Saturday, March 8, 2014

Brake Jobs

Mrs ERJ's minivan has been making "a grinding noise" from the rear end when the brakes were applied.

She has been loath to give it up to take it to a mechanic.  She loves the freedom of just being able to jump in the minivan and go.

This was our first warm weekend in a while.

I should not have put it off.  The rotors need replacing.  I threw on the new pads.  It was a bear to get the pistons back in place as they had hyper-extended and were very sensitive to off-axis loading.

The Roman god of mechanical things (Delcoius? Raybestius?) smiled upon me.  I had all the right tools, including an 8" C clamp.  It went fairly fast except for the hyper-extended pistons.  I will throw on a new set of rotors (and another $45 worth of pads) in the summer.

This is the first time I ever changed the brakes on a vehicle that was less than eight years old and had less than 125,000 miles on it.  It was enlightening to see threaded fasteners with the green Teflon coating still on them.  It almost makes up for Kubota having a cranky day.

I believe that a Rum-and-Coke is in order, for medicinal purposes...of course.

PS:  Mrs ERJ paid me with a pound of Power Pro 2000-MR.  That lady has class.

2 comments:

  1. PP2000MR is great powder. It meters like water and gives great velocities in the .308 class of cartridges.
    http://pawpawshouse.blogspot.com/2011/07/power-pro-2000-mr.html

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    Replies
    1. No kidding. I loaded up a few just to see what it will do. 2850 fps with 165 grain Boat-tail Spitzers. That is running neck-and-neck with most 30-06 loads.

      IMR 4895 is my go-to powder and I have not seen it for a while. IMR 4895 is not fussy about being downloaded a bit. What I am reading about this latest generation of ball powders is that they want to be run near the top of their power curve. That is where their "retardant package" is tuned to be the most consistent.

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