New Front Rotors Day

OK kids, it's NEW FRONT BRAKE ROTOR DAY!

The biggest news during this off-season at NMS-North in the "Make the Car Go Faster" Department is new front rotors on the 2009 Cayman. Well, maybe brake components don't exactly make the car go faster, but they can make the car stop faster, which means you can STAY faster before braking, and ideally get back to going faster QUICKER. In other words, given two identical cars, the one with better  brakes will go faster on a track than the other one. 

Jack up the front, use jack stands, and remove the wheels for access to the rotors and etc.
For this job I just replaced the front rotors, and left the "etc." as is! 

Old drilled rotor about to be removed. 

With over 64,000 miles, and several years of autocross and track days, I'd say the (presumably) original rotors lasted a long time. While the originals were drilled, our new front rotors are slotted. If they last another 60,000 miles, that would be great! 

Pulled out the brake pads and removed the caliper. 

Old rotor is off, that just required removing two small screws and then SMACKING the old rotor to loosen it and pulling it straight out/off. 

Why just replace the fronts? Because the rears still look good and do NOT show the signs of wear like up front. Say, how DO you tell if your drilled rotors are worn? Well, without measuring thickness, you can look for cracks from the drilled out holes, and especially look for those cracks growing out to the edge of the rotor. The Cayman has BOTH of those symptoms up front, so that's why they're now going off to the big rotor pile in the sky. 

Caliper removal: The two T55 bolts circled in red come off, and the 10mm bolt that was in the green circle loosens the brake line (green line) bracket so you can remove the entire caliper. To the left of the red circles is where the two brake pads have been removed. 
Most cars have the caliper bolts (red circles) 90 degrees different than this Porsche set up. 

Some cracks out of the drilled holes, and that one BIG CRACK that has reached the edge of the rotor over there about 3 o'clock. Any crack hitting the edge of the rotor says it's time to replace it. 

LOOK! A shiny brand new slotted rotor. The left and right side rotors are specifically for each side, so I was careful to install them on the correct sides.

Overall, the rotor job was on the easy side, providing you have some experience and the right tools. My favorite part of this, (other than hopefully driving faster on track) was smacking the old rotors with a hammer until they were loose enough to come off. Sometimes they come off easy, but I remember a brake job on our old Camry that took a lot of serious pounding to get the rotors off. I'll get a bigger hammer next time! The right tools included: 

    Car jack, jack stands, socket and impact to remove lugnuts and take off wheels. 

    Hammer, punch, needlenose pliers to remove brake pads. 

    T55 and 10mm sockets with wrench to remove caliper. 

    Jack stand or hanger/bungee cord to hold caliper. 

    Impact screwdriver and hammer to remove old calipers. 

    Torque wrench for proper assembly. 

Afterwards, I pumped up the brake pedal, drove the car a bit, and all was good. The rear rotors really don't have any cracks, so they are OK for now, but I'll likely switch them to slotted in the near future.