I changed the brake pads on my car Monday night. Seemed to go smoothly, only took about an hour of work. But then when I gave it a test drive the front right caliper self-destructed and would release. The seals were rotten and it was all corroded and rusty. And by that point all the auto parts stores were closed. Luckily I did the job at my brother's house and he let my borrow his ancient terrible pickup truck to get to work Tuesday. So yesterday I called all the parts stores until I found one that could get the right calipers for me the same day, picked them up on my lunch break, and headed back to my brother's after work. I replaced both front calipers since the other looked bad too, but has a minor setback when one of the caliper mounting pins jammed in the mounting bracket and broke off, so I had to find a store with a mount bracket in stock halfway through the install. But I got it all back on and my brother lent a hand to flush all the brake fluid and bleed the new calipers. And we finished around 11. So this morning I was able to wake up too early and drive my own terrible car to work. It's slightly pathetic how much goes into a car worth so little, but oh well. I did recently discovered my car is still worth more than its weight in chicken shit, and that's comforting.
I once performed a similar comparison for my beater, and was pleased to see that it was cheaper than ground beef. $12,000.00 Space Shuttle 6,400.00 Gold 650.00 Lear jet 45 150.00 High-end bicycle 62.50 Segway 49.10 Maybach 30.00 Harley Davidson VSRC 24.00 USS Ronald Reagan 8.13 Hummer 2 3.57 Ford Focus 3.51 Skateboard 0.21 1993 Subaru Impreza 0.09 Shredded auto scrap Cost per pound
I feel your pain. I have spent far too much time hammering at frozen brakes. You didn't mention bloody knuckles and rust specks in your eyes. :) The first time I did a break job, I managed to suck a whole lot of air in before figuring out what I was doing. Good times.