me: “But, I don’t have $1300.”
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Recent Comments
- In The Mailbox: 02.28.23 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain on Hey, longtime pw readers…
- In The Mailbox: 12.23.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll truly IS a sad, embittered psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- In The Mailbox: 07.18.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
Fuck me. My last fundraiser went to replace a drive train on my Jeep. Now this. Sweet.
If anyone needs me, I’ll be off hooking and/or trying to cook meth in my toaster oven.
Yikes.
Yikes is right. I just don’t have it. I’m expecting payment from some Poker site for putting an ad up at the Pub, but beyond that, well, sucks to be a blogger.
This is for my ’93 Land Cruiser. I doubt it’s even worth $1300. But it’s paid for, so.
Seriously. I just can’t catch a break — or my breath.
But enough. These are my problems. The country has bigger problems, and that’s what this site needs to focus on.
Well, that, and randy rodents drunk on Port who keep getting their dicks stuck in the Dyson.
Jeff, just remind them that the won! intends that they spread the wealth around, and get ’em to do you a solid. If that doesn’t work have the bill sent to Senator Udall, and have him pass it on priority one to the WH.
Tell him that it’s for the children!
Tell them they’re anti-semitic raaaaacists unless they honor their hippie Boulder roots and “gift” you a brake job. Maybe you’ll “gift” them a handful of the ‘dillo’s red pill stash in return.
PeaceLoveDope!!
Oh. See, I thought this was a mocking of Frey’s latest foray into incomprehension.
Find another shop and get a second opinion. You’re getting ripped off I suspect.
Remember what I said about old jeans, your garage floor, and a spinning tire?
You could offer them three pairs of those and tell them they can get five C-notes apiece on eBay.
You might check out a local vocational school with an auto mechanics department. They sometimes do such work for training purposes — cheap(er), but not guaranteed.
No, I’m fucked. I take my son to and from school daily. I have to get this fixed now. Somehow.
And I don’t think some of the suggestions — cute as they are — are going to do me much good.
My wife and I have about $600 saved for our 10-year anniversary trip to SF in June. Looks like we’ll be giving each other rotors and a power booster, instead.
You need a cheap, Mexican mechanic.
Oh shit, cognitive dissonance.
What’s the daily cheap rental car go for locally?
Me, I’da e-mailed Blitz and in conjunction with a service manual picked-up off the ‘net or the local library, have him talk me through a do-it-yerselfer. The parts are the parts, but my time is cheap. Plus bonus, learning to love the taste of brake fluid in the mai-tais.
Seriously, though, get a second opinion. Brakes aren’t really optional, and even $1300 is the same as 3-4 car notes, so it’s probably worth fixin’. I don’t trust those retail brake chains to give you a fair shake.
The booster costs about $228 (from one source, I didn’t look further) just by itself, plus the core charge which they would get back. The rotors are at most around $55 each. If it has drum brakes in the back, they’re about $50 each. Brake shoes (again if you have drum brakes in the back) are $30 – $70. Brake pads are around $50 – $100.
So, the parts are a little pricey, but brake jobs are not that labor intensive. Replacing the power booster might take a while, dunno. It depends on how crammed in it is.
I suggest that at the next place, you might want to get estimates for various qualities of parts. There are a lot of cheap rotors and drums coming out of China these days. Also, note that many repair places charge retail prices for the parts so they can make more money.
At the very least, take RIP Ford’s advice and get another quote. I once had brakes fixed at an independent shop for less than half the quote I got at Midas.
The source for my prices is family car dot com. I have no idea if they are any good, or if they’re cheap.
I went to Brakes Plus twice the one and only time I did business with them: first and last. They tried to push extra work on me that was unrelated to why I had come in. So, yeah: RIP Ford’s advice, with prejudice.
Jeff,
You might head over to Interstate Toyota. Their service department is supposed to be good and reasonably priced. (I have no 1st hand knowledge of this but know a couple of folks who really like them.)
Oh, and I HAVE to show your comment about the dillo to Mrs. scotch. It will clear a lot of things up for her.
