There are two ways to fix your brakes and neither one works. When I was attending high school in Lynn Valley, North Vancouver, I had the chance to take an Auto Mechanics class. It was fun and the teacher was a great guy. That was in 1973. We got to wear boiler suits and get our hands greasy. Mr. G. was confident enough in our talents by the middle of the year to let us work on teacher's cars. The teachers liked having the work done for free and we students blossomed in the environment of bestowed trust and voluntary responsibility.
My project partner, whose name escapes me now, was an amenable fellow and one Friday we were honoured with being given the task of doing the brakes on our Algebra teacher's sedan. He was a cranky bastard and we were as careful as we could possibly be. The elements of the job that I had forgotten from our prior instruction, my partner remembered and my memory served to fill in his blank spots.
We retracted the calipers, changed the front pads and the rear shoes. We adjusted the hand-brake. We bled the lines and replaced the water-logged brake fluid. We shined everything up good and moved her off the hoist for the next job. We were both changed young men that afternoon as we dipped our paws in a big bucket of Go-Jo and wiped off the grime with faded red shop rags. No longer brake-job virgins, we both knew that there were many men, much older than us who couldn't make that claim. We waddled a bit when we walked off into our week-ends, as if something in our bell-bottoms was impeding our forward ambulation.
On the following Monday morning, I was greeted on the front walk of the school by a gaggle of excited, chattering students. One dude asked me if I'd yet heard “The Word.” I said that I hadn't.
“Dude... Some grease-monkeys from Auto Shop did the brakes on Mr. Jones’ car last Friday. They bunned it all up and he like, torpedoed a street mailbox on his way home. Caught epic air over the curb, landed in some ancient tart’s petunias on Lynn Valley Road and the cops came. It was over the frikkin’ top! Mr. G. is gonna intensely pound their heads.”
“Jesus, back-flipping Christ! Was Mr. Jones hurt?”
“Negative Dude, but like his front bumper looks crotch-worthy, right? His alignment has had the major biscuit and he pissed his Hush-Puppies. And the cops had to like physically restrain the old granny! Right outta Monty Python!”
Later that day, Mr. G. took my partner and I aside and into his shop office for a closed door meeting. He discreetly told us that we must have forgotten to completely bleed the air out of the hydraulic lines after replacing the fluid. Just one tiny bubble, he explained, could take all the magic out of the of force-magnifying effects of compressed fluids.
His tone was fatherly, stern and deadly serious. When he had gauged the full effect that the ordeal had had on us and had seen how shaken up we were from contemplating what could have occurred; he pointed out with the faintest hint of a smile under his moustache, that it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy than Mr. Jones.
I have never repaired my own brakes after that, down to this very day. A few years ago, when I was having my Suzuki serviced, it was pointed out to me that my rotors were totally Jurassic, my brake pads were squeal-worthy and the only discernible tread on my rubber was the wear bars themselves. But, I'd be OK for a while yet, I was assured by the mechanic.
As it turned out, I was scheduled to move a cargo of nearly 1500 lbs., comprised for the most part, of books and shelving. There would be just enough room left over for myself and my wife. I quickly decided to get our vehicle brought up to a good safe condition prior to this mission up the Fraser Canyon from Vancouver. I purchased four tires with “aggressive” treads for a good price and made a mental note not to eat in restaurants for the next few years.
My window of opportunity to get the car work done was shrinking rapidly, so I went to a certain corner in Vancouver where five different automotive garages that all service brakes, shared a block. My reasoning was, that the only possible variable between them would be their respective labour rates. Those rates would be tightly grouped due to their physical proximity to each other and the magic of the informed consumer in a free market.
I entered one establishment that I used to service as a letter-carrier. I introduced myself and my vehicle and was shown a choice of three rotors and two brake pads. I quickly zeroed in on the middle quality rotors and the top quality pads. I was shown the price, told that all the parts were in stock and that the work could be done right away. That suited me, as I was due to move my goods to Lillooet in only forty-eight hours time.
Looking the man square in the eye, I told him that although I didn't know him, I was going to extend my trust to his shop. I gave him my keys and walked around the back of the garage for a smoke. I saw a small young man in a white lab coat hoist my car up and begin removing the wheel nuts with a pneumatic wrench. Another older guy was working on another car on the opposite side of the shop while chatting in Mexican Spanish to an ample woman who stood arms akimbo, a few feet away.
After pacing the periphery for an hour, I went back into the office for a cup of extremely bad coffee. I began reading a book I'd brought and after a few pages, the little dude in the lab coat popped upstairs and told me that my Suzi was ready. I paid the bill in full and pondered how I'd make the next month's rent during my drive home.
We loaded up the vehicle a day early, so I could test drive it with the new brakes and tires. I wanted to get a feel for ceramic brakes, which are noteworthy for not being too grabby when cold but improve as they heat up. Perfect, I thought, for the mountainous, canyon road that I would be traversing.
As luck would have it, a thunder storm brewed up just as I went for my test run. The brakes proved to be great and the tires were equally superb. I became used to the initially slippery ceramic feeling of the brakes within minutes. It was akin to mimicking a trained dancer cruising a mall in a brand new pair of Birkenstock's. I drove down some steep hills and physically measured my stopping ability with the huge load. Soon, I was ready and confident that I would not experience a daunting learning curve on my coming trip.
