Tag: brakes

September 25, 2025 – Experts Say…

September 25, 2025 /

Early June, we started to hear a grinding noise that had the distinct hint of metal on metal. As I have profusely espoused how ridiculously busy the summer was. But, I did find time in late July to have the brakes checked along with an overdue tire rotation. Their report to me was that everything looked fine with the brakes.

The next week after the all clear, my wife was complaining again. I have to be honest, I am very easy on brakes. Many times what she hears and feels It will take me months to hear. On top of that, I trusted that the tire people knew what they were doing. I said that I would take it in again but I kind of deprioritized it to the point that she took it in herself. They said that sound was metal on metal.

Needless to say, she was mad. She was mad at them and she was mad at me for believing them and not acting faster. She has this trait where if there is a perceived safety deficiency then there is going to be some yelling. The tire shop asked if she wanted to schedule a brake job, I said no way. I am not paying $700 for a couple hour job.

If you look at the picture closely, you can see that the pads on the left are bare metal whereas the pad on the right look like they are half used. My theory is that the tire store only looked at one side of the brakes when they declared that everything was good. Clearly, that was a mistake but how did this happen really?

My theory goes back a couple of years to 2023. We had taken the vehicle to a mechanic shop to do a few things. One of them ended up being the front brakes. A couple of months later, I was on a business trip and the rest of the family was on a road trip. My wife called and said that the brakes were making a metal on metal noise. I couldn’t do anything and we couldn’t take the car back to the shop and so we took it to this Northwest tire chain.

I had assumed that when any mechanic did one brake they did both. Since I was not present for the work I kept the same theory until looking at the brake hardware. It was very clear that one side was different then the other and so I think the tire chain only replaced one side. It had only been a few months and so I can’t argue, I think it was the right decision to only do one. That being said the pads were clearly different durability.

We never went back to that shop again. I don’t know if it was faulty work or faulty parts. There were a few other things that they didn’t follow through with and so this was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. I sent them a copy of the bill as well as well as their bill along with my displeasure about the situation but I never got a response, so I guess that pretty much cemented things. They could have apologized or given me a credit or something if they really cared.

As the title implies, if we always trusted experts then it could be trouble. My wife frequently said that if she had trusted doctors, she would be dead. I can’t say that I disagree. While experts are experts in their field, we are experts in our bodies and our vehicles. We live with them everyday. If something doesn’t look, sound, feel right, it may not be. It takes this type of misdiagnosis to keep teaching the lesson that we should have confidence in what we know.

End Your Programming Routine: The lesson that I learned from this is that I should put more faith in my wife’s observations and complaints. Just because I don’t notice something doesn’t make her wrong. The truth is that I did hear it once, just not repeatedly and so shame on me. I don’t mean anything by it. I think it is the skeptic in me that makes me more of a scientist whereas for her is a matter of respect. That is an expert that I should always listen to.

November 21, 2024 – Sometimes, Being a Can Do Really Sucks

November 21, 2024 /

I have to vent for a minute. I have a garage for a reason. Not only should I be able to park a car in it which it was until the Mustang was sold, but I should also have a place to work on cars out of the weather. That I cannot do. Secretly, I can barely stand to go into the garage because it is so cluttered.

I have been needing to do the brakes on the pickup for a while. It was something I was planning on doing when the weather was nicer. You all know how my summer went and it didn’t get done. I mentioned to my wife that the needed to be done and she immediately helped me prioritize the job.

I should mention that this was not an emergent problem. One of the rotors was warped which caused a terrible vibration. If things are going well, like not metal on metal contact, I am in the habit of just changing the pads. It is faster and cheaper. But, something must have happened since I didn’t change the brakes that long ago (in milage). I have been putting up with it for several years but I drive fairly gingerly. Now that my son is the primary driver of the pickup it was time to do it.

My wife was at a girl’s weekend and I didn’t have to work. I was dreaming of all the things that I wish I was doing besides freezing my hands with cold metal. Worse than that, rain was in the forecast I had no garage. Plus, I was on the clock with only eight hours of daylight. I had a few tasks to do that day including adding the cargo carrier to the Navigator, replacing a taillight lens plus removing the canopy from the pickup.

I devised that I was not going to beat the weather so I had better set up a work space where I could get the job done. I took the time to setup a popup, organize the parts and tools and make my workspace as comfortable as possible. That included a bucket for a seat and the radio for the football game.

After about thirty minutes, the rain started coming down in buckets. As my weather luck was turning bad, so was the football game. It was a miserable time for shade tree mechanics and Beaver’s fans. The total job took me about four hours. I had to go back and forth to find my tools that my son has taken out of my tool box, find the right sockets and the proper tubing for the brake bleed.

A recent brake job at a tire store cost me $750. I was travelling for work and my wife was on a road trip with the kids so it was kind of an emergency. Mind you, I had just paid a mechanic for the same job about two months earlier and I was not happy in the least. I paid about $120 for parts for this job. And I got a $30 rebate to boot that I am waiting for.

Over the years, I think that I have made almost every mistake under the sun doing this job. This includes twice having the bolt holding the calipers on fall out. When that happens, the bracket bangs against the wheel making a heck of a racket and impossible to drive without feeling like major damage was about to happen.

I now know to use thread locker and torque the bolts to the right amount so it won’t happen again, I hope. Experience helps with expediency and proficiency. I think most people with the tools, the space and mechanical aptitude could do it too. I realize that is some major hurdles for some but why have all the stuff and not do it?

End Your Programming Routine: I am glad it is done and despite everything I very well may have saved time but definitely money. Even with bleeding the brakes it is not that difficult of a job. It was more that I just didn’t want to be out in the elements. I am convinced that I could probably do this in half the time if I didn’t have to spend time messing with the popup and setup. I was tired and sore and happy to be inside a warm, dry bed by the time it was over.