Brake Job

The truck has needed some brake work for a while. Nothing critical, just routine maintenance as pads and rotors wear. Last time I had the shop do it, I seem to remember it running almost $400 for front pads and rotors, and that just strikes me as WAY too much. Money is tight for all of us these days, and pinching pennies is how we're going to make it.

Some digging on YouTube and through other sources revealed that this shouldn't be a tough job with the right tools. I called my father and borrowed his impact wrench, buzzed through Tractor Supply for a bottle jack and a couple jack stands, and the auto-parts store for new pads and rotors and a can of cleaner.

Got home, gritted my teeth, and dug in.

I got the calipers off and pads out without trouble. Getting the new pads in? Not so much.

After much grumbling and a few four-letter words, I called my neighbor to ask if he had fifteen minutes to swing by and maybe help.

Turns out the videos online are a good start, but missed a few points.

Once the neighbor pointed out the OTHER two bolts that hold the pad carrier on the piston assembly, and those got separated, it was short work to get things back together.

The first side took me over an hour. The second side took twenty minutes. Pumped the pedal a few times to get pressure back up, and went for a test spin... she had "go", and she (more importantly) had "whoa!"

I learned that my compressor WILL run an impact gun in short bursts. It wasn't designed for it - it doesn't have the flow needed to run a tool full-time - but for my purposes it's just fine.

90 minutes of my time for $250 savings? No brainer.

Truck musing

I have a four-year-old Nissan Frontier Crew Cab. Not fancy. V6, manual transmission, power options, and a tow hitch. No premium sound. No leather. No sunroof. There's a hint of rust starting on the door sill. The tires will need replacing this year. The brakes need some attention.

The bed has accumulated the detritus that seems to be the hallmark of trucks: a broken bungee cord, a double-handful of wet and moldy hay and leaves, a hank of faded nylon rope, an empty soda bottle or two.

There's a ding in the hood from a rock falling off a semi.

A scratch on the bumper from a loose cart.

A scuff in the fender from a close encounter with the garage.

A crease in the quarter panel from another cart. (By the by, please, put your damn carts in the corral.)

A stain on the back seat from a spilled Coke.

There's a bit of a bloodstain on the center console from a bloody sleeve after dressing out a deer.

For all that, though, it's still my truck. Maybe even because of all that.

It doesn't clean up quite like it did when it was new - I washed it weekly and waxed it monthly for a year or so. Now it gets washed a couple times a year, and I pay the car wash another $5 for the wax option.


(Two days after I got it.)

I haven't done much to customize it - I added a toolbox and a few decals. No lift. No new rims. No fancy lights.



It is, unapologetically, a work truck. Sometimes I'd like a bigger truck. A bit more towing capacity, or a little more cab space, or a longer bed.

I looked at the numbers for an F-150 the other day.

I can't park one in my garage.

Guess I'm sticking with a midsize. :-)

Mobile Audio

Every so often I start thinking that a new audio head in the truck would be nice. In particular, one that reads MP3 discs and has a line-in for an iPod.

Then I look at what the options are out there, and I cringe.

See, Nissan did something right with the Frontier's audio system (in '07, I haven't looked at the current models and can't tell from their advertising photos): they made it simple. BIG buttons, and not many. Simple display.

MrsZ's previous car had an aftermarket head in it that drove me NUTS. The buttons were the size of a pencil eraser, and it seemed like the entire face was covered with them. Labeling was in tiny print and not well-lit. It had a very pretty display, though...

We complain about and legislate against "distracted driving" with cell phones and text messaging and so forth - and then "upgrade" our cars with accessories that require a degree to operate. Derp?

(I really do love my truck. It is unapologetically a TRUCK. Easy-clean interiors, big buttons, big knobs, etc.)

Eye-Catching Cars

With apologies to JayG, this post came to me while I was driving to and from New England this weekend.