Do you know how hard it is to convince your wife you have no idea how armidillo joy juice got into the cyclonic suction of the Dyson? And tell the armored panzer rat he owes me $220 for the repair and another $220 for trying to explain the smell to the repair guy…
The front wheels are easy to replace. The power booster can be a real bitch. But yeah, second opinion. And/or, buy the parts and throw an ad on Craigslist for a mechanic looking for some side work.
Our regular mechanic can’t even look at it until next week, if we have it towed there from Brakes Plus.
So fucked it is.
See you all when I see you. I have to figure out what I have around the house I can dump onto eBay.
Sorry you have to have it done so quickly Jeff. Hell, If I lived there I’d be there. IF you have the time I can easily do a walk through with you, but it doesn’t sound like it.
By the way? Power booster? bitch of a job. I’d have the shop do that and the the rest yourself (w/ a partner for line bleeding.)
Try life without braking for a couple of months first. Lower your deductible. Blame Bush and get a refund on bad breaks. You’re golden. You could be a democrat in 3 months.
OH, yes. Definitely get a 2nd opinion on the power booster. In all my years, I’ve done like 2-3, so it’s not all that common a repair.
Firestone.
Now that I think about it, tell me what happened to make you think you needed brakes in the first place. Grinding, squealing? having to pump the brakes to get pressure? I’ll give you my 2 cents (now a dollar eighty five!!) on the booster.
Cranky? If you can tell me where I can get a rotor that cheap, I’d move next door to the place. Hell, turnable junkyard rotors are more than that around here.
I linked the website in #16, Blitz. I’m not sure how much shipping would cost, though. Depending on the car, I’ve paid less than that for them.
Well now, I did miss the link. Sorry about that!! Honestly though, when a customer wants/needs the car like yesterday? I don’t have time to order on line. Also? upthread someone says mechanics charge retail. Let me let you in on a little secret guys…it’s our price + 20%. It’s more than retail. That’s how we make our money mostly. Labor pays overhead and stocking (especially if you’re affiliated w/ a large oil co. like Shell,) regular unleaded is actually a loss leader at times, and we make pennies off of an average gas customer. There’s more, but i don’t want to bore you with the vagaries of insurance,permits,oil disposl (we used to get PAID for that!!)…
Crap. Car stuff sucks. I got stranded (in Detroit) on Mother’s day with one young child when my fuel pump went. Closest place to sit an wait? Gunfire the week before. Never mind, I would have had my car stripped had I left it.
Sucked.
Jeff, what in the world makes anyone think the thing needs a booster? I’ve been driving and wrenching for 35 years and I’ve yet to have one fail. It’s a metal can with a diaphragm in it. I’d bet 10:1 that you’re being fed a line here because it happens to be brake related and these guys, they do brakes.
As for rotors, drums, and pads, is anything grinding? I mean, you can replace both the disc/drum and the pads/shoes for under $100 a corner in parts if you shop. Just about any shadetree mekanik can perform said service for $50 wheel. If I were there we’d do it ourselves.
Disclaimer: Not suggesting at that you scrimp on brakes or that you fail to get truly professional advice. But get another opinion.
Discs. Pads. Drums. Shoes.
Not saying those are the right parts or sources, but it’s a perspective — you get the idea. Brakes for anything past a few years old are basically commodities.
You are almost certainly getting royally screwed.
Did you have to lean into the pedal with both feet to get the thing to stop? If not, you don’t need a booster. The only thing the booster does is make it easier to push the brakes. If it didn’t get harder to push the brake pedal, the booster is fine.
Can you see deep grooves in the rotors? I don’t mean shallow scratches, I mean grooves that will resist a fingernail scratched across them. If not, you don’t need rotors, or at least don’t need all of them.
Did the car make singing noises when you stopped? If not, you don’t even need pads, or at least not right away — and replacing brake pads is easy.
Regards,
Ric
…and even if you do need rotors, us impoverished rednecks know quite well that the car will be safe if you just replace the pads and forget the rotors. The pads won’t last long, but it will give you time to save up for the complete job.
Basic advice: Tell the jerks at Brakes Plus to put in new pads, which you will pay for, and leave the rest of it alone.
