I just changed the rear pads on my wife's. 48K miles. Rears were worn almost all the way; I didn't touch the front as they still have a lot of pad left. $29.99 at Advance Auto for Ceramic pads and $9 for the "cube of death" tool. Done in 1:15 minutes using the included jack and this was my first car brake job. Rotors were fine so I left them alone.

I just did the front, 43K miles. 1.5 hours flat, new rotors and ceramic pads. I found the same adhesive Ford used for the pads. Perfect job. Brakes are like new. Had no idea they were so bad. Pads had 1/8-3/16" left. Interesting thing the pads were cracked.

...Norm

Thanks to everyone here, I managed to get through a rear brake job relatively unscathed.
I managed to also get a few more pictures that may be helpful:

perhaps a slighlty better picture of the arrow on the piston housing that shows what direction to turn the cylinder inward. Be prepared, it's a fine thread with about 100 turns from the fully extended position!


The "Magic" piston turner tool, $11 at Sears.
Be sure to keep a fair amount of inward pressure on the tool to keep it locked into the cylinder slots. It does slip out if you don't, busting knuckles!


This is the card it came on at the tool display so you know what you're looking for:

That little square piston tool really sucks. Almost a year after doing my brakes, my knuckles are still sore....

So, as a public service, I'll mention that Harbor Freight has this thing on sale. I was in there looking for something else and I said to myself "if I see that tool kit on sale, I'm going to get it". Well, it's on sale:

http://www.harborfreight.com/18-piece-d ... 97143.html

I did the rear pads at 75K and honestly, they weren't even that bad (they may have been done at 18K under warranty before I got the car, but I'm not sure). Still, I love this car and plan on having it for a while, so I figured I should have this on-hand for the next time.

This kit has both the left and right-hand threaded piston tools, which you need for the Freestyle.

Great Kit. When I lived in CA and bought my FS, there was a Harbor Freight 20 minutes away. I bought the smaller of these kits (It was under $20.00) and it worked great. I will use it every 30,000 miles I am sure. (15K more to go).

It is nice as it turns and pushes at the same time. No knuckles getting scraped. The rear brake job was complete in under 1 hour.

I'll have to pick up one of those kits, it's especially nice since it's got two tools, one for the left and one for the right.

I noticed the wife's 2005 FreeStyle front brakes were making some grating sounds when applying the brakes at low speeds with the windows down. It was so bad, SHE actually noticed it and mentioned it to me.

The FS has approximately 77k miles. The front brakes were factory stock. The rears had been reworked by Ford under recall at 33k miles. They replaced the rear pads with Bosch parts and machined the rear rotors.

I went ahead and decided to bleed the brakes and replace the front pads. I used about 2.5 pints of Ford brake fluid. I also used Raybestos ATD pads (PN: ATD1070C). The front rotors had plenty of life left and I decided not to have them turned as I had no pedal pulsations and the friction surfaces were very smooth (no deep grooves). The rotors measured out at just over 28mm thickness (minimum spec is 26mm; minimum thickness to machine is 27.1mm)

The factory Ford pads have a very strong adhesive on the shims that caused me to resort to hammering to separate them from the calipers. The cheap store brand brake cleaner I used was not strong enough to release the adhesive.

The new Raybestos front pad frictions were 11.18mm in thickness. The factory Ford pads (which were made by PBR, judging by the markings), still had 6 to 7 mm of life left. I estimate that I had another 45k miles left on the factory pads.

I managed to damage one of the caliper slide pin boots (bonded metal/rubber type) that is press fit into the anchor plate. The aftermarket replacement (USA Brake 8237A) did not have the correct diameter metal sleeve (too small by about 0.3mm) so I had the pry it larger with needle nose pliers until it would press firmly into the anchor plate. Next time I will order a Motorcraft brake hardware kit so maybe they will be the correct diameter. You will need four of these boots to do both front calipers, if they need replacement. I had to special order the boots since no local shops had them in stock. The slide pins were in great shape so I cleaned and lubricated them with high temp grease before reusing.

I would recommend installing new abutment clips (spring clips) instead of reusing them. These are the thin metal clips that go between the brake pad ends and the anchor plate. They are wear items and cheap to replace. High quality brake pads usually come with them (my Raybestos ATD pads kit did). I believe the noise that the wife noticed was caused by these clips being worn and dirty.

I inspected the rear brakes and found that the factory rotors were worn to around 10.3mm in thickness. (minimum spec is 9.5mm; minimum thickness to machine is 10.1mm). When I get around to replacing the rears this fall, I will install new rotors with the pads. The rear pads had about 5mm of life left after 44k miles of wear.