Just wanted to share with everyone the stoopits i've done with my car on the last two brake jobs. I'm no where near new at this and have done dozens of brake jobs on many cars. That's why this is all especially stupid. With the first brake job on my FiST i went with blanks and Hawk HPS, my pad of choice since forever. For reasons i was too distracted to dig up at the time, my bed in took a week or so lol But eventually i had functioning brakes. Fast forward to a week ago and i'm doing my brakes again. This time i go with slotted StopTechs in the front and blanks in the rear ( I also flushed the fluid and swapped to stoptech braided lines). So I pull the front pads and they're down to a sliver of material with perfectly even wear. Yes i like to get my money's worth 
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I made note of which pads came of off which side. This will be important later... I slapped on the new pads and rotors, etc and went out for the bed in. When i pulled over to let everything cool, pads were smoking. Well that's a first, i thought. Upon closer inspection i noticed the pads weren't making full contact with the rotors. Only the inner rotor was worn shiny. Never seen that b4...eh whatever, the pads will eventually flatten out after a few days and all will be well....NOPE....a ring of rust formed around the outer edge of the new rotor. Uh oh. This can't be good. To the Googles!!
Every forum i read was crying out stuck guide pins or new calipers. I greased the pins so it wasn't that and no way i need new calipers at 41k. I wasn't just gonna roll over and throw parts at this so up she went again to re-grease the guide pins. I hadn't cleaned out the old grease so i figured that might be the issue. Got some Q-tips and went to work. Buttoned up the passenger side and then while working on the driver side i noticed the back of the pads have buttons on them. I'd never paid them any real mind until I removed the old pads. But now I'm staring at them and it dawns on me that i'm stooooopit. These stupid buttons will get in the way if on the wrong side of the caliper. And sure enough, i had them reversed. Not convinced and being the engineer that i am, I wanted to test this eureka moment of mine. So I switched the pad orientation on the driver side. The passenger side was buttoned up so i left it reversed and went for test drive. Sure enough the braking power was MUCH better and the driver side rotor rust ring cleared right up while the left did not. So back home i went to take the passenger side apart for a 3rd time and flip the pads.
Lesson of the day - 4 button pad on the inside. 2 button pad on the outside. And there you have it folks, always mind ur buttons and don't be stoopit!
If you stuck with me this far, can you guess how my pads were setup for the 1st brake job during that week long bed in? Both 4 button pads on driver side. Both 2 button pads on passenger side. Yea, neither side was correct or making full contact. I think the only reason i didn't get the rust ring that time was cuz the blanks were coated. So i chalked it up to PITA bedding gone wrong and just pussy footed around until the pads leveled. And as you can see from the first pic above, they somehow wore evenly!
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I made note of which pads came of off which side. This will be important later... I slapped on the new pads and rotors, etc and went out for the bed in. When i pulled over to let everything cool, pads were smoking. Well that's a first, i thought. Upon closer inspection i noticed the pads weren't making full contact with the rotors. Only the inner rotor was worn shiny. Never seen that b4...eh whatever, the pads will eventually flatten out after a few days and all will be well....NOPE....a ring of rust formed around the outer edge of the new rotor. Uh oh. This can't be good. To the Googles!!
Every forum i read was crying out stuck guide pins or new calipers. I greased the pins so it wasn't that and no way i need new calipers at 41k. I wasn't just gonna roll over and throw parts at this so up she went again to re-grease the guide pins. I hadn't cleaned out the old grease so i figured that might be the issue. Got some Q-tips and went to work. Buttoned up the passenger side and then while working on the driver side i noticed the back of the pads have buttons on them. I'd never paid them any real mind until I removed the old pads. But now I'm staring at them and it dawns on me that i'm stooooopit. These stupid buttons will get in the way if on the wrong side of the caliper. And sure enough, i had them reversed. Not convinced and being the engineer that i am, I wanted to test this eureka moment of mine. So I switched the pad orientation on the driver side. The passenger side was buttoned up so i left it reversed and went for test drive. Sure enough the braking power was MUCH better and the driver side rotor rust ring cleared right up while the left did not. So back home i went to take the passenger side apart for a 3rd time and flip the pads.
Lesson of the day - 4 button pad on the inside. 2 button pad on the outside. And there you have it folks, always mind ur buttons and don't be stoopit!
If you stuck with me this far, can you guess how my pads were setup for the 1st brake job during that week long bed in? Both 4 button pads on driver side. Both 2 button pads on passenger side. Yea, neither side was correct or making full contact. I think the only reason i didn't get the rust ring that time was cuz the blanks were coated. So i chalked it up to PITA bedding gone wrong and just pussy footed around until the pads leveled. And as you can see from the first pic above, they somehow wore evenly!
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