Yesterday I had one of the worst days in my DIY career!

Started with me wanting to (finally) change my track tyres and brake pads from broadford.

Got the car jacked up and on 4 stands. I do this by jacking up one side, place front stand under, other side, front stand under then the rear and both rear stands under.

I go about swapping pads and tyre no worries. Interrupted 5 million times by screaming kids and lovely wife. But I got there!

Now comes the interesting part. Because the car is up on 4 stands I dont normally tighten the lug nuts up to their tightest until the car is on the ground (wheels turn when you try).

Anyway, I start buy re-jacking the drivers side up a little and remove the front stand and lower the car. At this point I get distracted by visitors. When I come back I jack up the passenger side and stupidly remove the rear jack. Now I have NFI WHY but I did. When I lowered the car of course the weight is diagonal and the car starts to wobble and the car falls of the drivers rear stand. No major damage that I can tell. The stand nub is a bit bent and the fuel tank took a knock but no visible damage (Simon will be inspecting it so dont fret).

So all done right!!! WRONG. I go and test drive the car and bed in the pads. driving down the road for 30 min and cant figure out wtf these pads are squealling so bad. Finally pull over and realise I have put the anti squeal shims in the wrong way! at this point itslike 9pm and no way I am re-doing these tonight so just pull in and call it a night.

Next day I am driving the car to work. WIndows up to avoid the horrendeously embarrasing brake squeal. I hit the freeway and there is the most god awefull rotationaly noise that is feeding back through the steering column. At first I thought it was some crap that had hardened onto the tyres but soon decided there is no way. I then spent the rest of the trip going through nigtmare scenarios like the fall from the stand did more damage than I suspected. My brain then stumbled onto the hint posted above...I forgot to tighten my wheel nuts. And here I am 25k from work and no lug nut tool handy (I have 12mm hex bolt lug nuts) because in my rush the previous night I packed it in with all my tools instead of the glovebox like I normally do.

ANYWAY!!!! to shorten an even longer story...I made it to work eventually and was late for my daughters basketball training, but I made it with my car in one piece and a quite once over with the breaker bar and she is right as rain.

At least I got all 3 in one go

 

I dunno how to top that!

I can only remember what I did at Wakefield long time ago

 

HAHA, been there, done that. You'll probably never do it again now, or at least next time you'll know what it is :P

Thank goodness there's no damage done from the fall though eh?

 

Oh that is a terrible tale.....but hey you have all 3 things go bad so you are right as rain now for the remainder of 2008!!!

Glad you didn't have anything else go bad!!!!

 

well just before chrissy I had my laptop and home PC die and then (while working on my car) I rolled onto my phone in my pocket and cracked the sreen. All up...$3500

 

Sounds like you should get an accidental damage clause on your contents insurance!

 

LOL, I've driven with my wheel nuts loose, after changing the brake pads, it started to rain (at my friend's place), so quickly put all thing together, and nobody tighten the nuts, drove back home, felt things wobbly, pulled over, and check the nuts (for some reason i naturally assumed it was the nuts) and had to tighten all four of them. Lucky I properly packed my lock nut in the glove box

 

That's the best mea culpa I've read in a while. Congrats on fessing up to all that.

To be honest though, that kind of stuff happens to me EVERY time I try any DIY, which is why 'er indoors gets very nervous at the sight of me fossicking in the tool box.

 

Andy,

Mrs Murphy's rule "Murphy was an optimist!"!

Hope all's well now!!

M

 

heh - once I almost had a car roll off the blocks we had it on while trying to pull out the gearbox . Two of us lying underneath required all our strength to lift the car back onto the the blocks . That was when I was young and stupid (er)

 

You're very lucky Andrew...you should buy a lottery ticket...!

 

I'm glad this sort of stuff doesn't only happen to me. Glad there was no damage in the end.

 

I got hit with $1500 bill from Mazda.

Starter motor, spark plugs and crank sensor died in the @ss.

 

Thanks guys Still have to go for a long drive yet but all is well. Still have to get her back in the air to change the shims :|

 

Took me a while but I finally got there. Changed the shims over and made a world of difference. Also found something else out. When you wind the piston back in, make sure you wind it all the way in on the back. I only wound it back far enough to get it over the pads and realised later that this becomes the maximum width the piston can open, so I had the rear pads basically constantly rubbing. All good now Just have to find the source of a knocking when I turn left.

Cheers

Andrew

 

This might be a stupid question, but which one are the shims?

Also, you know there's like a piece of cloth that's put on top of the pads (the outer side of course), mine has become very dry and brittle, so I removed it. I assume it's not going to change anything, am I right?

I've also noticed that the rubber bit that surrounds the piston on the front right side is basically half missing what could have caused this? and should I get this fixed? Could the motul rbf600 caused this? or over heating?

 

No stupid questions. The shims are thin metal plates that sit between the pad backing plate and the caliper. The theory behind them is that brake squeal is caused by minute vibrations, like a wet finger over a champagne glass rim. The shims are supposed to counter that vibration.

I believe this serves the same purpose as the shims, it absorbs the vibrations.

Its not good as its there to stop dust and dirt getting in. Its possible brake fluid can eat away at it but it will look different to something tearing it away.

Look at getting it fixed as soon as possible.

Cheers

Andrew