Brakes
Once again, my car fails me. My brakes have been squeaking for some time now, but about last weak, the squeaking has been even louder. Now, before I’m asked, “why didn’t you get that looked at sooner?” I will answer that I did. I was told, by a professional brake mechanic, that the noise was caused by a gasket on a part I had recently put in the car and that the gasket should stop making noise as it ages and becoms more flexible. Well, apparently he was very wrong in his diagnosis.
So, with squeaking so loud I can barely hear my radio, I pull into a different brake shop and have them look at it. And it seems that a broken rod in the master cylinder punctured the brake booster. In english, nearly my entire brake system is boned, and it was only a matter of time before my car would stop… stopping.
Price to fix this: $800
Now, for those of you who don’t know, I’m not one who’s so rich I can throw $800 at a problem and not think twice about it. Oh no. I am a man who hears $800 and lets forth with a string of obscenities. So I don’t have the work done and bring my car home. I was lucky enough that my stepfather was willing to help me, so we went out into the garage and fixed it ourselves. We spent the entirety of Sunday out there in the cold, cursing at hard to rach bolts and stubborn parts, but finally, at 7:30pm, we emerge victorious. And so far, the car seems to be running.
Highlights:
My stepfather dropping his lighter into the engine, which we begin probing and prodding to find the lighter. In the middle of a long string of obscenities he exclaims, “This wouldn’t be so bad if I had lit my cigarette before it fell.”
A spring clip pops off the brake light circuit and hurls itself into oblivion. We spend an hour searching for it before deciding to buy it from the auto parts store, who doesn’t even carry it. We end up having to get this tiny clip from GM.
We find that the price of a master cylinder is $40.00. The little plastic resevoir on top is $85.00. Needless to say, we salvaged the resevoir from the broken cylinder, spending half an hour prying the damn thing off. At the very least, it seems to be solid plastic.
Damn well better be for $85.00.
So, all in all, the job cost me $45.00 in parts, including the cylinder and a bottle of brake fluid. The booster was a free exchange, being as I just recently bought a new one.
Hooray for doing it yourself!
Zel-kun out.