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maybe it really just needed new rotors
Monday, September 3 2018
We had leftover pancake batter from yesterday, so Gretchen made pancakes yet again this morning to honor labor day, what would be my last day of freedom before returning to the work-a-day grind in the form of my new job across the Hudson fjord.
The coffee we'd had with our pancakes had been decaf, but when I went out to get the right brake rotors for the Subaru, I stopped at the Old Hurley Stewarts to get a cup of richer roast and a bag of meh potato chips. On the way home, I went out of my way to visit the Tibetan Center thrift store. This time I happened to find a little treasure trove of tools languishing outside. The things I bought from this trove included a staple gun, a set of shallow 3/8 inch sockets (some of which actually required a hex drive), a pair of end-cutting pliers, and a nice ~20 foot long extension cord. The woman running the register asked me what I wanted to pay, and I said $5, which she agreed to immediately.
Back at the house, I had a little trouble replacing the passenger-side front brake rotor. One of the 17 mm bolts securing it seemed to want to enter its hole cross-thread, and I couldn't get it to enter the hole normally. Eventually I used my tapping set to cut new threads in the hole, but these seemed so loose that the bolt might not hold. So I added some plumber's tape, and amazingly that seemed to fix everything, allowing me to tighten the bolt to the limits of the torque my wrench could supply. After replacing both of the front rotors, the Subaru's brakes seemed a lot better. Most importantly, they no longer hummed when I braked. I'd never replaced rotors before and had been dubious that doing so could have much effect, since even old rotors seem to have plenty of surface to grab on to. It seems my thinking had been wrong.
By then, I started drinking, which is allowed on a holiday such as Labor Day.
Meanwhile Gretchen had driven to the Kingston bus station to pick up our friend Andrea, the woman who spent a couple months in our basement master guestroom last summer. She'd come upstate mostly just so she and Gretchen could watch recent episodes of Claws together, screaming at the teevee as needed. I did not participate in that, keeping mostly to the laboratory, where I watched YouTube videos. For a time I also hung out in the greenhouse. Eventually I sobered up and went to bed, though the evening was so hot that it was difficult to get comfortable in the bed even with the fan at full blast.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?180903 feedback
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