New Brakes

They say that there is a certain amount of satisfaction to be had in doing something yourself. Well, after changing my brake pads this weekend, I realized that I would have taken more satisfaction out of paying someone else to change them for me while I sipped on a cup of coffee and watched tv. I've never been fond of auto maintenance or repair, in large part because of my aversion to getting dirty, but decided to undertake this but of repair. I've changed brakes before and remembered that changing drum brakes is a pain, but had it in the back of my head that changing disc brakes wasn't too bad. Well, I don't want to spoil the surprise, but it didn't turn out to be as easy as I had expected, and despite my best efforts, I still ended up pretty dirty. It took a prolific amount of scrubbing to return my skin to it's natural pasty white hue.

My saga begins with a trip to my local neighborhood Napa. I knew I should have gone to Schucks from the moment I stepped out of my car and saw a rather rotund Napa employee bent over the hood of a car, inspecting an engine, and displaying an impressive 8-10 inches of exposed ass crack. I thought of snapping a picture for your enjoyment, but quickly thought better of it. Once inside the store I found that it was busier than I'd ever seen it before. After waiting in line for several minutes I realized that the line wasn't getting any shorter and decided to head to Schucks.

The wait for help at Schucks was much much shorter, but the help I got was from either one of the dumbest people I've ever talked to, or he was stoned. I dutifully recorded the conversation for posterity and it went exactly like this:

Me: I need front brake pads for a 99 Mercury Cougar.
Him: ...Uh, what year is it?
Me: 99
Him: ...Uh, that was a Cougar?
Me: Yep.
Him: ...Uh, what did you need for it.
Me: Front brake pads.
Him: ...Uh, all we have is the standard semi-metallic pads for $22.
Me: Ok, that's not what I want, I'm going to go somewhere else.

Next stop Autozone. There was no wait at Autozone, and the guy working there wasn't a moron, so immediately it was a step in the right direction. Sadly, I quickly found out that all they stocked were bottom of the line brake pads there too. Since I consider stopping to be a relatively important thing, brakes aren't something I want to skimp on, so at this point it was time to take a moment to weigh my options. I could go online and order the parts and try again at a later date, or I could head down to the Napa distribution center by Southcenter where I knew they would have quality parts for me.

Not wanting to put off the repairs and risk being unable to drive my car, I opted for the distribution center. The wait there was quite lengthy, but my number was finally called (it was busy enough that you had to take a number), I told the woman there what I needed and was asked, "do you want cheap brakes or do you want good brakes." I told her I wanted good brakes, that I wanted ceramic brakes with electronic wear sensors. A little bit of tapping on the keyboard and she told me the cheapest brakes they had that met my specifications were $90. I had done my research online beforehand and knew I could order the brakes I wanted for $60, so I had another dilemma on my hands: pay the extra money and get it done today, or wait and do it later. I bit the bullet, paid the extra money and was on my way.

Thinking that the repairs would be easy, I began taking my car apart. The first setback came when I found out that the bolts holding the brake calipers on were so tight that I had beads of sweat rolling down my forehead and stinging my eyes as I fought to get those damn things off. My hands are still sore today from wrestling with the wrench. Once I got them off, I discovered that they had been glued in place with some locktite. Damn you Mercury!!!!

I removed the old pads and that is precisely when I realized that I am more talented at taking things apart than I am at reassembling them. The new pads just did not want to get in place. I wrestled with them, cursed at them, and just when I was about to the point that I was ready to throw something, I finally coaxed them into place. I threw the wheel back on and headed to the other side.

The ability to learn from our successes and failures is one of the things that separates us from the animals, and with the knowledge still fresh in my mind of what needed to be done to complete this task, I knew this side would be easier. First step: go to the local hardware store and get a longer wrench with more leverage for those damn bolts. That made a huge difference. Putting the new pads in their homes still proved to be a challenge, but overall this side was much easier.

So after approximately 5 hours, including all the trips to various stores, and innumerable profanities (something I learned at an early age from my Grandpa is an essential component to auto repair), I was back in business. I took a couple victory laps around the block to make sure everything worked properly and there were no surprises.

Final step: bragging about my accomplishments. I called up my Dad to let him know that I was able to successfully pull this feat off without any complications. Here is an excerpt from that call for your enjoyment:

Me: I can't tell you how hard it was to get those damn bolts off. I only found out later that they had locktite on them. I really wish I had an impact wrench.
Dad: I've got an impact wrench here.
Me: Yeah, that's really helpful at this point, thanks a lot.
Dad: That's what I'm here for.
Me: I think if I had a pneumatic wrench, I could have saved myself at least half an hour.
Dad: You probably would have saved a lot of vocabulary too.

So if you were ever wondering where I got my smart ass tendencies from, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. Now I'm back in business, and I think that the next time this comes up I'm just going to pay a mechanic to do it for me. If you are planning on a do it yourself brake job though, I did learn one very useful tip from the internet: when compressing the pistons to fit the new pads on, take the cap off of the brake fluid reservoir. It makes all the difference in the world.