i am going to change my rear brakes tomorrow. DO i need a piston compressor to slide the piston back or can i just use a C clamp.
I know when i did the front brakes - all i needed was pliers
but the rears are a little different and i wanted to know if i needed a rear piston compressor? Thanks

 

what year is ur car?

 

not at all. just a C-Clamp. Put a peice of wood or something over the piston and put the c-clamp on to compress it.

 

C clamper willm work just fine. Just did this to Snaps CLS last weekend.

 

C- clamp works for me also

 

Every man should have a big ass C-clamp in the garage...

I usually just use the old pad over the piston instead of a peice of wood.

 

For some calipers (not the CLs though), these are a good idea. The reason is where the clamping pressure is going. A proper spreader will only put pressure on the inside of the caliper (where it is designed). It is possible to damage a cheap a$$ caliper with a c-clamp if you put too much pressure on the thing (by cracking the outside of the caliper, which can be very weak).

Bottom line.... For 99.99999% of cars, a C-Clamp works just fine.

 

C-clamps are fine. I use big channel locks. Its alot easier and quicker.

 

1 big long bolt, 1 nut, and 2 very large washers worked gret for me on several cars. These were just extra parts lying aroung my garage at the time.

 

im 99.9 % you dont need anything except a screw driver....just did my accord rears and not long ago the CL this is the 99.9 that my accords are the same as the CL if so... there's a big cross grove in the piston...you just rotate it about 360* and it will retract all the way...i pushed for hours on the accord even completely disconnected it...took 3 hours...then once i realized all i had to do was rotate it ,the second side took 15 minutes

 

How does that work?

 

i just finished installing my rear brakes and rotors
I definitely did not need to use the C-Clamp
I just used a big ass chanel lock to compress the piston
One screw on the rotor did not want to come out so i had to drill it
what a pain in the butt
Anyways
I realized that i did not take off the stock metal shims that were on the back of the pads
DO i need to put those back in?
I think the EBC Greenstuff pads had some kind of metal shims already on the back of the pads.
I do not want to take out my rear pads again if i dont need to
DO i really need to put back the metal shims on the back of the pads or no?

 

my greenstuff pads came with shims which went over the backside of the pad, you can use those.

 

aiite cool
thanks for your advice
the EBC greenstuff pads did come stock with metal shims
thank god that i dont have to take off the pads again
Thanks guys

 

All Mine.......it works the same way as an actual caliper piston compressor made by Blue Point. the 2 washers secure the bolt in place and the nut while being turned pushes the bolt against the piston with enough pressure to push the piston back in.