The next morning, my wife and I pulled out of Vancouver and headed East. It was a work day, so the traffic was against us and we made very good time. I had booked a day off work before a long weekend and was feeling mighty fine. We had breakfast a hundred miles down river and turned North. The road was mostly deserted once we got onto Highway 12 at Lytton. This stretch of road has a chasm on the port-side and a sheer rock-face to starboard. There are free-range cattle, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, mule deer, black bears, grizzly bears, wolves, grouse and falling rocks to watch out for along your way.
Not far from Jackass Mountain, we heard a mighty thud. I figured that our aggressive treads had picked up a rock and slung it under the floorboards. It sounded like a 38 calibre pistol fired into a half-bucket of sand. As our deer-whistles whined around a curve and down a decline, I applied a light touch to the brake pedal.
If you've ever heard a train braking in a switching-yard, you could approximate the screech that came from my passenger-side front wheel. It was metal on metal, it was angry and accompanied by a vibration that could churn milk into butter. Worse, there was no braking action whatsoever on the hurtling, sheet-metal-clad ton of precious literature, beech-wood shelving and the best wife I ever had.
I tried a few more times, gingerly, like a man testing a sore tooth with the tip of his tongue. If anything, it seemed to be getting worse. I was able to downshift and use the aptly named emergency brake to make my approach to the ascension of Jackass Mountain. Climbing was OK. It was the coming down that was sketchy and it was several sweaty kilometres before I could find enough shoulder to pull over on.
A visual inspection revealed that the wheel was bolted on just fine, but one of two bolts that held the brake-caliper assembly was missing. It was the rearward bolt, so when the brakes were applied, the pads grabbed the disk and the whole assembly pivoted on the one remaining bolt to come rudely to rest on the iron tire rim, creating the hellish sounds and demonic vibrations. My prognosis was that each subsequent operation of the brakes would serve to further unscrew the remaining bolt.
With not much traffic on that lonely stretch of the canyon and us being without cell phones, there was no way I would abandon my wife to seek help, even though she would have a rifle, a box of shells and a copy of Sun Tzu's, Go Rin no Sho. Thus, I decided to chance driving the remaining forty-odd kilometres to Lillooet. If we didn't delay it might be possible to find a mechanic before quitting time. I put on my four-way flashers and pulled my hat down tight. I worked the hand-braked like a sled driver and down-shifted like an Italian boy.
We pulled into Lillooet at about an hour past lunch and found that all the mechanics at the local garages were already gone for their long weekends, save two. There was a big line up of customers, so my wife went across the road to the grocery store while I waited my turn on the hoist. A mechanic examined the tortured tire rim, the empty bolt-hole and the very loose remaining caliper assembly bolt. Fortunately, there was no damage to the disk nor to the pads.
The young mechanic said that we were mighty lucky to have arrived alive and very unlucky in that he didn't have the needed bolt, nor did the local Lillooet auto parts supplier. While I digested that information, the bearer of news disappeared. I thought he’d gone to use the phone in his office. My wife returned from her shopping and we tried to figure out a way to get back to Vancouver in time for our jobs.
A pretty young blonde woman in a cowboy shirt walked up to the only other mechanic and inquired as to the whereabouts of her husband, the fellow that I had just been dealing with. She was informed that her husband had gone home for a wee bit. We four stood under the hoist and speculated on what the missing man was up to.
A few tense moments later, the mechanic drove up in a cloud of dust. He was holding a bolt in his raised right hand. He greeted his wife with a kiss and told me he had gone home to dig through his personal stash of spare parts in order to find the required Japanese fine-thread metric bolt. I was starting to come down off my adrenaline rush, feeling the warmth of Great Spirit’s hand and wondering how anyone on earth could doubt it.
The mechanic installed the bolt, re-torqued the other loose ones and we both checked the other three wheels. A greasy old radio on a wooden bench squawked out Neil Young's song, Keep On Rockin' In The Free World. As I watched the mechanic work, I remembered my Algebra teacher's car from long ago. I then remembered the time a Surgeon had sewn up a sponge in my brother-in-law’s back by accident. I spoke those thoughts aloud and the mechanic paused, wrench in hand.
“Mike, it happened to me before. In my case, the guy's whole wheel fell off!”
“I'm not going to go head-hunting,” I said. “I will phone the owner of the establishment and tell him what happened and advise him to talk to his mechanics and to tighten up his shop routine. That’s my way of acknowledging the triple gifts of getting here alive, finding you three hours before a long weekend and your extra personal efforts on my behalf.”
When I got back to the Vancouver, I presented my small bill from the Lillooet garage, was paid in cash and received an apology. As I left, I was handed a business card with the words, “Free Oil Change” scrawled on the front above a pair of illegible initials.
I walked around back to the shop door for a smoke and to see the young mechanic who wore the lab coat. Still feeling residual indignity, I planned to have a word with him. When I came level with the hoist area and saw him, he was bolting on the front passenger-side wheel of a car ,while chatting on his Bluetooth. I then realized that to avoid further distraction was the wisest course for all concerned and decided not to squat on my spurs.
fin