Car Maintenance Musings for my Record

This weekend dad and I did some general maintenance to the mustang. I changed the air filter, which was surprisingly a pain in the ass compared to what I’m used to on the bronco. Instead of unscrewing a lid I’m unclamping rubber hoses, pulling off large plastic pieces with electrical wires, etc.

In addition to that, we have mice in the garage, apparently. How do I know? They started eating my old air filter…which means they are getting up into my engine. Not a good thing.

I was going to change the oil but ran out of time because the brakes took 7 hours to change. Apparently my emergency brake has been locked up for some time. No, the emergency brake handle hasn’t been up all this time (Mike K), but at some point the compressor completely locked down.

Front brakes were easy to put on, but the back brakes were impossible, even with a c-clamp. By dark we still needed to bleed the brakes and dad and I were too tired to mess with it so I decided to just drive his truck into work yesterday.

On the way in his engine light came on, which apparently is normal, but I called him up to check and he said that he and my uncle had finished bleeding my brakes and if I wanted he would come switch vehicles. I wasn’t too far out of town so I agreed.

A cop stops behind me wondering why I was sitting on the side of route 15, so I lied and said I was broke down and waiting for my dad.

When dad and I switch vehicles, the brakes seem like they are working fine, but once I switched into 5th gear I lost all power. It seemed like my brakes were frozen again, and I could smell it when dad had pulled up. I stopped and got gas and when I got back on the highway everything was fine and I had power in 5th gear again. I thought maybe it was just that there was brake fluid on the rotor or something and maybe it just needed to burn off. When I left work later in the day they were fine so I’m hoping it was just the one time thing, but I’ll have to keep an eye on it.

I’m definitely going to invest the $100 into a floor jack sometime soon, these hydrolic jacks just don’t cut it on these smaller cars. Have I mentioned I hate fuel injection? I eventually may invest the $3k or so into a lift in the garage, especially when I start restoring my bronco.