Rear Brakes and CV Joint..
 

Hi Guys
2012 C30 R Design has just ailed his MOT with

Rear Brake Pads
CV Joint Drivers Side


Garage want to charge £200 to put right.

The CV joint I am not keen on doing myself as I believe the hub has to come off. Should I buy a genuine volvo part and let a garage do it??

But pads should be simple I guess as I have done front pads before.


Is there a guide for the rear brakes, and do I need a wind back tool, or any special tools for this??

Please help?

You do need a wind back tool and a 7mm HEX bit, I think that would be all. :) It's relatively simple if you get the stuff you need, plenty of videos show how to do it on YouTube and Googling. It has the same rear brakes as a Ford Focus so if you find a guide for a Focus it will be the same.

If you don't have a windback tool, a pair of needle nose pliers will do it. Just stick the ends in the recesses and spin your pliers around. Should wind back very easily.

I found that very much didn't work for me.. :P My car sat on axle stands for about 4 days waiting for the right tool to arrive after I tried that and failed.

Caliper windback tool
 

Hi Chiptivo,

Dont know if you managed to get your rear brakes sorted, but i had to replace rear pads on a C30 some months ago, in the past have used long nosed pliers to rotate the caliper piston, but found there was no way on earth this was going to work with that approach, maybe you found the same thing, had a look to see where i could buy a windback tool - note these have to have the pins exactly the right distance apart for the calper piston holes.. anyway ended up resorting to making something with whatever i had to hand (will post a picture in a bit) the tool worked surprisingly well as it gave me the extra leverage needed to get the rather reluctant piston to start turning .. had to anchor the caliper on one of the slide pins in order to be able to get the caliper held securely enough to turn it with the homebrewed tool :regular_smile: So like a lot of jobs you only need to get stuck at one tricky point and until you have got past that your stuck with the car on axle stands going nowhere :confused_smile:

I did it a few months back, replacing the front and rear pads. Front was easy as expected, the rear was a bit difficult in terms of pushing back the piston, the windback tool I have, the pins, do not match the caliper piston holes, so the last resort was the nosed pliers to rotate and at the same time pushing back the piston. It was not easy, but with a bit of sweat, nerves and muscle tension, i did it.

Homebrew windback tool and notes
 

Well here are some pics of my homebrew tool used to get the piston wound back, and some pics of the rear C30 calipers to help anyone else with luck..

Tool was made from some flat bar that came from a roofing tie found at a local builders merchant *ewson if you know them !, the holes in the piston are 6mm dia, so i used some M6 short nuts & bolts, and drilled some holes in the bar spaced around 19-20mm apart. The fit was good and required me to oval one of the holes to get the distance just perfect having the nuts on each side meant i could fit it on the piston then lock the nuts against eachother resulting in something that would take the force needed to turn the piston. You might wonder why i assembled the bolts going the opposite way.. well... as you fit the tool and turn the piston by say 90 degrees the caliper body gets in the way so you then just flip the tool so the other end is now used to turn it another 90deg. Calipers on this C30 were ATE ones, and i used Pagid pads which ive had fairly good experiences with if your not going to use OEM parts.

The pads have a spring piece on each of the pairs, worth remembering that one with the spring goes on the piston side, and the one without on the outer side.. Some ceramic grease on the piston end/pad rear and also on the guides (see green lines on pic1).. and dont forget to refit the long spring clips (in blue pic1) once its all back together..

As others mention you need a 7mm hex/allen tool to unscrew the guide pins (some more red arrows on the 3rd pic) i tend to use a long 10mm hex to 7mm tool and then fit a 10mm ratchet ring spanner over the bit which works well.