well they have cuts in the material thats have to be in the same direction as the other side i made that mistake when i noticed it on one side. I placed the cuts upwards, as for the indicators i ripped em off the inner pads.

 

Gotcha. I thought it might help to detemine how many mm's of brake pad you have left. Thinking when it gets down to the bottom of the groove, it would be time to change the pads. But I guess not.

 

a little tap to the pins with a center punch is the suggested way to install them- must be in all the way to lock in place-
a tiny bit of caliper grease makes them go in smoother and remove easier next time

pads have a center slot for 2 reasons- to give an easy visual of pad remaining- normal min is 2mm and thats USUALLY the end of the groove
Not all pads are the same and some grooves go all the way to the backing plate and others may have no groove at all so look closely

Its other purpose is to allow expanding gasses that come from hot pads in use a place to escape
Thats why side slotted rotors exist-the slots allow the gasses a place to escape

IN extreme situations expanding pad gas can push the pads away from the rotor- while your foot is buried on the brake pedal- not a great feeling approaching a hairpin turn way to fast~

 

Thank you everyone for the great input!

Alright so as Tripnbeats stated, I went and ripped off the indicator for the inner pads. They slid in much smoother.

However, I wasn't sure which way the grooves were supposed to face - up or down? Mine are down so the indicator was on the top side. Does that play a role? TIA!

 

doesnt seem to play a huge role. least of my worries....next time ill use them reversed to see if it makes a diff

 

Haha yeah, I already love them because they create a lot less dust than the OEM's..
i think they are starting to grab as hard as the OEM's the more I drive on them!

That's good to hear..Thanks for your opinion!


Oh and.......these are only limited lifetime warranty..it doesn't cover normal wear...i thought they were ripping me off so I called several other Autozone's and all the same response...maybe area/location plays a role?...I'm on the east coast....does anyone on the east coast have lifetime on these?

 

Hey guys,
i have a quick question on the installation of the brake pads. When i removed the OEM pads, there are 2 shims on each side of the pads. Cmax pad comes with a shim on them already, should i still need 2 shims from the old pads? It seems like only one will fit on the cmax pads.

let me know how you guys installed yours.

thanks

 

no

 

use what came with the new pads

remember to clean and regrease with caliper grease,, the sliders where the tab on the pad end fits
thats where they move across when applied

a little grease on the outer side of the shims will allow them pad to move as supposed to when in use- put it where the fingers touch or the piston does- look at the old pads for wear pattern and follow it

 

brembo cars- just a touch of grease on the retainer pins makes it easy to work on , and a little grease on the pad backs for install
Not sure if you can reach inside the caliper area to clean and lube anything else on them- look closely

 

I just finished installing the CMAX rear pads on my 08 TL-S, and I must say, this was a pretty easy job for a DIYer. I installed them as specified, lubed where needed, and voala, done in about 90 mins. Not bad for someone that is still learning about the car.
When I took it out for a test drive, the brakes felt really good, and no squeek, yet. I don't think that I will get any squeel though, as I put a fair amount of anti squeel on the back, and lube on all sliding surfaces.
I really liked how these CMAX pads came with all new hardware, shims, and lube for a more complete job. It really helps to have it all come in one package. Rather than looking for things separately, and for a decent price also. I believe I paid $56 for the rears at AutoZone. We'll see how they behave over the next few thousand miles.

 

i have these pads on for about 8 months now and one side squeaks occasionally under light pressure.

 

^^^I had that happen once...but then I took them out and noticed that there was some dust collecting behind it due to me overdoing the grease. I cleaned it off, reapplied and now 3 months later, got no noise still.

 

Do a pad-bedding procedure and your initial feel should return.

- Do a series of 6 medium pressure stops from 45mph down to 5mph (don't come to a full stop).
- Drive for 5 minutes without using the brakes (yes this is the tricky part).
- Do another series of 6 hard pressure stops from 55mph down to 5mph (don't come to a full stop). By this time you should be smelling hot pads.
- Drive another 5 minute cooling period without using the brakes.
- Park overnight to temper pad material

This burns off any mold release agent still on the pads as well as presses them into the shape of the rotor. But most importantly it gives the rotors a proper coating of the new pad material. When the pad material on the surface of the rotor doesn't match, you loose a considerable amount of friction.

