(part 5 of the series)

Catching Up...

Where we are and where we are going.

It's been quite a while since my last post. The project took on a new perspective and slowed to a crawl as the funding dried up. Yes, the project is "over budget" but in all honesty, we all knew this was going to happen, and it's not about the money..really. 

Since last I posted, we've experienced the ultimate squeaky belt, rain without a top, cold of winter without a top or heater, grinding brakes, unexplainable high engine temps, a leaky transmission, what we call the Turn Signal Incident, and a cracked windshield. Ya, I know, sounds bad.. I keep thinking Money Pit as well, but hey, it's fun too. The good news is that Kassie has been an absolute stud and driven the jeep as-is for the entire time now. She loves Alice (the Jeeps name) and has vowed never to sell her.

In the next few blog posts, I'll detail what I can here to get you all updated to where we are now. Stay Tuned! 

Them's the Breaks

The Jeep needed brakes desperately. Kassie, her main man Kyle, and I set about to install new rotors and Pads. Kassie has done the breaks on her moms van (with my supervision) before, and was now going to teach Kyle how to install brakes (again, with my supervision).

To the left you can see the badly scored and rusted out rotor on the driver's side front.  The pads were down to the metal and had torn up the rotors so bad they needed replacing. 

See all that rust on the rotor face? It took a lot of elbow grease to remove the rims after all that rust had formed. We got them off, but they were the hardest rims I've ever tried to take off.

 

We cleaned off all the dirt and spiderwebs, inspected the lines, caliper, and slides. Removed the old rotors and replaced them with brand new ones. 


To the right, you can see just how bad the old rotors were - pretty sad. 


The new rotors were all shiny and full if awesome. Only problem was, they looked out of place on the jeep. Too new when compared to the pitted, dirty suspension components around them. 


Below is the new rotor on the old jeep. 

Kyle did most of the work, directed by Kassie who consulted with me. So in that respect, we are a lot like the American Auto Industry... 3 people for a 1 man project. 

Once we had the new rotors installed, we greased the slides, compressed the calipers, and prepared to install the pads.

Side Note: 

We use a product called Zep SuperPenn, it's a penetrating oil used to loosen rusted bolts. Without this can of Zep, nothing on this Jeep would have ever come apart. We've come to refer to the aerosol can of Zep SuperPenn as simply "Zep Juice".

If you look closely, you can see the blue can in the picture of Kyle to the right. 

Zep SuperPenn is the MVP of this project! 

Here's a shot of the old, worn pads. They were thin as thin can be. If you look closely, you can see that they were worn down to the rivets holding the pad material on. OUCH! 

Out with the old and in with the new.  Thanks to our friends at Autozone, these thick beauties will help our Jeep stop when it should.

I'm amazed it stopped at all before.  

Pleased to announce that the brakes work great! 

No Squeaks or grinding noises - 

Great Job Kyle and Kassie!!! More to come!

Like, Share, Tweet, whatever! Thanks for reading. Stay Tuned for the next update.