Is there much involved in changing the brake pads on a 2002 Ford Ranger 4x4?

Answer 1

As far as I know, you just put the truck up, remove a bit of brake fluid from the master cylinder (and dispose of it, never reuse brake fluid) to avoid it overflowing when you take a c-clamp and tighten it enough on the caliper to bottom the pistons in their bores (this is when the master cylinder fluid level rises) then remove the c-clamp. I'm not sure but i think you can just pop out the two caliper slide pin bolts (top one first, try to retain as much of the grease on them as possible) and pull the caliper off. Since I haven't actually done this yet, you might need to take the caliper assembly off of the wheel hub by two bolts (factory loc-tite'ed, so that might take an impact wrench, or maybe my 120lb body isn't strong enough). suspend the caliper assembly with a wire so it doesn't just hang from the brake line. then switch out your pads (and shims if applicable) on your anchor plate, slide the caliper back over the pads, line up the pins and tighten them to 14-26 ft lbs. if you had to remove those bolts from the wheel hub, spec says 80ft lbs, and you may want to re-loctite them. replace wheels, lower truck, start it up, pump the brakes to readjust the pistons (pedal may go to the floor the first time, just keep pumping till they feel firm), top off the master cylinder and you're done.