Regards,
Ric
Wot Ric said: The booster only amplifies effort. Discs and drums can be moderately scored and work fine. Do you hear metal-on-metal when you brake?
Outlaw.
Jho, I have seen them fail, and I’m only 25 years in. The diaphrams go, I chalk it up to poor QC. That being said? as a pro, I’ve done 2 or 3 in my life!!
Ric, No my friend, you do NOT EVER put new pads on badly worn rotors.Reason being that I’d get my ass sued if the windshield cracked, you know?
Ric,
I second that with a question: Did Brakes Plus tell you to do the rear brakes also? If they did, they are probably really gouging you because rear brakes rarely go out at the same time as the fronts.
I’m guessing master cylinder/break line problems. Since Jeff has not responded w/ the symptoms though? Just a guess
Blitz,
What if the rotors are still within tolerance? If I’m not mistaken, turning rotors can take them out of tolerance.
1) Mostly agreed with other folks that lots of car repair shops are a bunch of frickin’ crooks that are out to gouge you.
2) Complete agreement with Ric that, unless your braking is noisy, difficult, and asymmetrical you don’t have an urgent problem.
3) If you’re not completely averse to do-it-yourself, the rotors/pads thing can be done in less than a day on a weekend. If the rotors are worn out of spec, you need to throw them out and put in new ones. If not, you can take them off, have them turned, and put them back on yourself. Some auto parts stores do rotor resurfacing; pretty much all automotive machine shops do. Dunno what this involves on your vehicle, but most on most modern automobiles you simply jack up the vehicle, pull the wheels off, pull one bolt on the calipers and rotate them away from the rotor. The pads are then easily removable. The rotors are generally held on to the hub with a single screw (the wheel lugs provide the rest of the force that keeps the rotor centered on the hub). If you’ve got rear drum brakes, it’s a little more complicated.
Unless your brake fluid is completely shot, you’re probably not going to have to mess with the fluid right away.
HIGHLY unusual for a power booster to fail. They’re generally vacuum-actuated devices, and they only really have one moving part. The calipers/wheel cylinders tend to fail more frequently, because the brake fluid tends to get cruddy and then the seals start wearing.
It would get more complicated if you needed a new master cylinder, because you’d have to remove the old one, fill the new one and reconnect, and then bleed the brake lines. But again, unless your brakes are sticking, making loud noises, fluttering, or pulling to one side, you don’t have a situation that demands immediate action.
I’ve done the mechanical work replacing brakes quite a few times, on various kinds of vehicles ranging from early 70s Volvos, late ’60s Ford pickups, a 1991 Sentra and a late ’80s Honda. I’d come over and do it for you if I lived as close to you as my brothers do. Hell, if I had an extra set of hands I could change out the brake fluid.
The only vehicles I’ve worked on that presented any sort of difficulty in re changing out brake system parts were my old Ford pickup (had to pull the rear axle half-shafts to get the drums out) and my Volvos (the rotors and the wheel bearings were all in one casting, so you had to repack the wheel bearings when you put it back together).
Most modern calipers are of the self-centering variety, so no adjustment is needed when replacing pads. Pads literally snap out and back in, once the calipers have been swung away from the rotors. You might have to press the new pads outward to get them to fit, because the pistons in the calipers will have clamped the old pads to the point where they contact the rotor, and so they’ll be too close together. I generally use a c-clamp to compress the piston(s) in the caliper (they’re usually single or dual piston, depending on the car).
Napa sells the brake rotors for $43.50 each, new, with local pickup. Just an FYI for Blitz.
After reading through all that, it looks as if I’ve spent entirely too much of my life working on cars. It’s probably true. But I still don’t have the 950hp Lexus, so I feel gypped.
Rotors were about my only complaint with my F-150, as I found the suckers warped too readily in the summer under heavy bedloads in stop and start traffics, then wore the bejesus out of other parts as they shook at higher speeds. Other’n that, my truck was a honey.
Slightly off-topic, but I have decided to never buy a car with drum brakes again. I managed to screw up my do-it-yourself job the last time, and ended up paying more than I would have spent, total, to just have them do it in the first place. Plus, disk brakes are just so darned easy to work on.
