I have done brake work numerous times without any problems, until i get started on my friends '02 mazda protege 2.0. I can not get the brake pads to go on properly. I fought with it for at least ahour. If someone can send me a writeup with pics or just help me out as soon as possible, I'd really appreciate it. His car is sitting in my driveway waiting to be fixed. Please help.

 

I'm also in richmond, va. So if you could help tomorrow let me know. I've built cars before from the ground up and to have a brake pad own me is embarassing to say the least.

 

hmm...i assume that you have pulled the calipers, opened the bleeder valves, pried the calipers open, and now you are sitting with the pads not seating all of the way back down into the calipers so that you can get the calipers back over the rotors, correct?
i had some problems with a similar model and i will take a wild stab and say that you are using Wagner pads. i found that the Wagners were just a shade to thick and i even compared them to other pads and they are just a little thicker than the others. if not, i would just say that they aren't quite pried back far enough. i know that the first time i did the brakes on my car, they were a little different than the ones that i had done before. they seemed to need to be pried further back than they look. also, the caliper itself may need to be replaced. it could be a lot of different things.

 

I wish that was the problem. I can not get the pads to seat into the calipers. They will not fit into the little metal guides. The old ones won't even fit back in.

 

sounds like the guides are in a bad place. i would just take the clips out, seat the pads without the clips, check out the clearance room and work from there. sometimes, the clips will get in kind of a bad place and they will look like that is where they go, but they need to be moved around a little. the first time i did brakes on my car, i ended breaking a couple of the clips because i didn't have them in the right place.