the last auto repair i had was i have a nineteen eighty four Nissan truck
i had a a tune up done and i had the i had the brakes done on it
and the the reason i did that was because i don't have a scope
and it has eight spark plugs
and it's hard to to get get at them and plus
the time i just don't have time anymore um
as far as maintenance tasks that i do myself
i i usually change the oil and wash the air filter and i i had an occasion to change the had to change the the battery once
but
the brakes i was really surprised with the brakes i wanted
i do have the background i know what needs to be done and i know the the oil needs to should be changed regularly very regularly and all of the bearings and and and the lubrication lubrication system needs to keep be lubricated and
so i i stay on top of that but i i wanted my front wheels i wanted the bearings packed
and they wanted something like fifteen dollars uh up front or something like that or maybe it was thirty dollars to do it
just to pack the bearings
just to pack the bearings but what i found is that they had a brake job and they changed i had them another thing i i let them do sometimes is that
i let them go through and let them tell me what let them do the diagnostics that's free okay and then i can decide whether i want them to do it or whether i can do it see
right
and they told me that my my brake pads were gosh you know seventy percent still good you know
but still it was cheaper in the long run and uh so i just got the the the brakes done and i thought that was a good deal and and plus
right and they repacked the wheel bearings
and they we repacked the the wheel bearings yeah but
i've i've had considerable experience i you might say i'm a mechanic
a good back yard mechanic and i you know i took auto shop in high school it's been a while back but i i still have a pretty good feel for it
but one thing i didn't know is that
when i was messing around with cars and stuff and most of the cars i had i had bigger cars
and the brakes go out fairly rapidly on those but what i was surprised at is that on my little Nissan
i bought the truck with about sixty thousand i have almost a hundred and ten
so i drove on those brake pads
for uh you know forty five thousand miles and there was hardly any wear to them so those small little trucks and cars like that they they just the longevity of the brake pads is really good
you know they've gotten to the point that where they don't weigh very much and the the surface material on the pads is so good
exactly
exactly so i you know but i i just did it anyway i like to stay i like to stay up on it you know like to stay kind of stay up on it then
if you go in like just about any point any you know point in time
and pull my dip stick
and pull it out and look at the oil the oil is you might say a a light golden brown you know it's not dirty i i i keep it that way because that's
that is the key to the longevity so
right
well
so so how
it it sounds like you've had um
some good experiences with that uh
uh-huh
and my experiences have been kind of contrary to that
uh oh
um i
i get a little more involved in the maintenance of my car and uh
uh-huh
and in fact i have an eighty seven mustang with a 302 in it that i've uh beefed up a little bit
um-hum
okay
and one of the things that i did was to change the pulley system on it to use under drive pulleys so that the engine doesn't have to turn the accessories and can
use more of the power to the rear wheels um the only catch was the first set of under drive pulleys that i put on it were
um-hum
um not even cast aluminum they were just pressed aluminum
you're talking about the vibration dampener
well there's three there's three pulleys that you change you change the crank pulley and the alternator pulley
that's the vibration dampener yeah
and uh the water pump pulley
okay
so
when i changed those over i put on these these pressed aluminum things
hm
and uh
probably about four months ago the water pump decided to go out
uh oh
so in the process of seizing the belt spun on the pulley and wore through the water pump pulley almost all the way
hm
uh oh
but not far enough to notice
hm
so i was on my way to work one day and uh the water pump pulley split laterally in half
so there was a half a water pump pulley still attached to the water pump and the other half was kind of dangling off the end of the crank and uh so i
um-hum
