Mondeo Rear Brakes - Tricky Little Buggers

[bigev]

I wanted to share my experience with changing the rear pads on my 2010 Mondeo, a task which I assumed(!) would be as easy as that on my Falcon. Turns out, not so much ……

This is more a note of possible issues for those planning on doing it themselves, as well as a future note for myself as I have a memory like a sieve. If I’ve missed something that would make this an easier job in the future please comment. I do not suggest that the way I went about this job is the right way. Is there a better way?

It all started with the obvious sound of metal-on-metal when braking. The car is just over 60,000kms and still on it’s first set of rear pads and disks.

I made the decision to change the pads that afternoon to avoid any significant disk damage, so I headed on down to my local Repco and bought the default pair of rear pads.

Starting on the passenger side I took the rear wheel off and undid the caliper – that was where things started to get tricky.

It became clear pretty quickly that I could not press the piston back at all. This was a real issue as the pads had caused a small lip on each side of the rotor. No matter how I tried I could not get the pads over those lips as there was no play from the piston. After some researching I discovered the fact the pistons are screw-in type and not push in like my EF. Now I will admit I had not done any research in to how to change these pads, but I realised I was in a bit of bother.

In the end I had to file a section of lip off each side of the disc so the caliper would slide off the rotor. This worried me as removing some lip off just one section of the rotor would make the rotor unbalanced and may introduce some wobbling to the wheel. I decided that it would be smart at this stage to buy new rotors so this would not be an issue. After checking with the three local big stores (Repco, Bursons and SuperCheap) none of them stocked the rotors (and I wasn’t paying Ford prices). So I skipped that step and decided to risk keeping the old rotors. (it’s worth noting the rotors are only about ½ used).

My next difficulty was screwing the piston back. Turns out you need a special tool. So, back to Repco to buy a dice-shaped device that does the trick.

Now this dice-tool didn’t properly fit the piston. I had to use an angle grinder to modify one of the sides so it would fit (I turned a 4-pin side to a 2-pin side). Hooray – it fits.

Next difficulty came after about 10 minutes of screwing the piston in – it wasn’t going back in. Another quick Google reveals you need to push in HARD to get the piston to lock on the threads. Finally, I got it going and after about 15 minutes of stuffing around the piston was screwed in.

The new pads took a bit of stuffing around to get on to the caliper but went on OK in the end.

After the lessons learnt on wheel one, the second wheel was much faster. I reckon all up I spent maybe four hours on the first wheel and a little under 1 ½ hours on the second. The most time consuming part in all this was the filing back of the lips on the rotors. If there’s a next time I might try a power tool of some sort to help out with the lip removal rather than a hand file.

I reckon I’ve reduced the lifespan of my knees by a few years. Turns out kneeling for long periods on concrete makes ‘em a bit sore.

Also FWIW there’s no noticeable wobble in the wheels from the modified rotors. Hopefully I’ll get a couple more years out of them yet.