Saturday, August 19, 2023

Brakes Done...and other stuff

Monday...put the National Park Pass in the Jeep when I left in the morning.




Drove the Jeep to the office, yep the rack whistles at highway speeds. I'll try slapping some duct tape over the Barricade cut out, hoping that's the whistle. I can live with it if not.



Lordy what a week. Only went to the office Monday. Here I'm testing stuff to make sure only particular IPs are allowed access to one our sites, rest get a Sorry Page.

Tue-Wed I really just felt fatigued; work was fine but no energy for Jeep things. Thursday used the 25" bar and got the caliper bolt loosened.


Saturday Morning, OK time to get serious.



Holy Fucknuckles...

The guide pin was so seized it broke before rotating -- these aren't threaded, they're smooth sided pins that should be lubed!

AND THIS WAS THE GOOD SIDE!!!

Had pads from NAPA, but off to O'Reilly since they had rebuilt calipers in stock. Buying the entire thing was just as cheap as buying the bracket, slide pins, and boots individually (without the main body either!).

Of course I'm a bit time pressed, really didn't want to get into bleeding brakes...so I just put on the brackets for today.

It'll be a good cool weather job to replace the caliper body and give the brakes a good flush this fall.




No photo, but I adjusted both parking brakes out to the point you kind of had to give the rotor a good push to seat on, instead of freely sliding.



My bag of goodies for the project...





Took it out for a test drive, finding some really steep roads to test the parking brake.

...and it sucked.

Was able to find some directions for holding back a tab by the lever while pulling on it which definitely helped but didn't make it 100%. Consensus online seems to be they just suck. I may try a new lever mechanism when I get home -- relatively cheap ($85) to give it a try. There is a clutch mechanism that is supposed to help improve leverage / keep cable taught or something like that. Maybe mine is just particularly weak?

While out and about, saw they put up a new sign at the CL&P land along Day Street:



Daylilles were late this year, but a lot of them. The Deer eating them last year probably helped -- Mother Nature's version of dead-heading. This one is particularly late!



Normally by this point I think I'm down to just these late yellow daylillies by the mailbox. I think the orange striped ones are usually done.

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