With the weather getting nicer (not as hot) and not having to travel just yet, I finally have some opportunity to do some wrenching. It seems my project cars never get any love, over the easier, “hands not as dirty” nerdy things, but I still love spinning a wrench from time to time.
On the daily driver (Mazda CX-5), it needed an oil change (as always) and the brakes were squealing bad despite being mostly new. While doing the oil I noticed a groove on the passenger side rotor, which lead me to find the source of the squeal…
It seems a hard spot on the inner pad was the culprit and wore nice groove into the rotor. I used a screwdriver to get rid of the hard piece and cleaned everything up. Brakes are finally quiet again!
Next up were the two money pits (project cars); I fired up both and let them run to charge up the batteries. On the Buick I decided to check out an issue with the dashboard lights (no Dave, it wasn’t a fuse!), and found the headlight switch had a burned contact.
Thankfully I had an extra switch and plug laying around, so a quick splice later shes all fixed up.
I also did some minor maintenance and fixed some iffy vacuum lines on the HVAC side of things.
Sadly I didn’t get any time to work on the Firehawk, so hopefully that’ll happen in the near future. New headlight gears and other improvements are in the works for it.
It’s been nice not having to travel this month, as my usual conferences have all been bumped to Oct/Nov this year. Hopefully things stay this way!