 

BTW: For those that don't know.....ALWAYS bring in the old part for comparision when buying stuff from so called "autoparts" stores. These guys have no idea what there doing, and they ALWAYS try to give you the wrong parts EVERY FREAKING TIME!!!! It's like a prank or something. They trust their crappy database WAY too much.

If you take out the old part and bring it in with you, you can easily compare to see if you're getting the proper part.

Batteries, Rotors, Hoses, Brake Pads, Nuts, Axles, etc.... They always try to give us the worng parts. I've tried dozens of them too...

 

Yep when I bought these pads, they gave me the wrong ones. 2nd try was much better.

 

Oops, did I just reply to quotes on page 1 of a 4 page thread? I must have missed that...

 

yeah i will pull the one side off again and clean. what did you use to clean? brake cleaner??

 

I would just wipe it if I were you. I think a brake cleaner would remove all of the grease.

 

Yep...just basically used the brush that comes in the graphite caliper grease container to smooth it all out. that was it.

And me too...they gave me the base model front pads first...

DANG!

 

Right, all four of mine came with indicators (the little metal tab hang off one corner).

Maybe 01tl4tl can answer this: The OEM pads were chamfered/tapered, on both ends of the pad. The Duralast were only chamfered on one side, why? And does it matter whether the chamfered end is towards the front or back?

 

Chamfered side needs to face the rear of the car.

 

err? I ran 40k on my car with OE pads and rotors. Tires too..except I saved the michelins until my bridgestoneRE960AS get lower. My michelins at 25k was at 7/32nds. Im about to replace my pads and machine the rotors. They had about 40 thousandths left from discard limit. My pads are roughly 70% worn in front and 75% worn in the rear.

 

my local autoZone doesn't have a type s in their system - which part # should I get?

 

Tell them you have an '06 with manual transmission. Same pad.
.
.

 

Thanks that worked

dgc1049

 

uggg I did not do this. Been on the car for 4 months? And they brake normally. Should I got through the trouble of switching them around?

 

I installed brand new Duralast CMAX gold pads and new duralast rotors for the front of my 06 AT TL two weeks ago, and have been having some real frustrating problems. I followed all instructions by the book, and the overall condition of the front brake system was excellent. (I live here in NC....not a lot of road salt, and wash my wheels about every week)

- The passenger's side caliper piston doesn't seem to be compressing against the pads. Some of the rust on the rotor is still there after a 10 mile test drive with a couple test stops.

- The front end feels rough when driving between about 20 MPH and 60 MPH. I liberally greased all parts properly, checked for proper threading of all bolts, greased caliper pins, etc. Can't find anything wrong.

?????

 

Rust on new rotors?

Have you done the bedding procedure?

 

Sorry....I should have been more clear....the rust is from the water that got on the rotor when I was washing the car. There's just a tiny bit of superficial rust that gets on there after each washing. And it usually goes away after the first drive.

 

Are there pad shims that go with the CMAXes or did you have to reuse the old ones?

 

Gonna do this today...... Thx for the info

 

Installed these pads over the weekend, so far so good, however, I pulled off the wear indicators on the pad that goes on the inside.

I did this after examining the originals pads, I noticed the these didn't have the indicator for the inside and stopped trying to force the pad in (including hammering it in).

 

i noticed this too, if the wear indicator is just slightly bent/off it wont allow the pad to go in. I just readjusted mine and the pads went in fine.

 

I'm a couple hundred miles into the brakes...no dust...awesome product!

1hr and no $$ when it comes time to replace......super awesome product!

Thx Acurazine!

 

Just swapped out the DG Ceramic pads on the MDX. After 7 years (+1 day), and nearly 100k miles, they still had about 10-15k miles on them before the striker. Wear was even front to back and on each side. Very little dust through the life of them.

When I traded them in at AutoZone, they charged me the price of inflation (current price - price purchased + tax), roughly $8, but didn't hassle me. Took about an hour (minus trip to AutoZone) to swap them and bed them in. I did the brake fluid last year, so I'll wait before doing another flush, but I didn't lose any fluid with the swap.

Sadly, can't report on the TL, but the pads in the TL had about half the pad left when I swapped out the rotors about 1.5 years ago (~65k miles on the pads). So I'm guessing they'll do well over 100k miles. The new owner will have at least a few years on them.