ah kin fits it

I've really been careful about the time I take off work lately.  I'm trying to improve my leave balances but had to make an exception this evening.  I had to do something about the Saturn because the temporary tag is just about expired and there was something wrong with the little thing.

This is a good place to stop for a minute and state that I'd rather be lucky than good any day.  I mean that.  I'm good at fixing stuff, but I 'd rather be lucky any day.  Sometimes, to be sure, good helps, but I don't think good had anything to do with fixing the car this afternoon.

I bought a set of front brake pads for the car because it sounded like the wheel was going to fall off sometimes when you stopped the car.  That was a few months ago.  After I bought them, I pulled off the wheel fully expecting to need to turn the rotor or replace it and the pads, but upon inspection, the pads had plenty of wear left on them.  I've been driving the thing like that for a few months now, but knew there was no way it'd pass inspection that way.

The plates expired last month, but with the $500 car key episode, there went the money to fix the car.  Until this payday.

Earlier today, I took the wheel off again and still didn't find anything wrong with the brakes, but saw one of the plastic pieces was rubbing against the tire.  I replaced a missing bolt and that seemed to fix the plastic rub problem, but not the sound that really sounded like metal on metal.  So, I pulled the wheel again and decided to replace the brake pads.

Again, the rotors were fine.  No scarring, no uneven wear pattern.  No nothing, except a spot on the pad where it looked like it had been scraping against something.  But nothing on the rotor to indicate it'd been scarred.  I changed the pads and viola, no grinding noise.

I topped off the oil, threw an air filter in it, and got the inspection and emissions tests done just a few minutes ago.  We're good till next year.

While at the Jiffy Lube (shameless plug; I had coupons for $15 off, too!), I saw the weather forecast for the rest of the week.  Glad I chose today to fix the car.

I thought I was going to have to drive the car up to Idaho and back because I'm pretty sure the dealer disconnected the battery when they took the airbag out of the steering wheel to change the ignition switch housing.  When that happens, you have to drive your car at over 55 mph for 150 miles to reset the computer that controls the emissions system.  I guess the trek to the VA and back, plus driving to Hill every day got the job done.  No lottery tickets, but I'm not heartbroken about that either.  My life is hard right now.   Can you just imagine the grief $260,000,000 would cause me?  

Thank you, but no thank you.

Anyway, like I said, I still don't know what I did to fix the car.  For the life of me, I can't find anything wrong with the brake pads I pulled off it.  They had more than half of the wear left on them. The clips didn't look like they were rubbing.  Everything was tight.  Well, I did grease up the lower pins on the brake calipers on both sides, but other than that, everything looked good.  Maybe the car didn't like that particular set of brake pads.  I don't know.

I'm just glad it fixed it and that I got it done on a warm day.