Gen 2 rear brake pad/rotor change

mhamilton said:

Anyone done rear brakes on their Gen 2? My rotors are pretty deeply scored, although there is plenty of pad left, I'm looking at replacing them. I was curious if there is anything special to know about the rear calipers with the integral parking brake motors?

On my other vehicles with EPB the system is identical to a manual parking brake, just has an electric module to pull the brake cable. Not sure if these Volt calipers with individual motors are the same, or if some reset/recal procedure is necessary, or if that can be done DIY.

Thanks,
-Michael

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mhamilton said:

27k on the odometer.

I have no idea what the PO did to result in the brakes looking this bad, I've personally never seen a brake surface like this before. They work fine, if you like the sound of braking with 60 grit sandpaper. Rears are far worse than the fronts. Rotors may be savable with a skim, but would at least put on new GM pads if I don't just replace both pads and rotors.

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mhamilton said:

emartin00, how many stops did it take to clean yours? I tried the parking brake stop about 5 times last night, not much difference on the rotors.

Thanks for the links Scott! I'll read through those tonight.

Andy, very possible the car sat for several weeks after it was traded in, before I bought it.

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Andy00778 said:

My rear rotors looked identical to your pictures. It originally started in Dec after being away on a cruise for a couple of weeks. It sounded like the normal rust on the rotor from sitting but it never quite went away. The noise was particularly bad in reverse.

After making the mad dash to the border before it closed the sound got worse in reverse only but now the scoring rings were present on both sides.

GM said the pads were not worn but had gone “hard”. They replaced pads and rotors although I think could have gotten away with new pads and buffed rotors.

I see this may be a normal issue on regen cars as the back brakes do not work enough.

Car has 42000 miles on it.

Front rotors are like new.

emartin00 said:

Go to an empty parking lot and get up to 20mph and then pull and hold the parking brake lever. It'll clean the rotors right up.
Last year my car failed inspection because the rear rotors were gone according to the shop. I did as I said above and brought it back to the shop and they passed it, no question.

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filmvolt said:

My son and I just did a full front and rear brake rotors and pads replacement on my 2016 Gen 2 Volt by ourselves. I purchased a set from of rotors and pads from Autoanything.com (Power Stop Z17 Evolution Brake Kits 4-Wheel Brake Kit 2016 Chevy Volt Part #:CRK7561). Cost me about $180.00 total. My son has done a brake job before on his Jeep but this was a little different but not difficult with the right tools and after watching a few Youtube videos. The car is basically a Chevy Cruze so if you watch a good install video that will get you through the front brakes no problem. The rear is a little different because the Volt has an electronic parking brake and the Cruze apparently does not. It just makes the re-install a little harder. A couple of pointers if I may: 1) Don't forget to release the parking brake before starting work on the rear brakes! 2) Buy or borrow/rent a Universal Disc Brake Caliper Wind Back Tool for the rear brake piston. We found that after installing the new rear pads we couldn't get the brake piston assembly back on and needed to compress the piston. This is hard to do because of the e-parking brake assembly. You can buy a Lisle 28600 tool for about $10 but the pattern is wrong for the volt piston. The Volt piston has three notches each 120 degrees apart and the Lisle tool all has two notch patterns. We were able to make it work but it was more difficult. Autozone has tools you can borrow for free. 3) Find your jack and jack stand point carefully (consult the manual)

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filmvolt said:

My son and I just did a full front and rear brake rotors and pads replacement on my 2016 Gen 2 Volt by ourselves. I purchased a set from of rotors and pads from Autoanything.com (Power Stop Z17 Evolution Brake Kits 4-Wheel Brake Kit 2016 Chevy Volt Part #:CRK7561). Cost me about $180.00 total. My son has done a brake job before on his Jeep but this was a little different but not difficult with the right tools and after watching a few Youtube videos. The car is basically a Chevy Cruze so if you watch a good install video that will get you through the front brakes no problem. The rear is a little different because the Volt has an electronic parking brake and the Cruze apparently does not. It just makes the re-install a little harder. A couple of pointers if I may: 1) Don't forget to release the parking brake before starting work on the rear brakes! 2) Buy or borrow/rent a Universal Disc Brake Caliper Wind Back Tool for the rear brake piston. We found that after installing the new rear pads we couldn't get the brake piston assembly back on and needed to compress the piston. This is hard to do because of the e-parking brake assembly. You can buy a Lisle 28600 tool for about $10 but the pattern is wrong for the volt piston. The Volt piston has three notches each 120 degrees apart and the Lisle tool all has two notch patterns. We were able to make it work but it was more difficult. Autozone has tools you can borrow for free. 3) Find your jack and jack stand point carefully (consult the manual)

The job went smoothly otherwise. The hardest part was accessing some of the bolts, again because of the e-brake. Have a good set of tools and a torque wrench. A pivoting socket head might really help also.We are going to finish the work today and test drive so I'll post any other issues if they happen.

As most people have posted the pads and rotors rarely need to be replaced on the Volt due to Regen braking and that is true. I have exactly 100K miles on my 2016 and the pads were not overly worn but the pads and rotors had pitted and degraded from age and exposure to east coast weather and road salts and were in messy shape and making a lot of noise. I'm sure I could have just resurfaced the rotors and replaced the pads only but honestly the time and effort wasn't worth it (having to fully jack up all four tires and remove the rotors, bring them to a resurfacer, pay him, drive there again to pick them up). I can't imagine it would have been much cheaper than the $180 I spent and now I'm good for another 100K miles! Good luck and let me know if you need any other help! It was a rewarding job to do and a fun project with my son and I'm sure I saved a $1,000 over what me dealer would have charged.
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