Day Ten - Tea Brake

The man versus car tournament continued today, I woke up this morning looking forward to the next challenge, the front brakes. It's been about a month or so with a very slight squeak coming from somewhere, at first I brushed it off as being other cars, but then after a while I concluded that 115000 kilometres was probably a good moment to inspect, and replace, the front brake pads.

I have to comment that I don't particularly use brakes a lot, which is why these seventeen year old pads have lasted so well. It was last summer, on a thirty kilometre drive back from Victoria, I noted I hardly touched the brakes at all. I expect that my style of driving over the years has resulted in the original set of pads lasting so long.

After some research I decided on ceramic disk pads from Wagner and my preference was for pads with a separate, shouldered shim as opposed to a bonded shim. I ordered them from Amazon for grand total of C$40.10 including taxes and shipping, they took three days to arrive.

The job took a couple of hours, which included an odd half hour at the start with the camber of my driveway working against me actually jacking the bloody car up correctly in the first place. I also used the job as an opportunity to rotate the tires front to back so I was using a secondary jack. This second set of tires have about 45000 kilometres wear now, so I hope by rotating them I'll squeeze another few years life out of them.

Featured above, Vintage Canadian Tire trolley jack and fixed stands from the early 1990's. It was two thirds of the way through the job and the back passenger side tire had been rotated and I knew the finish line was in sight, so a cup of tea was deserved.

The two 12mm bolts were loosened on the caliper.

The piston was cleaned and lightly greased and cycled using the old brake pad and a four inch clamp. I found that my resolve and strength were beginning to flag at this point as I was approaching the two hour point, however, I was about ten minutes away from completion and I found some enthusiasm to get the job done in a methodical fashion. 

Canadian Tire clamp from a set, door crasher from the mid 1990's.

As I drank my cup of tea, had a biscuit, I was transported back in my mind to the times in the 1970's when my dad would be working, in the driveway, on his Austin Taxi for the bi-annual test. I would take him, and his good buddy, Freddy, a cup of tea so they could have a break from the hard work, usually involving the front brakes and the king pins.

It is difficult to convey how happy doing stuff like this makes me, as I was working on the car, Karen was working in the garden, transplanting shrubs here and there for the new season, but she took some time out of her activities to put the kettle on.

She is a lovely lady and she makes a wicked cup of tea.