Slart, I cannot tell you how many old Fords passed through my dad’s place, separate bodies and used engines coming in at one end and running cars coming out the other. Back then Mustangs and Falcons were just old cars, so if we made a few hundred dollars it was a good outcome. I’ve always had old cars, so I’ve always worked on them. Maybe one day I’ll be able to afford to have someone else do all the work, but even then, no more drum brakes. Ever.
I’m guessing a power booster is the servo and the rotors are the discs? Two countries separated by a common language.
This particular F250 had the heavy-duty rear end, and drum brakes all around.
So, not fun. The rear wheel hubs are held on with something like 10 or 12 nuts (not to be confused with the wheel lugs). Once you undo the nuts, it looks like the hub should just slide off, but: no. There’s this thing called a cone washer, which is really a heavy, cone-shaped piece of really rigid steel that’s split so that it compresses when forced into its cone-shaped seat. Once these have been in place for, oh, four decades or so, they have to be removed via the application of some persuasion. First, though, you have to recognize that there are in fact parts there to be removed, because after that much time they look like (what with the addition of decades worth of dust and rust) pretty much like part of the hub. Removal, for me, meant smacking the side of the hub with a 4-lb sledge until, one at a time, the washers came off.
Which they tend to do with no warning, and at high speed, so best to provide them with some destination so’s you don’t lose one. Once they’re all out, the axle-halfshaft, which is captured in the differential with a built-in spring-clip, can just kind of snap out, along with the drum. The drum just comes off, once you’ve pulled that part out. Then of course you’ve got to take it in and get it machined, insert a new wheel cylinder, and then reassemble the fucking spring-loaded jigsaw puzzle that is the pad engagement mechanism. Which on an old Ford pickup requires leverage; the springs are pretty stout.
Yeah, I agree: disc brakes are much, much easier.
The power booster is a manifold-vacuum-powered assist to the master cylinder, which is the hydraulic actuator for all four wheels.
Mostly all the braking power you need for a vehicle is supplied by your foot combined with pad friction. You step down on the pedal with X lbs of force over Y distance, and the pads move maybe a millimeter each, backed by a proportionally more force.
Not quite accurate: the brake pedal itself is a lever, so the master cylinder only moves a little, but the input to it has substantially more force than your foot is supplying.
Slart: Then you get to use the special tool to compress the cone washer/spring combination that hold the brake shoes in place, and pray you don’t slip and have the whole thing go shooting all over hell’s half acre. It will happen at least once.
SW: I think you have translated correctly.
Vo-tech school nearby? Don’t laugh. They should let you borrow tools and they do OK bodywork.
Pay the man for the booster, do the rest in the driveway.
I’m going through the same thing. Need new rotors, brakes and tires. Plus I’m due for my timing belt – ka-ching! And since the ECONOMIC MELTDOWN-DOWN-DOWN-down! They took away my car allowance. Mileage is paying for gas and oil changes, barely.
I just changed out my motor and transmission mounts, easy enough but busted my knuckles good. I’m buying the brake parts piecemeal. Fronts first. $90 each for rotors.
105k service is $500 bucks easy for the timing belt/water pump/trans flush. Tires are fucking expensive and it’s because they over-torqued me at the last rotation, I need the new rotors.. Anyone sees me on 65, move over and pray it’s not raining cause I’m buying used.
Here’s the thing about power boosters, though:
If I can stop a 3700-lb truck carrying a ton or more of mulch in the back with only my foot, who needs a power booster?
I feel your pain, my wife’s car’s transmission went just after we replaced the ca. converter.
Want to get pissed off? Here are our border guards at work:
Here is a border guard getting some attitude for a stupid question by the border guard.
1) Blake. If I were to do my own car, that would be fine. As a licensed, insured member of the NON shadetree mechanic clan? I would never do it.
2) Cranky. Just made 2 phone calls to local autoparts dealers. ( Autozone and NAPA ). I can’t touch a rotor for a 93 Land Rover defender for under 64.00 (which would cost over 76 each to Jeff)
3) Slart and Sdferr. Shit. Try a 1971 F250 with a towing ( and I mean a towtruck) packagge. Thing couldn’t go over 60, but could pull down a house…anyway, it had split rims. Even ‘I’M’ not crazy enough to touch a split rim, and I’m plenty crazy!!
