wfim (well fuck it's monday)...
had to get up at 5:30am to get my grandparents to drive them to a cancer clinic. no problem there, i'd drive em at any time of the day. the situation sucked though, because we had freezing rain all night AND my front brake pads wore out yesterday and chewed the rotors without a warning sound. the brakes felt a little spongy to me, and then all of a sudden the lovely sound of steel on iron. sigh.
so, driving on ice with no brakes and under a pretty tight deadline i nearly slid into on coming traffic doing maybe 40km/h down an easy sloping hill with a left bend to it. i never tapped the brakes, cause they're just not there .. i simply down shifted my truck to first, to control the speed before i got to the slope and that's when the slide started.
i've never actually been scared in my truck, but that kinda freaked me out because there was no traction to work with. i got the truck under control with 2 quick motions but i'm sure it looked totally sketchy to the guy i almost slammed into.
anyways, moving in 3 weeks and i'm probably out around $400 for repairs. wtf at this timing. that'll be just over a grand in a month. sigh. i'm not even going to be driving it that much once i live in ottawa, only to escape the city on weekends with my bikes or snowboard.
update: the mech shop tried to screw me out of roughly $400 for labor that would take a competent person maybe, 2 hours if they were slow. total cost of parts i need, $240 from my well known city wide supplier; total cost from theirs? somewhere around $350-400. same quality of parts. nice fucking mark up.
i got my front rotors changed, bearings repacked and pads for $370. that's, roughly $200 more than it needed to cost for an hour of labor. rotors + pads, $220 from them. from the company i get parts from, $140.
i seriously hate almost all local businesses in this shitty city. they'll rip you off badly if you're ignorant about the work that's required and the retail cost of parts. same shit goes down with my bikes and even my snowboards.
had to get up at 5:30am to get my grandparents to drive them to a cancer clinic. no problem there, i'd drive em at any time of the day. the situation sucked though, because we had freezing rain all night AND my front brake pads wore out yesterday and chewed the rotors without a warning sound. the brakes felt a little spongy to me, and then all of a sudden the lovely sound of steel on iron. sigh.
so, driving on ice with no brakes and under a pretty tight deadline i nearly slid into on coming traffic doing maybe 40km/h down an easy sloping hill with a left bend to it. i never tapped the brakes, cause they're just not there .. i simply down shifted my truck to first, to control the speed before i got to the slope and that's when the slide started.
i've never actually been scared in my truck, but that kinda freaked me out because there was no traction to work with. i got the truck under control with 2 quick motions but i'm sure it looked totally sketchy to the guy i almost slammed into.
anyways, moving in 3 weeks and i'm probably out around $400 for repairs. wtf at this timing. that'll be just over a grand in a month. sigh. i'm not even going to be driving it that much once i live in ottawa, only to escape the city on weekends with my bikes or snowboard.
update: the mech shop tried to screw me out of roughly $400 for labor that would take a competent person maybe, 2 hours if they were slow. total cost of parts i need, $240 from my well known city wide supplier; total cost from theirs? somewhere around $350-400. same quality of parts. nice fucking mark up.
i got my front rotors changed, bearings repacked and pads for $370. that's, roughly $200 more than it needed to cost for an hour of labor. rotors + pads, $220 from them. from the company i get parts from, $140.
i seriously hate almost all local businesses in this shitty city. they'll rip you off badly if you're ignorant about the work that's required and the retail cost of parts. same shit goes down with my bikes and even my snowboards.
bad things always come at stupid times eh... well, keep smiling! cause, lucky for you, you'll be out of this crap town soon!!
lucky jerk!