My weekend ... ROLLER COASTER!

That sums it up perfectly. A little nervous Friday and Saturday morning, Spent time getting to know an old friend Saturday, then the rest of my weekend working on my car. The highlight was certainly spending time with Jack, hopefully we can manage to find time for each other on a more frequent basis. The low point ... a brake job on my car that took almost 8 hours! It's a 4 wheel disk brake system that should take 45 minutes per wheel, including cleaning the new parts and hand tightening the lugs with a torque wrench.

I started about 3:30 Saturday afternoon and by 9:30 had FINALLY gotten the calliper to retract, the new pads and rotors in place, and the rear tires back on the car. It involved a little surfing the Internet for the answer to why the callipers wouldn't retract and Dad fabricating me a custom spreader wrench to spin them back to where I needed them to go. Thank goodness I decided to do this at their house instead of driving home and doing it here! I don't have scrap steel and a welding machine tucked away in my garage to make custom calliper wrenches with. I'd blame it on foreign engineering except that the brake system has Ford Motor Company stamped all over it ... lousy Ford engineers. We called it a night and I tackled the front brakes Sunday morning. Those were much easier and the hardest part was getting the corroded rotors off the hub ... almost 3 years and 118,000 miles of wear and tear meant I had to use a 4lb sledge hammer to literally knock them loose.

I had the front done, garage cleaned up, and was in the shower in under 2 hours. Too bad I didn't double check the lugs after I dropped it off the jack. Jen and I only got three miles from Mom and Dads when the front end developed a serious shimmy and I turned around. Apparently I didn't have the tire quite square and, though I didn't lose any, three of the 5 lugs on the drivers tire were not even hand tight. That'll teach me to not double check things before driving the car too far.

I don't think being outside helped my bronchitis much this weekend. I was feeling pretty good Saturday morning and early afternoon but by Saturday night was having trouble breathing in between the coughs again. Sunday wasn't much better and I ended up staying home today after one scary asthma attack left me seeing spots for an hour or so. Time for different drugs I think.