Hi Everyone,

I have a couple of questions for you guys. I'm planning on changing my front brake pads out on my own and was wanting to see if there was anything I needed to know about my 2004 X-Type 3.0 before I do the job. Are there any quircks or special tools that I should know or need when I do the job? Also, does anyone have any advice as to what brake pads I should replace the current ones with. (I'm just looking for decent ones with factory performance.)


Thanks in Advance

 

There's a ton of information on that topic on this site. If you do a little searching you should find everything you are looking for and more.

 

Adazard, as for the type of pad that you are after, there is a large selection out there of what to choose from, but each one has its pros and cons.

semi-metallics: fairly cheap, decent stopping power, but tend to generate a lot of dust (ie, dirty wheels)
metallics: about the same price as semi metallics, long lasting, but also tend to eat up rotors at the same time
organics: probably about the cheapest you will get, but have a very short life, generate more dust than you can imagine, but are much more friendlier to the environment that any other pad out there.
ceramics: higher end of the stopping power range for pads, generate very little dust, have good characteristics over many repetitive hard stops, but have a fairly significant price tag associated with them.

As for installing the pads, the Jag calipers are a little bit different than most other cars that I work around. The big thing to keep in mind is that you only need to remove the upper bolt on the caliper and then the caliper can swing enough that you can remove the pads. Make sure to clean the surfaces to get rid of the old brake pad dust to ensure the new pads can slide like they need to for even pad wear. As for the caliper piston, use of a 6" C-clamp will push the piston back into place. Overall, not too bad of a job. Probably take you about 45-60 minutes to do the front end of the car.

If you have more questions, just ask. This may be also a good time to do a brake fluid swap out since you will be there already. But, not needed.

 

I had ceramics installed on my 05 and will never look back. Wheels stay MUCH cleaner and still stop the car. Extra money spent pays dividends on time spent scrubbing.