I've done any number of things on my volvos though the years... but I've never done the brakes. Mostly I was afraid if I screwed up it was a matter of life or death.

But now I want to do the brakes on my 1995 945 T with ABS.

Question #1: How can you tell how worn the current pads are? I took off the wheel and in peering in I can see about a 6mm thickness of the side of the front pad remains. Is that thickness ALL useable braking surface? Or is some of it the backing? It's all uniformly black with dirt... so I'm mystified.

Question #2: I have Girling in front and ATE in the rear, (deduced from the factory code tag numbers which I translated from the FAQ). I'm guessing the front pads I need are CTD1198 (or Repco 1198) since I have ABS. There's what looks like a flip up cover in the middle of the caliper that I tried to flip up, but it seemed to not give and looked like it might break. Is that for flipping up to inspect inside?

Question #3: The rubber boots on the pins seemed inflexible and hard... I'm assuming they need to be replaced.

Question #4: When I push back the calipers and bleed the excess fluid out of the lines through the bleed valves, do I need to clamp the brake line above the valve? Or is that harmful to the brake line?

Thanks for any repsonses....