It will be soon time to change the brakes on my XJ. hoping to get some recommendations from you guys

 

I just went OEM. You can get good prices from Welsh or AutoHaus. They just sell the stock replacements, without Jaguar brand labeling. They brake fine, for the XJ's truck brakes.

https://www.welshent.com/Jaguar-Fron...ged-P3285.aspx

 

Get yourself a caliper retraction tool. Makes the job tons easier. As for parts, you can't go wrong with EBC. Great product, but the price reflects that. I am getting ready to do a 4 wheel job on my XJ too and I bought a combo kit off of E-bay for like $220 that has 4 new rotors and ceramic pads front and rear. They are made by a company called Powersport. I just helped a fellow member do the brakes on his car and the parts that he got look a lot like mine, but I know he bought his through a local auto parts place (Autozone I believe).

The big thing to keep in mind is that people are going to confuse the supercharged and non-supercharged brake systems. They are not the same. They use completely different parts for the pads and rotors. They are not interchangeable unless you buy the caliper brackets and calipers for the rotor/pad setup. The other thing that I would recommend is getting a new pad wear sensor. even if you don't install it, good to have. They are dirt cheap to buy and pulling the calipers off/apart, you can damage the sensor fairly easy.

 

Depends on if you like all the dust the factory pads produce on your wheels?

I did not and replaced them shortly after getting the car with pads from Porterfield (R4-S's) on my XJR.
A lot less dust and mess with good stopping power. I have ran them for about 20K miles with no noise or roughness.
Seem to last a long time too?

But as posted above to make sure you know what size brakes are on your car before ordering anything.
Also is your brake indicator on? If so you will need to replace the wear sensors. If not they can be reused just be a bit careful with them.

Brake Pads
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New to Jags, everyone says they are a pain to work on, and get parts on. I like to pretend I am a weekend mechanic, and have always done my own brake jobs. Any advice? I recently bought a 2015 xjl portfolio awd 3.0 and wanting to change the brake pads and rotors. What are the best options for Jags, and any special tools that I will need to buy to get the job done? Thanks!!!

 

Chillydg305, if you can do a brake job on a Chevy, Ford, or Dodge, you can do it on this car. Not that much different with the Jag. The big thing that I will tell you is that with the rear, you need to pre-adjust the calipers unless you have SDD and can run the program to make the car do this. Otherwise, your car is going to throw a code saying that you have a problem with your parking brake. You only need to do this with the rear calipers. What I do is I assemble everything like I found it (hardest thing being that you get the pad wear sensor back on the pad, get a new one as this makes things easier) and then before putting the wheel on, I use my thumb or a small pry device (screw driver works good for this) and manually operate the e-brake lever until the pad are up tight against the rotor. Do that on both sides and then put on the wheels. The car will operate the e-brake with no issues. You do have a 3rd option which is to disconnect the battery and at that point, the car goes through the actions to reprogram the parking brake. But, disconnecting the battery also makes you reprogram the windows, radio, etc.

Like I also mentioned, getting a caliper retraction tool makes things much easier. You can rent them at your local auto parts store or you can buy a complete kit for like $30. The front calipers can be pushed in using a large 6" C-clamp. But, the rears, you need to turn them as you push and having the tool makes life lots easier. Can it be done other ways, sure.

As for brands, a lot of people love EBC. Granted, you are going to pay for the name and quality. I have done the brakes on a lot of different cars and I guess I have not seen that big of a difference between things when you are comparing apples to apples (ie, ceramic to ceramic, smooth rotor to smooth rotor, etc). Now, you go from a single piston, organic pad, on a smooth rotor to a 6 piston, ceramic pad, cross drilled rotor, yes, there is a difference there. But, the cost is there too. Stick with brand names and you will be fine. The brakes on your jag are better than most cars on the road as it is. Going better is only going to raise the odds that someone is going to rear end you. I will say that going to ceramic will be advisable for the lack of brake dust build up on the rims. The one down side to ceramics is that they need a little bit of heat before they really start to grip. Pros and cons to everything.

 

Well I did the front and rear brakes on my 2014 XJR without using the SDD. Even though I do have a working version.
I just apply and release the EPB to make sure they are released and it seemed to work OK. Did not disconnect the battery either. I just apply and re-calibrate the EPB several times afterwards and it was fine.
I did fight with the front brakes a bit because of that clip that is very hard to install without scratching the painted caliper. I just retouched the caliper paint after I did the brakes.

Be sure and listen to Thermo about the rear caliper piston retraction tool. It is required. I just purchased the kit from Harbor Freight.
It's kind of expensive for Harbor Freight at $50 but you can use the standard 20% off coupon to get it down some.
I have used it several times and is a surprising good quality tool!

Disc Brake Tool Kit

I just noticed but why are you changing the rotor's? I don't unless they are grooved up from running the pads too long.
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i keep hearing that its typically good routine to change both disks and pads. maybe i was getting suckered?

i wont be doing the work myself, ill take it to a shop, i just dont want them to use cheap autozone stuff, so i want to bring materials with me.

 

I would suggest Porterfields and on a 2015 you most likely will not need to change the rotor depending on miles.

Here is a thread with reviews and there are plenty more if you search "Porterfield"
https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...reince-191472/

 

32k miles