I had dropped my car off at Mazda for a plethora of things to get done to it (including the free lock reinforcement which will supposedly hinder any attempt to break into it AGAIN) and unfortunately I received a phone call during the day telling me that my rear brakes were shot and the front ones had a few months left in them.
Fortunately, I have never owned a car long enough to need the brakes changed. Unfortunately, I found out that it would cost upwards of $800 – $900 to change both sets and I coughed into the phone. I said that my Dad and I would do it ourselves so he would stop asking me if they could do it for us.
Alas, this is the life of being a car-owner and I will have to suck it up and change the brakes. The good news out of all of this is that I was talking to Eric and he reminded me that he helped Simon change his brakes a few weeks ago and he thought that Simon wouldn’t mind helping out on the task at hand so I am very appreciative that Eric will give Simon a ring and ask him about it. I’m sure it will save me a few bucks on labour costs.
Speaking about labour costs, (WARNING – RANT!), I brought the car in for the 96,000 KM Service check. Please note that the car is not under warranty anymore. So in the end, after giving the car an oil change and giving it the once over, it ended up costing me $260 due to 2.5 hours of labour costs.
I really don’t understand this too much and maybe someone can help me out. This is the first time I’ve brought the car in for a service appointment after the warranty has expired. Is this a proactive move on my part? Should I now become reactive and just wait until something breaks? They did point out the need for new brakes and they also pointed out that I need my transmission flushed out (another $200). But here I’m thinking that I could have saved myself $200 if I just didn’t bring it in for the service appointment, and really, what real use is the service appointment anymore if I am not under warranty? I think I shall leave it to the commenters of this website to let me know what I should be doing now. I am going to assume that I should stop wasting my money in bringing it in for a service appointment and just be reactive. Although there are slight proactive things I can do like look into how long it takes for a transmission to need flushing and mark it on the calendar and just get it done, instead of having someone look at it for $200 and then say “Oh yeah, you should get this done.”
Anyhow, so there you have it. I need new brakes and I await hearing back from Eric/Simon. I’m quite excited to change the brakes as I feel that if another person can do it, I’m sure I can also (if I have the right tools of course). I would like to thank my friend Pierre for giving me the idea of doing it myself after he told me of a time he changed the brakes on his Dodge Neon himself by following some instructions he found on the Internet.
God bless the Internet.
Day Two of my Freedom was fine other than that as I got to take a ride on the O-Train (which I love. I love trains.) to pick up the car and then I headed home where we all had steak and veggies for dinner and I watched an old Spidey episode with Vero and she loved it.