My car was making an awful noise for a couple months. This metal-scraping-something sound emanated from a driver’s side wheel — sorta like steel nails etching evil spells into a tin can. It hurt to hear and totally killed the riding-with-the-window-down vibe I had going. It wasn’t constant though, just a raking rattle every time I hit a bump — which, if we’re being real here, is pretty much every few feet on Memphis streets — or sometimes just coasting, for no apparent reason at all. But tap the brakes, and it’d go away. It got to where even the radio wouldn’t drown this out, the embarrassing echo grating the ears of others, surely, as I passed.
I do have my car routinely maintenanced, and I know to replace brake pads when they wear down, but this was not that. My boyfriend, who does this weird thing where he takes his tires off and cleans his brakes every so often (who does that?), had already inspected the pads for me. My car is seven years old, but it’s not driven often since many days I work from home. The tires are practically brand-new. So what was the deal?
Well, I’m no mechanic and the thing was still under warranty, so I drove out to the dealership for free popcorn and three hours’ wait time in the lobby. There’s guest wifi, so I kept about my work business while the experts attempted to figure out how to exorcize the demon screaming from the side of my vehicle. After a while, I’d had my fill of popcorn and my car was ready. Only they hadn’t done anything to it. The front brake pads were wearing unevenly for some unknown reason, but they weren’t quite to the point of needing to be changed. The mechanic who took her for a test drive couldn’t hear it, which led me to believe they might need a hearing check, but that’s for them to sort out. So, surprise! “We can’t find anything wrong.”
Interesting. Because as soon as I drove off, the screeching was as screechy as ever. But it’s fine, there’s no problem here. After being given the green light to keep driving with no regard, I did just that, hoping maybe it’d go away on its own. Or that a tire would fall off and then we’d have an actual problem that could be fixed. Alas, neither happened. The noise got noisier and I couldn’t take it anymore. So on the way back from the office last week, I dropped it off at another repair shop. A couple hours later, I get the call: “[Something or another about there being multiple things wrong] and that’ll be $679.”
Ummm, what? So I need front and back brake pads and new rotors plus a brake flush? The pads still had some life left, I knew that. And the rotors were in good condition. But okay, maybe let’s just change the pads anyway and see if that does anything. “We can’t change the pads unless we change the rotors too. For the front only, that’s $369.” Okay. But no.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m a woman and they figured, “Here’s our chance to do a bunch of work that doesn’t need to be done and charge an exorbitant amount of money for it!” Or perhaps they truly thought I’d worn the brakes down to nubs with no care in the world. (But anyone who knows even the slightest thing about it could see that wasn’t the case.) So, again, I drove my loud-ass car home in shame.
My boyfriend went to the parts store and purchased some new pads, put them on, drove the car around, and the damn thing was still hissing. A closer examination had us wondering, “Has the rotor backing plate bent somehow? Is the car possessed?” After some troubleshooting and Googling, we were back to square one. Then tried that weird thing where you just take everything apart and blast the water hose through the pieces.
Guess what? A few clumps of brake dust, dirt, whatever the hell it was, flushed out. Maybe that accidental mud-riding I did this summer on the gravel road leading to my dad’s left me a little souvenir. Who knows? But we took her for a spin after, and the ride was as smooth and quiet as the day she rolled off the production line.
Moral of the story? Well, there’s probably more than one. But sometimes what’s broke doesn’t actually need fixing. It might not even be broke. Maybe it just needs some TLC.
Shara Clark
shara@memphisflyer.com