Brakes
Rear brake pads
Rear pads look like the front job with smaller hardware, and differ in the ways that bite: an electronic parking brake needs retracting first, and on many cars the rear piston winds back with a rotating motion instead of pressing straight in. Hazards and per-vehicle notes below.
Electronic parking brake must be in service mode via a scan tool before touching rear brakes.
Effort
- Skill
- 2/5
- Physical
- 3/5
- Diagnostic
- Not rated
- Consequence
- 4/5
- Time
- Not estimated
Each axis is rated 1 to 5 against the catalog's shared difficulty scale. An axis without a rating is unknown, not easy. A time estimate appears only when BuildBay can stand behind one.
Tools this job calls for
Requirement levels come straight from the job catalog. Required tools block the job; the rest make it faster, cleaner, or safer.
- Breaker bar (1/2")Required
- Low-profile floor jackRequired
- Jack stands (pair, rated)Required
- Metric socket set (1/4" + 3/8")Required
- Torque wrench (1/2", 30–150 ft-lb)Required
- Wheel chocksRequired
- Brake cleaner (cans)Recommended
- Cordless impact wrenchRecommended
- Triple-square (XZN) bit setRecommended
- Work light / headlampRecommended
Vehicle-specific notes
Where verified data exists for this job, and how far each row is verified. The values themselves (capacities, torque) live in the product, attached to an exact vehicle: an unsourced value never gets printed, and this page prints no values at all.
- Audi · B9Community-verified — confirm for your VIN
- BMW · F30 / G20 / F80 / F87Community-verified — confirm for your VIN
- Mercedes-Benz · E-Class / SL / CLS · 2003 to 2012Community-verified — confirm for your VIN
This car may have SBC (Sensotronic Brake Control): a pump-charged accumulator holds brake fluid at high pressure independent of the pedal. Confirmed on the W211 E-Class (roughly 2003 until its ~2006 facelift reverted to conventional brakes), the R230 SL (which kept SBC longer), and the first-generation CLS.
Opening any brake line or caliper — or working near the calipers, which the system can self-actuate — without first running the scan-tool SBC deactivation/depressurization routine is a fluid-injection and uncontrolled-pressure hazard. Blind pedal-pumping is not a substitute.
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BuildBay checks this job's required tools against your inventory and shows what is missing before the car comes apart.