In addition to the health problems, we seem to be having a rather torrid time with our cars at the moment. As a family we have three cars. A small people-carrier that my wife primarily drives (which recently got damaged in a car park) a small 4-door run-about that I’m currently using, and my home-built sports car (which is loosely based on a Lotus 7, and which is currently off the road waiting for me to repair the rear suspension).
On Saturday I noticed that as I was driving “my” car up to junction, the rear brakes were making a strange noise. On checking them, it turns out that the pads have worn down to the rivets. Which have scored the discs. D’Oh. My bad for not checking them more regularly, but the upshot is that the rear discs and pads needed replacement.
This is a job I’ve carried out before on other cars without any issues, so I called into the local discount motor factors, and picked up a pair of discs and a set of pads, before calling into the more consumer-oriented place to pick up a workshop manual that would show me the details of how to actually do it. Only for me to discover they don’t do a workshop manual for this car. Oh well, I figure it can’t be *that* hard to change the discs and pads, even without detailed instructions.
How wrong could I be? 3 hours later, and I still haven’t managed to even get the callipers off, let alone the discs themselves. It’s basically impossible to get enough leverage on the bolts without having the car on a lift. At this point I realise that life is too short to be messing about with this, especially when I’m not making any progress, and so I put it all back together as it was. And today I’m trying to get hold of a friend who runs a small garage to get his guys to sort it out for me.