriate way to remove your brake caliper. You take a look here; up top you can see this is a solid piece. There is no bolt here. That's not too uncommon; most of the time it will have 2 bolts. This particular vehicle only has 1. It happens to be a 7 millimeter Allen Head. I prefer to use one of these on a ratchet. It is a lot easier than using your plain single piece Allen Wrench. Take it and slide the Allen in, make sure you have a good fit and break the bolt loose. These bolts don't have to be extremely tight and it is really uncommon for them to cease. Once you get the bolt loose, go ahead and give her a wiggle so it clears the caliper bridge. So I ratchet it out. This caliper will rotate up like so, brake pad will fall out and slide it in. And that is how you remove the caliper. Once you have it off, you don't ever want to let the caliper hang by the brake hose. The hose is designed to carry fluid pressure inside of it and not carry the static weight of the hose. If you leave it hang this way, it is possible to damage the delicate tube inside the nylon reinforcement. What I like to do is just take a caliper and flip it over the back and set it up right there. That exposes all the braking components for you and that is how you remove your caliper."