Thursday, May 5, 2011

More posts unrelated to mopeds: The Volvo Army

So I decided to put some regular maintenance into my Volvo so that I can hopefully have it for another couple years. I wasn't raised to work on cars and that's sort of why I got into mopeds. Mopeds just seemed like an easy way to get my hands dirty and pick up a little bit of mechanical knowledge. Now I can translate what I know about mopeds into figuring out issues with my car. First, I changed the spark plugs, distributor cap and wires. I also changed the oil and filter (ashamedly the first time I'd done that at home instead of just taking it to a garage). But the big fix involved my rear brakes. Nate Bandit noticed that there was a lot of rust on my aluminum rims...which didn't really make sense. With a closer inspection we found a huge problem...This is was your rear rotors are supposed to look like:

And this is what mine looked like...

COMPLETELY SEPARATED!!! The inner part of the "ring" was sharp enough to cut your finger. We found this out after we tried throwing them around the yard like Xena Warrior Princess. Needless to say I replaced both the rear rotors and brake pads as well. It's amazing how different it feels to brake with four brakes instead of just the front two.

2 comments:

  1. Worst brakes I've ever seen, congratulations!

    ReplyDelete
  2. second to worse brakes i've ever seen, either way you should probably get a tetanus shot.

    ReplyDelete