The brake warning light has been flickering in our Sequoia, and if the brake warning light is on long enough, the traction control and stability control warning lights illuminate. There was 3 mm remaining pad life, so I was putting off the job until the weather warmed up to at least freezing on a weekend. The lights made my wife nervous, and she didn't seem to believe me when I told her that it still stops fine for around-town driving.
On a previous replacement attempt, I couldn't get the pad retaining pins out and the ends were starting to mushroom so I gave up and bought new pins.
Started the job on a Sunday evening around 4:00 PM. It usually takes me about 45 minutes to do a brake job, and with the stuck pins, I guessed 2 hours would be more than enough. What a pain in the neck it was to remove the pins! I used a drift and hammer, then got a bigger hammer, then got out the air chisel, then got out the angle die grinder, then got out the air cutoff tool. The driver's side pins took about an hour each to remove, the passenger side only took about 20 minutes each. Somewhere along the line, I knocked over my halogen work light and broke the bulb so it was back to a drop light and the LED head light I use for camping. The Sequoia has a
4-piston caliper, so compressing all 4 pistons simultaneously without removing the caliper took a little more time than on a single-piston caliper. The stupid wire retaining clips for the pins are hard to hold on to with gloves, and by the time I was working with them, the temps had dropped to around 27 degrees, which is tough bare-handed at 10:00 PM. My hands were getting a little cold, those stupid clips fly a long ways in the dark!The replacement pins got a coating of Anti-Seize to make the next brake job easier.
For the wheel torque fanatics out there, I ran the lug nuts down in a star pattern with my impact gun and stopped as soon as the hammers hit the anvil and took a final pass with a torque wrench
Took it out for a road test at 11:15 PM, back to stopping without any warning lights. Even taking an hour out an hour and a half for dinner, that was the longest time I have ever spend on a brake job, even ones where I've worked on all 4 corners and flush the fluid!