So y’all have substantiated my claim that there is NO WAY IN HELL this is a power booster, cool.
Slart, re your #47? Compadre!!!
Cranky, that ‘special tool’ you refer to can be bought at almost any hardware store. It’s a Vice Grip C clamp
Slart? I can’t stop my 18 year old daughter from going out at night (sometimes) How the hell am I going to stop THAT monstrosity??
Nah, I don’t think that does the trick. What’s needed is a tool that levers against one of the many attach-points in the drum-brake hardware mounting and also holds the end of the spring (of which there are a few; can’t recall how many exactly) so that you can stretch it out long enough to snap over the piece it’s supposed to help hold in place.
Me, I can’t even remember what I used, but it wasn’t anything resembling the right tool.
OH…Thought he was talking about a caliper Slart. I’ll go reread
Blitz, isn’t it a Toyota Land Cruiser? Not a Land Rover? Should be a bit cheaper. (My mom drives LR Discovery. It’s a great car, but parts are expensive, and even the dealer does crappy labor.)
Oh crap…Yes. I had one, for my truck. Inherited it from the previous owner of the shop. Could not tell you what it’s called? All I knew back then was “put it here, and duck”
Haven’t had much call for that since the early 80’s, so…
60 comments on the “brake job” thread?
You folks need to get out more.
You know Ella? You’re 100% correct. I can work on these things, but I need them in front of me. Kinda like an idiot savant, or an autistic child, I tend to remember the LAST thing I worked on, and don’t read properly.
Blitz, if it makes you feel better, the first three times I read this post, I read “Land Rover” and thought how cool it was that Jeff and my mom had the same car.
Married to a Silent Gen guy. He can fix shit like this. Sucks to be the rest of you.
Does that mean it sucks to be him too?
Sd? I kinda figger that she thinks we’re incapable o’ like, fixin’ stuff ‘n all. y’all know I cain’t fix for nuthin’ and wall, figger she cain’t read the thingys we sayd cun’ weall is to dum to type
Or, in reality? she’s a troll.
I’d LOVE to know where she came from though. Call it professional curiosity.
All this advice and no one hits on the most critical thing Jeff needs to know. Jeff if you decide to do any of this yourself DO NOT ask the wife to help bleed the brakes. Marriages end over much less than that.
Spork? My ex was GOOD at that…Unfortunately, not much else, but that she could do!!
Good to hear Blitz. Mine turned it into a fight after getting air in the lines. Didn’t get back to the car until the next morning. Told her not to use the car but she did anyway and rear ended somebody at a light.
She wasn’t good for anything else either so she’s an ex now.
Jeff, don’t mean to imply that your wife is anything like mine was. It’s just a situation fraught with lots of potential for hurt feelings, you’ll basically be yelling orders at her.
Oof, that is bad. Much better to bark the orders.
Blitz, I gotcha.
If you guys are talking drum brakes, something I used to be able to work on in my sleep, see this picture: http://www.allpar.com/fix/pics/drum-brakes/Multi-Purpose.jpg
The device you’re talking about for compressing the retaining spring sort of looks like a nut driver, if I remember correct. I always used needle nose pliers to compress the spring, if memory serves.
I even had a cylinder hone for drum brakes. Yeah, I was the shade tree mechanic with the oddball tools.
Sorry. Been away.
Yes, I’m convinced I need a power booster. The reason I went to Brakes Plus in the first place is because it was a lot closer than my regular mechanic. I’m pretty strong, but I was having difficulty getting the pedal to move even a little bit by the time I got there, and stopping was a real hazard: I followed my wife to the shop and I had to begin stopping very early to get the thing halted at every red light. Even with the car “stopped,” I could feel the brakes struggling to hold — such that the car was almost pulsing in an attempt to lurch forward.
I’m not an expert, but I knew there was something very wrong — and it was more than just worn pads. So. There it is.
A couple of the regulars here sent a very generous donation just a few moments ago. I sent them a thank you note, but I didn’t ask if it is okay to mention them by name, so I won’t. Rest assured, though, that I am deeply appreciative.
