Back in early winter on a warm weekend me and a friend redid the rear brakes (the pad was so worn it's rivets were wearing groves into the rotor discs on the passenger side). We ended up having to replace the rear, pads, disc rotors, and calipers (the cylinders were stuck would barely compress enough to get the old pads and rotor back in). That went well, aside from two wrinkles: Emergency brakes don't work (and probably were bad before), and the pedal occasionally gets slightly soft. The Emergency brakes are some lever that ratchets the rear hydraulic cylinders to grab the rotor, but we could not figure out how to set it (I plan to read up and eventually revisit it), and the wire cable to one wheel was broken. The softness is not a big deal, but weird, we did a good job of bleeding the system, and it is not nearly as soft as that was when it acts up, but it does get softer than normal occasionally (and brake effectiveness drops a bit)....A partial release, and repress fixes it (or just push farther and have it suddenly stop hard) and it usually does not occur again on the same drive.
A weird thing is at a certain spot a couple miles into a drive at random times (done it twice so far) it will, taking off from a stop, suddenly start sputtering really bad like there is no fuel or spark, making almost no power, and be almost unresponsive to the gas pedal...It will go about half a block like that, stall, then not want to start. I had to floor it and crank it for a while to get it to go both times...Next time (if there is one) I plan to pop the hood, check for spark, then pull the fuel line to the carb, crank it and see if it's pumping fuel properly.
I got the other speaker in and RE-replaced the driver door power lock motor. I noticed the speakers are closed frame on top like the originals so no worries about water dripping on them. The driver lock mech is a lot more sticky with or without the motor than the passenger side (which is probably what killed the last motor) so I may have to take the lock mech apart and lube it soon.
I just had THE most fun drive I've had in it in ages, I discovered the auto-dimming high-beams work properly (boy are those fun), and picked up a 23"V-25"V Zenith TV (hard to tell the two sizes apart without a ruler) on the way.
http://videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=266505
I love having a car with a cavernous trunk! I swear I had a piano in there once, and almost got the trunk lid latched with it in there.
DSCN1393 by
Tom Carlson, on Flickr