Just finished my rear brakes on my 2008 XJ8 and here area couple points I wanted to bring
up. They might be buried in the 4 pages of discussion on this post, but worth repeating.
Only 26,000 miles on pads but they were pretty much GONE... but this is a big beast to bring to a stop

- For the initial steps to insure the electric parking brake is disabled, I found that
if you release the brake and turn the car off and THEN remove the key... it sets again.
So I released the brake, turned the car off, left the key in the ignition and THEN
disconnected the battery NEG terminal.

- After all was done, the electric parking brake re-calibration steps were easy and clear
from the PDF file attached toward the beginning of this post

- The tip to pop the bleed screw a bit when compressing the piston was nice. On the first rear,
I had already taken the caliper off and THEN tried to crack the bleed. Kind of more difficult
since you had to hold the caliper with your hand and turn the very stuck bleed screw. For the
other side, I cracked it loose FIRST before removing the caliper. Also, I SHOLD have PB Blasted the
bleed screw because on one, the wrench started rounding the bleed nut. Also, should have used my
brake wrench and not a standard 10mm wrench.

- The sections of this post I read left me unclear as to whether the rear piston compression procedure
required the rotating tool. Mine is a non-R and non-VDP... but I erred on the cautious side and ordered
the kit for $20 on Amazon and rotated the piston. I watched a YouTube video of a guy working
on a regular 2008 XJ8 and he just compressed with a C-clamp.. but maybe he was wrong ??

- The slide pins use a 7mm hex and all I had was long ones (6-7""). Would have been nice to have a stubby
7mm since it would not foul with other bits in the suspension, but no big deal.

- Finally, my "horror moment" came when I was using the rotation compression tool. I was on the second
rear and happy things had gone well and I was just turning away like crazy when I noticed the piston rubber
boot got pinched in the tool and was getting rotated as I turned. I quickly backed off and smoothed it out and
thank god it did not rip !!!!!

All in all, I was a bit apprehensive doing this job but appears to have gone well and saved mucho bucks doing
it myself.

 

I am about to tackle the brakes on my 2005 XJ8 SuperV8. Thanks to all the info, tips and tricks I have come across here, I am hoping for a smooth operation!

 

Excellent guide with the included pictures, thank you for this. I was able to use a kit from harbor freight that was on sale to turn the pistons.

Also recommend an impact wrench for anyone doing this as one of my lug nuts loosened but would not finish coming off as someone had marred it up in the past probably using the wrong socket size.

I bought a Brembo prime rotors and ceramic pad kit from RockAuto, the pads included the two metal clips so no need to buy Brake hardware separately unless your rubber boots are damaged. I will say that while the ceramics are noticeably smoother, they're also slightly weaker than semi metallic. I wouldn't call it a major or risky difference and it might just take time to wear in the pads.

Important note for those doing this in the future: the correct torque spec is not 135 but actually 99 ft lbs for the caliper bracket bolts (the massive ones). The original poster misread the workshop manual which lists it in newton meters and when converted is 99 ft lbs.

I ended up learning that the hard way and snapped one of the bolts.. Hopefully the original poster is still active and can edit so others avoid this. Worse yet has been finding the right part number for the bolt. As of now I believe it's XR853294 but we'll see if I'm lucky when they come in.

My lesson from now on is to stop after it's tight no matter what the torque spec is.