Anyone wanna buy a house in Indy?
Or in Colorado?
I’ll be damned. Yes, that sounds very much, if not perfectly,like a failed PB…VERY strange. I cannot think at the moment of an instance where a master cylinder or calipers could cause that, as their failure invariably results in a LOSS of pressure. Let me look this up?
Could this be frozen caliper bores, Blitz?
Better Half wants to build a place and wants to sell Casa JD. ;-(
OT: fixing blame somewhere else seems to be a specialty of this White House. Blair’s statement here.
There is plenty of blame to spread around to everyone not named Barcky.
What do you mean, you don’t have $1300? But…you’re a writer!
Blitz, he has a Toyota Land Cruiser, not a Land Rover.
I should have written myself better cheekbones, Darrell. Then I could be an artist. Like Matt Damon.
Blitz, to push the caliper piston back, I have used C-clamps, very large pliers, whatever I had on hand. To put the fancy springs on drum brakes, you need special tools I think. I didn’t try it without them.
Slart, drum brakes require less force for a given amount of stop than disk brakes. Drum brakes are “self-energizing” in that a lot of the stopping force is generated by one shoe pushing the other shoe against the drum. If they just pushed straight out, without all that linkage stuff tying them together, then they would not be self-energizing. Try pushing on the brakes of a car with disk brakes when the ending isn’t running and you’ll see that it takes a lot of effort.
From that Weekly Standard link: I hadn’t realized that Admiral Blair was a 20something-ish black guy.
Odd photo choice, ‘s all I’m sayin’.
Serendipity, Jeff.
You need to find a friend who knows that when your brakes go bad, it’s usually only one wheel. I fried my brakes on Friday, and fixed them (it – left front wheel) for $42.00, including a quart of brake fluid.
Auto mechanics are going to roll you – no matter what.
I don’t blame them. Their rate around here is about $100 to $110 an hour. The parts were $35.00. An hour job for $258 profit. I wish I had the tools, but the tools that I do have are better suited to other things.
Brakes are EASY to fix. Even a mechanical moron like me can do it. A lug wrench, large channel locks and a hex wrench are all I need for my rolling disaster.
When I asked “my” mechanic how much he would charge to fix JUST my front brakesa, he told me $300. The back brakes were $700.
Excuse my French, but fuck that shit.
Cultivate mechanical friends. Beer usually works great, although sometimes you have to resort to tequila (BEFORE you need help).
It is worth it. They are almost as valuable as friends who have a stable full of horses (Ergo…)
The “old enough (finally) to know better”…
Lost Dog
Thanks to all of you who’ve thrown a few bucks in the tip jar. My wife thanks you, as well.
I called a guy about my brakes from a CL ad, a guy who worked at a Brakes Plus up until a couple days before I called him. Since I had a 1995 Land Rover Disco, which was a tough vehicle to work on for a host of reasons, he told me to go buy my own pads and rotors, then take them in to his old Brakes Plus (just West of Wadsworth off of Jewell or Florida) for the $99 deal. The anonymous guy from CL told me I will have three people visit me while I’m waiting at Brakes Plus, each person telling me something is wrong and I need to spend more money.
After spending over an hour telling three people over and over that I was spending $99 plus tax or leaving, no other options, they finally showed me a broken spring that they only had available with a kit, for $42.
I walked around the area for an hour to no avail looking for a spring, and ended up paying $141 plus tax, which I think was probably the low cost any customer of this place paid that week. These guys were a great sales force.
They have a huge poster saying “CALL 1-800-000-0000 if you have any problems with the bill!” or something to that effect, creating a false sense of security.
And lots of people getting paid by how much they can upsell you, for any reason or potential reason at all.
Two nights ago I had a guy from CL look over my vehicle and tell me the parts I needed. We go to the auto store in his car and get pulled over.
Not his car. No license. License he claims is his says he is 5’6 and 240 lbs. The drive is actually 5’9 170 lbs. No proof of insurance. Can’t find the car’s owner, his sister, whose phone number he doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember is SSN, nor where is license is at.
Cops were very cool to me, after I gave them my ID.
So, CL is like everything else, no surprise.
