WORKING ON REAR BRAKES
1 Our rear brakes looked a bit old and crusty compared to the fronts and they may well be the original 2006 pads. Civics suffer from seized calipers and non-working handbrake mechanisms, although upon testing, both of ours were declared fit and ready for more work – not bad for 13 years.
2 The rear calipers come off just the same as the fronts, but the slider spanner size of 15mm is different. The pistons are so old and rusty they cannot be moved back on these ‘wind back’ units, so getting the calipers off the pads took some effort. The brake pads look like Titanic memorabilia.
3 The caliper carrier bolts are next after you’ve got those pesky disc retaining screws out. The bolts are 14mm and are torqued up to 55Nm upon reassembly. Two things in this photo – the suspension is quite rusty (but not bad), and the rear shocks are German Sachs with Honda logos!
4 So, here is the caliper and you can see the shape of the wind-back piston. The red dot here marks the position of the serrations – note that one of them must be at this angle to the caliper as there is a locating pin on the inner rear pad that needs to fit into one of these four serrations.
5 This is my old faithful Laser Tools brake caliper wind-back tool I bought in 2014 for our Vauxhall Zafira project of that year – I have never used it since. It looks a little bit rusty so I stripped and greased it all up before use, but it’s a good piece of kit. You just can’t do the job without this tool.
6 Here’s a close up of the tool doing its thing; two small pins on the tool’s end disc locate into the serrations on the piston, and a combination of inwards force and turning clockwise rotates it back into the caliper on the threaded internal screw. That’s the bit the handbrake lever operates on.
7 Do a similar clean-up job on the rear caliper carrier brackets and the stainless steel shims so that the new pads are a nice close fit without binding, and bolt them back onto the rear arm once the new disc has been fitted – paying the same attention to de-rusting and cleaning the rear hub.
8 Here’s the reverse of the rear brake pad and you can see the small circular lug just above the red dot. The lug is there to locate into one of the four piston serrations and it locks the piston to prevent it rotating gradually during service. The pad won’t fit if the piston serration isn’t in the right place.