The RAV4 hit the U.S. market in 1996, two years after it made its debut in Japan. Throughout its lifespan, the RAV4 steadily became more refined. The 2005 RAV4 came standard with four-wheel disc brakes and a 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine that produced 161 horsepower. Just recently, the front brake pads on my 2005 RAV4 started grinding and I found this process made replacing the pads pretty simple.
On my 2005 RAV4, there were two bolts holding the caliper in place and I used a ratchet and socket to remove them, while holding the caliper pins in place with an open-end wrench. The pads stayed in the caliper bracket after I removed the caliper, so I just slid them out. There is a series of shims on the pads, so I noted the position of each shim and pried the shims off of the pads with a flat-head screwdriver.
The rotors on my 2005 RAV4 had some serious grooves on them, so I had to remove the caliper bracket by removing its two bolts -- these were pretty tight, so I used a breaker bar and socket -- then pulled it off of the front spindle assembly. The rotors came off by pulling them off the front hub. One of them was stuck to the hub, so I just tapped it with a rubber mallet to free it, then pulled it off. The new rotors slid right back onto the front hub with no problems, then I reinstalled the caliper bracket and torqued the bolts to 78 foot-pounds.
I installed the shims in the same way they were before I removed them from the old pads and coated the outermost shim with disc brake grease to minimize squealing. Then I just slid the pads back into the caliper bracket, lowered the caliper onto the bracket and tightened its bolts to 20 foot-pounds. After I finished up with both sides, I tightened up the lug nuts to 76 foot-pounds in a crisscross pattern. I then took the car down to a small parking lot down the road from my house and did about 20 stops from 25 mph without locking up the brakes to burnish the new pads and rotors, and my RAV4 was ready for the roadway again.
