Installing these pads, both front and rear, is pretty straight forward (and it hasn’t changed since we did it in 2015). Both the Hawk and Brembo pads fit perfectly. After we bedded them in, they have done their job quite well. We should note that Brembo DOES offer a front pad for Isuzus and if we had known about it, we would have picked up Brembos all around (we intended do Hawk HPS all around until we discovered they were not available). We ended up installing the Hawk and Brembo pads on different weekends and noticed the Brembos gave us a much nicer pedal feel immediately. We really like these pads, they are perfect for a street only car or truck.
Next, we decided to pull the ABS computer. This is done by unplugging the giant black connector, then removing all four brake lines, then finally unbolting the ABS pump from its bracket.
To keep brake fluid from going everywhere while we swapped the computer, we used the good ol’ rubber-glove-finger-stuffed-with-a-scrap-of-towel-over-the-end-of-the-fitting trick.
With the pump out, you can unplug the power wire to the pump and remove the 6 Torx screws that secure the computer to the distribution block. Then just swap computers and put it all back together.
Next up we need to remove the MC. Unhooking the hard lines and unbolting the proportioning valve was easy enough. However the lines from the proportioning valve to the ABS pump were rusted on tight. Instead of rounding the fittings, we gently bent this assembly out of the way to let the MC and booster out.
4 comments
Maybe I skimmed it too quickly, but were the calipers in good working shape? No chance of sticky/stuck calipers?
I do find that most Japanese manufacturers (imo) undersizes brakes on their regular cars. On my old Highlander, a very quick stop from 160km/h to 0km/h would seriously put the brakes to test(did that once). I didn’t encounter adequately sized brakes until I got my Mazdaspeed3, and even then they somehow were just huge single piston sliding behemoths.
PS: With the new website format, are all the old accounts and such gone? We use this name and email format to comment now?
Calipers were fine. We cleaned the sliding pins and re-greased them when we replaced the pads, but that’s all they needed.
if the VX’s brakes were more consistent they’d be a lot better. Even with the repairs, the pedal can be a bit vague. Feels like there isn’t enough vacuum on the booster or something along those lines. Still a great rig though and the upgrades we added made a noticeable difference.
nice