Man, what a waste of a weekend. I ended-up missing a big poker tournament to install new brakes on the Accord, and I only finished the rear brakes! For some reason, I started with the rear brakes, knowing they would be harder because I’ve never worked on them before. I still have a lot of homework to do as well, and I’m not even finished with the brakes.
The rear brakes on my Accord are drum brakes, and what a total PITA they were. I could of changed the brakes in about an hour if they were disc brakes on all four corners (which is still considered slow by real mechanics). Right now, after bleeding the brakes, I don’t have much pressure, so I have the feeling I over extended the slave cylinders and broke the seals in them which are cheap to replace, but I’ll have to tear the brakes back apart again to replace them. Ugh. I’ll know for sure after I do the front brakes and bleed the system again.
Of course I could of paid someone $200 or so to do it, but I figured I should at least do drum brakes once so I know what they are about. I think the next time I do them, it would take me maybe 1.5 hours for the rear brakes.
It’s interesting how long it takes to do things for the first time on cars… my first clutch job on the Talon took me 2.5 days plus the help of a few people. Now I could do it myself in 4 hours or so depending on how ambitious I was, instead of paying someone $600 who probably knows less about the particulars of my car than I do. Then again this should be no surprise as I’m not a skilled mechanic. I do it for the challenge, I think in generally specialization is for insects (especially if you look at all of the things our ancestors could do), and it’s nice to get dirty sometimes.
One nice thing about doing these brakes is that I ordered some Speed Bleeders for them. Essentially it makes bleeding the brakes a one man job, without paying the exorbitant fee for one of those brake vacuum systems which does brake bleeding.
Anyhow.. hopefully I’ll finish them up tomorrow night (or Tuesday depending on when I do the homework thing) without needing to replace the slave cylinders in the rear brakes.
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