This past weekend, I submerged myself in the Escalade's braking system. She stopped just fine, actually quite well. I wanted to clean and inspect everything, and replace the hardware.
My intent was to disassemble the front and rear brakes, replace hardware, and replace all things associated with the parking brake shoes.
It didn't work out that way.
Friday night didn't happen because of issues at home.
Saturday was wasted jacking the Escalade up, dealing with caliper bleeder screws, pressure bleeding, and the fiasco of the Tech 2 Automated Bleed procedure. All that is documented in my Ugly thread. I did get the front calipers off and hung on S-hooks. I removed the caliper brackets and rotors, and took them into the shop for inspection. I was lucky in that the T30 counter sunk screws holding the front rotors to the hubs were unmolested. They came out with a quick blast from my 1/4" shank impact.
Looking closer at the front brake pads, I was concerned. They had some cracking.
Front caliper brackets and rotors on the carport workbench.
Pads show some cracking. Not end of the world, but not good. New pads are on order.
Sunday, I was able to disassemble and clean the caliper brackets in my parts washer. I used red 3M roloc surface conditioning discs to clean the rust from the inside hub mounting surface and outside wheel mounting surface of the rotors. Then everything got hosed down with brake cleaner and left in the sun to dry.
Front rotors after roloc pad treatment.
I used the same discs to clean the rotor mounting surface on the front axle hubs as best as possible. Then, realizing I was running out of time, I made the executive decision to not disassemble the rear brakes. I just cleaned the wheel mounting surfaces on the rotors with the roloc discs.
I used green 3M roloc discs and a light touch to clean the rust from the rotor mounting surfaces on the backsides of the wheels. That was a workout. I normally clean wheels on the top of my trash can. This Escalade has 22" wheels and 285 series tires. I had to really heave them up on the trash can. Getting them down was more of a controlled fall. Four times.
Once all was clean and dry, I reinstalled the rotors with a light film of copper antiseize on the mounting surface of the front axle hubs. As well, I put a thin skim of silver antiseize on the rotor mounting surfaces on each wheel. I mean really thin film.