Top Ten Eye-Catching Cars

These are the cars that make you turn your head and watch them in the mirror as they go the other way, or that you'll walk over a row in the parking lot to look closer. All of these are cars that I have seen in the wild at one point or another; no show queens here.

10) Ford Mustang. Any vintage, with a subtle thumbing of the nose to the boxy semi-hatchbacks of the 80s. The current iteration - and if you're getting one, it needs to be a GT - is a wonderful homage to the muscle-car fastback 'stangs of the late 60s and early 70s.

9) Chevrolet Corvette. All except the C4 style, which was an abomination in the eyes of Me. The current model is a sexy beast. I had an opportunity to drive one of the C5 generation while I sold cars, and it was definitely an experience.

8) Chevrolet Camaro. Much like Ford did with the Mustang, Chevy made an honest effort to get back to the original style with the new model. And it still works. The new Camaros turn my head right around. Attitude with power, and I like it!

7) Diesel pickups. Three-quarter and full-ton pickups with the loud diesel rumble get my attention. Too bad many of them are never used like they were designed - to pull BIG loads easily. It's easy to say, "Yeah, this baby will pull a trailer three times its size," but it's kind of silly to brag about that when there's no stinking hitch on the truck.

6) Jeep Wranglers. Ideally soft-top or no-top, and preferably door-less. One of the few vehicles out there that has numerous factory accessories to make it a true off-road machine. Rather impractical for anything other than playtime, they are a vehicle that makes no excuses about what they're for. (Or didn't, until the four-door "Wranglers" showed up.)

5) Q-cars. Sleepers. You probably won't see these in the other lane, and if they're in front of you, all you should expect to see is taillights. They look like daily drivers, but what's under the hood is a whole new game. Some of them are factory products (usually German, particularly Audi's S-badge, Bimmer's M-shop, and Me/Be's AMG-works) and some are home made. In my car days, the one I wanted was an Audi S4 Avant. A rather small wagon, all-wheel-drive, with a 2.7L twin-turbo under the hood. Off the showroom floor it would run 0-60 in 5.5. Aside from minor styling cues (17" wheels and an "S" badge on the hatch), it looked like a stock A4 wagon.

4) Custom muscle cars. Detroit iron. Chain steering wheels. Big fat rear wheels and tiny fronts. Mad Max-esque blowers sticking through the hood. Flame paint jobs and chrome. Exhaust that you FEEL before you hear. They make me giggle like a schoolgirl.

3) Properly-tuned rice rockets. Any jackass can dump a couple thousand into bolt-on body crap from Imports-R-Us and slap a fart can and a NOS sticker on their ricer. None of that makes it go faster. I'd MUCH rather see someone dump that money into engine tuning and suspension work, get their car into the 10- or 11-second range, THEN start worrying about ground effect and stupid lighting and so forth. (See above: Q-cars.)

2) Italian finery. Ferrari and Lamborghini. I've seen a few prancing stallions in the wild, and ONE Lambo. Very few things can compare with Italian sports cars when it comes to luxury and performance in one package.

1) Honda Prelude. Don't laugh. My first car was a '90 Prelude Si. A short-geared 145hp motor in a 2,400lb car has some serious ass. I detest the mid-90s "jellybean" style Preludes, but around '97 the styling improved dramatically, and so did power. I drove a '99 Prelude with VTEC once, and it was pretty bizarre.

I revved it up, dropped the clutch around 3,000, and it jumped, but not as hard as I'd expected. I shifted it through and kept it up in what I assumed to be the power band. The guy sitting next to me (a salesman for the local Honda shop and former co-worker from my shop) told me to try again, but this time, hold off the shifts until it was getting towards redline (around 8k, I believe). Around 5,500rpm, the VTEC cams clicked in, and suddenly I was thrown back in my seat with a face-splitting grin plastered on. Keeping the revs above the VTEC line proved easy, and the thing was a ROCKET.


So, there it is. My top-ten head-turners in no particular order. Tell me why I'm wrong!