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So I finished up the front brake job with no real problem. The only thing I forgot to do was spray on some anti-squeal on the backs of the brake pads, but thats only because I didn't have any at the time. Anyway, the front brakes are good, but we've been getting some vibrations in the steering wheel and the ABS is randomly kicking on. So I decide to check out the back brakes again. Seeing as I paid Midas to do my back brakes about 6 months ago, I never really looked at the job all too carefully aside from messing with the back left e-brake as I mentioned in another blog post. So, I start on the back right, I start taking it all apart and checking the work they did and thats when I realize one of the caliper pins is completely seized in place and the other one has limited movement. It took me about an hour to work that fucking pin out with my socket wrench while constantly spraying it with freeze off. wtf. I get that out, cleaned it, greased it. Ok. I go to take the rotor off and its locked in place on the e-brake. I had to whack that sunofabitch off with a rubber mallet. The rotor comes off, and so does the e-brake. After looking it over, the emergency brake was such a tight fit in the rotor, once its in place, it was causing a constant rubbing on the inside of the rotor. So I filed and sanded the damn e-brake down so it'll have a cm of breathing room. I cleaned everything up, re-assembled, tested thoroughly and its now in good shape. Roughly 5 hours on Saturday. It took me about 5 hours to get that pin out, clean everything and sand down that e-brake. So I figured the back left couldn't be as bad... Yeah. So yesterday (Sunday), I took the back left off and even tho the rotor came off easily, the brake dust on the inside of the rotor showed the e-brake was rubbing too. And of course, another seized pin in the caliper. WTF did I pay those guys for? Another 5 hours later and this side is now done. I took it for a slight test drive yesterday and the braking felt better than ever. I didn't get a chance to drive that far to see if the vibration problem is fixed yet, but I would assume the stuck caliper pins and rubbing brakes was the cause behind all that. I will never go back to that Midas again. Fucking rip off bastards.

This past weekend screwed us. While driving down the road the Blazer died. It completely stalled out 5 minutes from the house. We had to get it towed. There was a fuel leak that had to be fixed and the spark plugs, wires, distributor cap all had to be replaced.

Well, I did the oil change for the Blazer for the first time last Sunday (09-20-2009). I had to buy an oil filter wrench because my grip wrench would not budge that f*cking oil filter no matter how hard I tried. What a pain in my ass that was. Everything went well, but then on monday I noticed a weird humming noise and a stiffness to the steering wheel. Afraid I f*cked something up, I checked all my fluids. But no, it wasn't the oil. My power steering fluid was out. WTF. So I hit the gas station down the road from work, put some power steering fluid in and got home with no problem. I had to to do this a couple of times. I ended up getting some power steering stop leak at NAPA. It seemed to have stopped the leak thursday night. But! I started driving to work friday and the steering gave out completely. I tried putting my fluid in, but the car vomited it all over the road. As of today, I removed the air filter cabin and the front left headlight. It seems that the power steering fluid is leaking from a metal joint that connects to the ps cooler. I'm trying to put a hose over top of the broken section of pipe and clamp it down to fix the leak. I should be finished with it tomorrow, rain permitting. If it doesn't work, I might have to cut that section of pipe off and replace it with a high pressure hose... I'm just hoping that that is the only place it is leaking from. And I have to say this... what a horrible f*cking design flaw. With the way the headlight is positioned, the excess rain water or salty water during the winter that hits in that crack between the headlight and the hood would drip down the back of the headlight and rust the shit out of this metal joint. Why in the hell would someone design something to be rusted out like that? Its like it was made to break.

We come to the conclusion that we will sell the Blazer. We'll end up taking a loss on the loan, but the vehicle's constant maintenance is not worth it. At the current rate of random repairs, we'll actually loose more money keeping the truck than taking the initial loss from a trade in. We're going to look into getting a full or mid size 4 door 4 cylinder sedan. 4x4 is a damn nice feature, but the maintenance and cost is pure hell.

So after all the work I put into our blazer, and all the money we had to spend on it for random fixes left and right, enough is enough. The transmission starting going over the past couple weeks. From what I saw online, getting a flush would cause more harm than good, but just replacing the filter and a couple quarts of fluid shouldn't cause any problems. So I went to midas and paid them to replace the tranny filter and the fuel filter. They screwed up something by either hitting something too hard when they took the pan off, or they somehow dislodged something, or the transmission was just so bad, that even touching it caused it to screw up even more. After the tranny filter was replaced, it lost the first and second gears and the service engine soon light came on for 2 shift solenoids. Midas offered no help at all afterwords and only told me to take it to a transmission shop. The only way I could drive it was to physically shift it to first, then second, third and then drive... every single time the car came to a stop. So fuck it, we decided to trade it in. We were holding off for a while because we know we owed more than it was worth.. sure as hell the trade in value was pure shit. We did get a good deal at a toyota dealer with zero percent financing for 5 years tho. Yay. We got a new 2010 Toyota Corolla. Pics: http://forums.ancientclan.com/album.php?albumid=62