It would be nice if we could not learn about stuck brake calipers, but that option didn’t come up today.

So here is a spot where a brake goes on a truck –

And here is the damage caused by the caliper failing to retract after the brake pedal was released –

The black brake pad material is all worn off of one side of the pad, and bare metal is visible on the other side. You can see that a huge groove was worn into the rotor by the metal portion of the brake pad. These are ruined.

Here is the problem –

The bolt on the left is not sticking out as far as the bolt on the right. The bolts are screwed into the top of the caliper slider pins, which are supposed to slide in and out, easily, but the one on the left is seized in place. Why is that?

Well, it turns out that the rubber boot split –

Now I get to replace the rubber boots –

Here is the “teachable moment.” Since I’ve got the tools, can do the work, and buy parts through RockAuto.com; this is a $150 repair. If I took it to a mechanic, they’d buy the parts through O’Reilly’s, or a similar store. A single rotor at O’Reilly’s is $100. For a limited time only, they’ll throw in a set of pads if I buy two rotors. Lucky me, my bill is now only $200, but the boots I have to replace are another $16. A mechanic would mark up the parts anywhere from 50% to 100%, so the bill is now $324-$432, but then there’s labor and tax. The average white collar worker who barely knows how to drive a car isn’t getting out of this for less than $500. They’ll have to make three times what the handy man makes to break even with the handy man, if they’re lucky. It might be more.

I figured out my radiator leak. This line here was loose –

How did that happen? The nut was tight. It was tight enough that the wrench was slipping over it, and starting to round it off. I was using a special line wrench, which has a smaller gap on the end, so it more fully encloses the nut. It’s somewhere between an open-end wrench, and a closed wrench. Only enough gap to slip the line in. If that wrench is slipping and the nut feels tight, it should be tight, right?

Here’s the kicker. This nut is either 16 mm, or 5/8; and the line wrench was 17mm. Most wrench sets only give you the “commonly used sizes,” not “all the sizes in a range.” I didn’t look at the sizes, I tried the 15, it was too small; then tried the 17 and assumed that must be it. The nut felt tight, but it could be driven further with the right size wrench; and had to be driven further to clamp down on the line end and seal the connection.

So here is something profound – this 30 year old car is back on the road again, still performing like it is new. It sounds great. It handles as well as this kind of car handles. The ride is excellent. The A/C works. It’s still a nice luxury car, doing all the luxury car things. It’s probably older than most of the site’s readers, but, other than some minor dents and scratches in the paint, and some wear on the driver’s seat, it’s in like-new condition. You can’t buy a new car like this anymore. You’ll pay an amount that used to buy a house, for plastics and electronics that won’t last. Then you’ll do it again, and again, and again. And you’ll have to pay stupendous insurance prices and property tax all along the way.

Is that smart?

This car will eventually die when its computers go. My 72 is 54 years old, doesn’t have any computers, and seems like it could last forever (if maintained.) All the parts are available, and it can be upgraded to do almost anything a new car can do. The phone can connect to the stereo, and there’s a microphone in the A-pillar. There are enough performance upgrades to make it as fast as any sane person would want to be on a public road.

Something to consider as you plan your path through life. What is going to give you what you really want? Most of the “aspirational” stuff I tried wasn’t worth the effort it took to get it. Most of the people I saw who fall in love, ended up thinking the other person was the worst person in the world. Some people want a big house, but who wants to clean it? I used to want a fast car, now driving fast feels like work. So what has real value? I think I’m narrowing it down to two things – a tight waist, and practical skills. With those two things, almost anything else can be done.

I’m old enough to remember when the Boomers were young, and their offices switched over from typewriters to personal computers. I remember my dad saying that everyone in the office HATED the computers, and wouldn’t learn them. Want to know what happened? A few of the boomers DID learn the computers, and were given more money to run the computers and teach the Luddites how to use the computer. The ones who learned, climbed the ladder and had better careers. The ones who didn’t, had shorter careers; and the computers are still here.

I don’t know how valuable these slice-of-life posts are, but here’s another one of those things that keeps me from working on the comic.

See this little booger –

That’s a supercharger coupler. It connects the supercharger snout to the gears we were just looking at. While this nearly-new part looks like it is in good condition, the holes are wallowed out just enough for it to make a racket when the car is running. Pretty disappointing! Here is a different brand (ZZP) coupler, installed in the snout –

And here we are, all assembled again –

When I woke this car up from hibernation, she sounded like crap, and leaked radiator fluid. Now she sounds great, and still leaks radiator fluid. One of the cooling lines to the transaxle didn’t get seated right, so I will have to try that again. I had a bad feeling about it when I screwed it in, and it turns out that was for good reason.

It’s quite a thing to see a car all the way through its life’s journey. I remember the generations of cars before this one, then the first time these appeared in magazines. Seeing the first ones on the road. Seeing the production run end, and the first owner cars becoming affordable on the used car market, many years later. Buying this one when it was good budget hot rod material, making internet buddies with fellow owners. Seeing my buddies move on to other cars as the years went by – the forum died, almost all their cars are gone now. But mine still lives on. At a time when it should be ancient history, people are coming back to this generation because the new cars blow up when they’re new. Even though they cost as much as a house used to, they’re trash. So, while this car doesn’t have 400+ horsepower and rubber band wheels, from a certain point of view it’s a desirable car to have again. It still does a great job of floating smoothly down the highway.

I’ve been learning more about Awstats, and things may not be so bad after all. About 99% of the traffic falls into the 0-30 second range, but that doesn’t mean the traffic only stayed for 0-30 seconds. It could mean readers only loaded the most recent page, and moved on, which would be normal for a webcomic. 50 readers spent over 30 minutes on the comic, and 37 of those spent over an hour. I don’t know if that means they were reading the whole time, or read one page, did something else for awhile, then clicked on another page and lost interest. But it could be good news.

We’re at the halfway point of July, and Awstats is reporting 10,100 unique visits already. It turns out that Awstats is bad about inflating traffic numbers. The worst case scenario I’ve found is that Awstats inflates uniques by 150% – but, if my math is right, that would mean the actual number of unique visitors as of the middle of July is not less than 4000. Which is still pretty hefty, at least for me.

So why is there zero interaction, and no voting? It seems like I ought to be killing it. Do you guys only talk to your A.I. girlfriends and boyfriends? I’m kinda joking, and I kinda don’t know – maybe that’s how it is now?

Look ma! No radiator!

I’ve put the new one in, but have not run it.

After draining the old gas out of the tank and replacing with new, I discovered that what I thought was bad gas sound was actually the supercharger coupling. I replaced the coupling years ago, but it doesn’t have many miles on it, so I am a little bit perturbed that it is worn out already. That’s another $50 and a couple hours of time down the drain. I’ll tackle that job today, then I won’t have to listen to it knock while I flush the radiator. Then this car, in theory, should be mobile again.

It certainly needs a bath after sitting for so long.

In other bad news, my truck developed a dragging sound in the brakes, and I finally located it. It was a rear caliper that was failing to release, which destroyed a pad and rotor that are not even a year old yet. I had that brake apart a few months ago, and didn’t notice any unusual wear. Apparently when a caliper sticks, the pad and rotor tear up fast, and without enough warning until it is too late.

So that’s more money out the door.

I haven’t faced this problem before. It looks like the slide pins could be sticking. On this caliper, the pins stay with the bracket when the caliper comes off. I don’t know how the pins come out, but it looks like I’m getting to learn. Greasing the pins is a much easier and cheaper fix than replacing, or rebuilding the caliper; another thing I haven’t done yet. Hopefully that’s all the problem will be, but I’ll still have to get new rotors and pads.