Jacked up the back of the car and put its ass in the air on jack stands. Took apart the brakes and cleaned ’em up real good. I put new grease on the backs of the pads, the old stuff was a bitch to get off. The pad on the passenger side was real dry, that is the side the noise was coming from, so I thought that might be it. While I had the wheels off I did the brake bleeding thing to swap out the old fluid for new. Won’t be entirely new, but the fluid color in the reservoir on the master cylinder is looking cleaner already. On to the fronts. On a side note I need a hydraulic jack. All this up and down was accomplished with the scissors jack that came with the car. That is a lot of cranking!
Remember how I said the noise sounded like the squealers warning of low pad thickness? Turns out there was a very good reason for that, they were worn. They were worn at about a three degree angle so that one side was plenty thick. This was the side I saw on the outside pad when I removed the wheel the other day. the wear groove is in the middle so it looked OK, but the end of the pad with the squealer was very thin. Bolted the front tires back on and headed to the local Mazda dealer for some new front pads. Looked in the Moss catalog to get an idea of how much they were going to cost first, looks like around $80 for the front 4. When I got to the dealer they had in stock something they called the value pack, just the pads for only $34. Seems they learned that they could cut the cost some by leaving out the all those springs and clips that never really need replacing, thanks Mazda. While I was there I also bought an oil filter. On the way home I bought four quarts of oil and a can of Gunk Engine Flush, hoping this would solve my new annoying lifter tick. I guess those pads were worn out, the new ones were twice as thick as the thickest part of the old ones. Swapped out pads and “bled” the fronts to match what I did in the back.
The brakes were done, now it was time to flush the motor. Instructions said pour it in and let the car idle for 5 minutes. When I started the car up I really heard the ticking loudly. I had the hood up and when I looked in I could see the number three spark plug wire bouncing around. I shut off the car and pulled the wire off. I then tightened the spark plug back up and it took an awful lot of turns, a few more days and it would have backed itself out entirely, yikes that would have been fun. Restarted the car to finish my 5 minutes. Took off the drain plug and drained my thin black oil out. Took off the oil filter. I then hand tightened the new filter on. When I went to snug it up with the filter wrench, it wouldn’t go, the wrench just spun freely. I realized that the filter I got was about a 1/2″ in diameter smaller than the one I took off. I called the parts department and asked if they gave me the right filter, somewhere in the foggy recesses of my mind I thought that M2 filters were different sized. Parts lady said nope, I got the right one, it was a new part that was superceding the old. I asked if she had any old ones and when she said yes I drove back over and swapped, but I guess I will need a new (smaller) wrench for next time.
Took the car for a drive this evening. A little 25 mile loop on some back roads, nice and quiet, no squeal and no tick. I will sleep the sleep of contentment tonight.
Purchased Today: $56.35 in stuff
Money spent since 03/03/03: $312.01
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 104