#53 Joe. What a coincidence. I dropped $1700 on a multiple fluid leak repair on my “good” vehicle, and not three days later the catalytic converter died. So now I’ve got a car that’s worth about $2,000 which needs $3,000 worth of repair. And, it ain’t gonna get it. Fortunately I can afford to buy a new Camry with cash, which is just what I’m gonna do. Trade that bugger in, and let them haul it off to the auto auction, and thence to the downscale jalopy lots. Things are complicated because I was planning on replacing my “bad” vehicle soon, before this happened. Now the old scow has to last another several months while I save up some more.
Best of luck with the vehicular issues, Jeff. It’s like buying a house or having a baby–there’s never an altogether convenient time for it. An ebay suggestion–autograph some of the stuff you post for sale. Who knows?
An ebay suggestion–autograph some of the stuff you post for sale. Who knows?
I would suggest tiny little pieces of the infamous tree.
Sorry I missed this earlier. Hope they don’t rape you too badly, captain.
ahn. We were gonna go to DC for a 10th anniversary trip. then my grandmother died and the sewer backed up into the house. so, we never made it. I guess what I’m saying is… it could be worse. ;D
Mechanics tool box (http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200223524_200223524) = $99.00
Used auto parts (http://www.pullapart.com/)or (http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/home.oap) = Less than $1300.00
Sweat equity = priceless
this crap ain’t hard, just dirty.
Actually, bigfingo, you can beat the price (and likely the quality) of those sorts of tools by visiting pawn shops. You’d be amazed what’s showing up nowadays; even top-of-the-line brands like Snap-on. With Craftsman, you can’t go wrong; they will swap ’em out at any Sears or K-Mart, even if you bought ’em from a pawn shop or a yard sale.
Brake jobs (standard fare) are easy enough. Men with trucks and tools will come to your driveway and turn your rotors for you. But the killer to this job is that power booster thinger, something I had no clue existed.
And Toyotas, like many smaller foreign-designed vehicles, are notoriously difficult to work on. Ugggh. I tried to replace a starter in my daughter’s ’95 Pathfinder (because those things are always easy to replace) but, no, it’s under the stinking manifold. Which is beyond my desire (or ken) to remove. Hell, even the oil filter on that thing is hard to reach. My knockaround ’90 Blazer, now, is much easier to access and repair. Because guys with big hands designed and built the thing, I’m thinking… )
In the immortal words of Carl Walkowicz ” Never be afraid to take something apart. Smarter people than you have fucked stuff up.”
Jeff. Look at this as a learning opportunity. Sort of like earning your Zen and the Art chops.
How hard can it be?
[…] my first brief conversation with the guys at Brakes Plus who just informed me that I need a new powe… […]
JD,
If I moved closer to Indy they’d make me go into the office. Jeff, check for a vacuum leak.
Dude, do it yourself.
It is not rocket science. You may not know WTF you are doing (hell, it may end up costing you more….. maybe…) but how else will you ever learn?
At the end of the day it’s bound to be a more productive way to spend your time then trying to cook meth in a toaster oven.
You need an RV for that.
Keep in mind the other memorable words of Carl Walkowicz,” What do mean you’re drunk? You’re not vomiting yet.”
The Haynes manual is your friend.
Happyfeet would have something witty and off the wall to say at this point. I miss his sense of humor.
Oh fer…In my defense, my back is so bad I have to take muscle relaxants…Cranky? If you had read downthread, you’d see where I admitted I’d misread.
Jho? Yes, that can be, but unlikely in the days of power assist. You’d need at least 2 to go to have Jeff’s symptoms.
Serr8d? Try removing the 7 and 8 spark plugs on a Camaro circa 95 to 200. It’s impossible w/o a lift and removing the upper motor mounts.
#98 Rusty.
Those “smarter” people have ALREADY fucked it up. We can’t possibly make it worse!!
#105
Nothing is foolproof. God keeps making more resourceful fools.
I’ll bet he does too.
Rusty, that’s the First Law of Software Development:
“Software Development is the term to describe the race between software developers, to develop idiot-proof software, and the Universe, to develop bigger idiots.
So far the Universe is winning.”
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