Now I have never claimed to be a mechanic, but Micah had changed the brake pads in his car a month or so back so I thought I would get him to help me. By help me I mean I would watch him do it. The first sign things were going south was when Micah said, "these aren't like mine." Next thing I knew we had the passenger front wheel off, the front brakes off , and were not getting the new pads to fit back in. Now I do not need any of the real men out there commenting on "use a C clamp to press the brake cylinder all the way back and the new ones will fit right in, but be sure to remove the cap on the brake fluid reservoir first or you might blow a brake line". Shut up or Micah and I will explain to you exactly how all of your ideas of investing are wrong and you have no idea how economics really work.
Did I mention we were doing this at my Father-in-Laws shop several miles from home and we had wisely driven out there together in the car we were going to fix and no in-laws were at home? So of course in my mechanical non wisdom I thought I would start the car and maybe the cylinder would retract. Ok guys stop laughing and rolling around on the floor. Although when I started the car put it in neutral and closed the door, who would have guessed that car doors would lock. Yes that is right, only three wheels on the car, keys in the ignition, car running, all doors locked, and we are miles from home and another vehicle.
Micah rummaged around in his grandfather's shop until he found a long thin rod. I hunted up a heavy duty screw driver. And there we were, me prying open the top of the door and Micah pushing a rod in and trying to tip the toggle switch in the door. It was a lovely sound to here that click of the doors unlocking when he finally hit the toggle switch. Not quite such a lovely sound when the rod hit the toggle switch back and re-locked the doors immediately. Well try again I guess and low and behold this time the door unlocked and stayed unlocked.
Well now we had the doors unlocked and the car shut off but we were still stranded out in the country with a car with just 3 wheels attached. I'm thinking OK, can we get a wheel attached to this thing and get it on a trailer and into a mechanic or are we looking at getting a tow truck. Of course the whole trailer thing would mean we would have to have the pickup and we did not have one of those. A tow truck would have worked if we were not parked front end of the car up against the shop. Not sure how a tow truck would have gotten in front of it to pick it up.
We started giving it another try. Up to this point we had not been able to get the line loose on the back of the brake assembly to bleed out the oil because even with the C clamp (yes smart phones and google are a wonderful fount of information) the piston would not retract. We put the the brake assembly back on and were able to put considerable pressure on the brake line bleed to allow the fluid to bleed out. Of course while trying to loosen the line with the assembly unattached the rotor fell off and left me with a nice open cut on my ankle. Still smarts as I write this sad tale of woe.
I won't bore you with the rest of our fun times except at this point Micah says "I think we should stick to houses" Amen, preach it son. We got the brakes back on sort of, the car was drivable but when you stepped on the brakes it made a nasty grinding noise. We drove it to our mechanic and asked when he could fix the brakes. Yes I did tell him we had tried to be mechanics but had failed. He took a look at it and even though we only live ten blocks away told us he didn't think we should drive home and back as we would damage the rotor more than we already had by driving back into town, so he had his wife deliver us home, Thanks Cleo!! We were not really up to a nice long walk at this point.
Yea I think Micah is right we had better stick to houses and let the mechanics earn their keep. Just one last admission. Every time I got out of that car after the locking incident Micah would yell, "Dad take the keys". Yes we should stick to houses.
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