My Night Sucked

If you’ve been reading by blog, you know I had to do the brakes on my truck. I finally got around to it the other day and it sucked. Now I’m an ASE certified Master Technician, and a brake job is a very easy task to do. It should have taken me all of 30 minutes. I started on the passenger side brakes first and was done with it in 10 minutes.

Then I started on the drivers side brakes, and that’s when the sucking started. While taking off the wheel, three studs broke. This has happened to me before so I had two lug nuts in my tool box, but the only stud I had was for the rear. This meant I had to walk to the auto parts store (I only have one vehicle and I had already broken it).

At the auto parts store they only had 2 studs and no lug nuts. This didn’t help me much. Although I could replace 2 studs and nuts, I would have to disassemble the hub twice, and that would be a pain in the ass. So I walked to the next auto parts store (Luckily the first one is only a mile away, and the next one is only a mile from it). This one also had studs and no lug nuts. This was OK because I could replace all the studs and use the two lug nuts I had (I could install the third lug nut later).

Once home I started fixing the drivers side brakes. Nissan does things a little different than most other manufactures. In order to remove the hub, a specialty tool is needed. I don’t have this specialty tool, so I had to make do with what I had (that means I couldn’t torque the wheel bearings when re-installing the hub; I had to use the German method of tightening, "gutintite" (good and tight)). The hub then had to be removed from rotor (it is held in place by 6 bolts) and the three broken were replaced.

All wrapped up I test drove the truck, parked it and went inside to get cleaned up. I took a shower and started to have a couple of beers. After the second beer I realized that I didn’t tighten down the 6 bolts holding the rotor to the hub. I only snugged them down. I had already cleaned up, and had a nice buzz on, so I wasn’t about to go get dirty again that night. I decided to do it in the morning, and had another beer. I called my cell phone (it was charging in my bedroom) and left a message on it to remind me that I needed to fix the truck before I drove it to work.

In the morning, I woke up early, got dressed (at which time I saw that I had missed a call on my cell phone, and remembered that I had to fix my truck) I changed, because tan pants and light blue shirts show dirt and grease more than dark blue pants and shirt (I didn't want to look like total crap all day). So I took the wheel off my truck, and tightened the 6 bolts that I had forgotten to tighten the night before( this sucked to do before I had my first cup of coffee).

It pretty much set the tone for the day. My day sucked, just like my night sucked.