brake yo’ self, fool

i only had one positive comment to myself during the following experience:

“fuck it, this will make a good bit”

i finally did the brake job on the car last week. typically when i push off a car project it’s for one of three reasons:

1. no money for parts / supplies
2. it makes me nervous as fuck to do
3. i’m just lazy

in this case it started as the first one, but after a good memorial day weekend at the shop coupled with a sale for said holiday on brakes at callihan brakes (remember tommy boy? they even have the same logo!)

but they still sat for almost a month. why? because i’m starting to realize that even though i’ve done more repairs on this car than any other car i’ve ever had (i still love them, but it does kinda get ridiculous) i get nervous that fixing one thing might break something else.

and that was the case.

i can kind of take blame for this – the whole “lefty loosey, righty tighty” thing failed me – i got turned around, torqued an odd bolt the wrong way and snapped it…twice. not the same bolt, but two that held the caliper together, rendering the car undriveable until they were drilled out. in my defense, i didn’t know i had SNAPPED the first one till the second one went; they’re both behind this rubber barrier which made it just feel “looser” not “broken”.

so a two hour front-end brake job turned into a seven and a half hour one. not good for the car, as it seems that me over torquing some things trying to loosen caliper brackets might have fucked with the alignment, and not good for me as that day was supposed to be spent prepping for the ufc’s arrival.

then came the caliper bracket issue – it had to be removed to be drilled out, but would have had to been any way due to me replacing the warped rotors…it was too tight to get a breaker bar in their and you couldn’t get enough torque with a ratchet – then by my boss said something that should have come up in conversation a LOT earlier in the day:

“have to tried turning the wheel to see if that gets you clearance?”

and it did. but first i had to get a socket loaned to me. why? to show how hard things were hand tweaked by me check out the 16mm socket i was using before JAB brought me his:

he also ran me to the auto parts store to get the stuff to drill out the severed bolts from the caliper bracket, which we did on his workbench in a LOT less time than i think either of us thought it would take. once he dropped me back off i hit the ground running and all was good within an hour or so.

at least now the car rumbling to a stop is no more, so that’s a good thing. and hopefully an alignment job in the near future can happen…

…and now to perform a two day miracle on my house!