Back open for business, scratched

So last night after work I headed back to my mom’s place to do another round of vehicle swaps.  I am going to be doing some additional work on the brakes of her Rav 4, adjusting the rear shoes so the parking brake engages better and bleeding the brakes since mom said they feel soft.

I did plenty of high speed and hard braking testing on the drive back to our house and the Rav 4 passed every time, stopping smoothly and strongly.  Mom also pointed out a weird noise from the back brakes that sounds like a spring extending under tension which I heard as well.  I assume a spring back there is not positioned quite right or it could also go away once I expand the shoes out a bit.

Regardless I am going into it this time feeling much better about things since I now know how the rear brakes are supposed to go back together.  The brake hardware kit came with some new springs that I didn’t utilize, maybe I will pop those on while I am at it.

I will be doing a one man brake bleed which after doing some reading isn’t all that hard to do.  I am hoping the bleeder screws on the Rav 4 are not frozen.

This morning I dropped Ali off at the airport bright and early.  She is heading north to once again celebrate my niece’s birthday.  Since it is also Friday I took the SSR.

When I parked the truck in the parking garage and came around to the passenger side to pull out my gear I noticed a line on the rear quarter panel that I didn’t recall being there.  It almost looked like a body seam.  Well on closer examination my blood pressure immediately shot up a dozen points when I realized it was close to a two foot long scratch! I was so angry.

I go through a lot of effort to keep the SSR sheltered from the inconsiderate idiots, always choosing to park the vehicle in public as far away as possible from other vehicles.  I have to assume that this occurred on New Year’s Eve when went to dinner and a movie.

The scratch is deep.  I am going to hit a portion of it with some Scratch-X to see how effective it is at concealing the blemish.  If that doesn’t work I would probably wind up taking it to the body shop we have had other work on to have it professionally fixed.  There are some other small scratches/chips that could be handled at the same time.

Over this past weekend I forgot to mention I stopped by at the audio installer we used for the Camry years ago to get a quote on putting a new radio in the SSR.  I had already priced out a number of the items I would need for the install.  Well the number I got back was high, $300 higher than the number I saw another SSR fanatic paid to have the same radio installed in his vehicle and close to 50% higher than I was expecting. I was not pleased.  I was less pleased when I saw a sign posted that basically said they only install what they sell, meaning getting the equipment at a discount online and having them install it probably won’t fly.

So I left there feeling like the decision was made for me, I would just be doing the entire installation myself.  I would literally be saving at least 40% by doing so. When I got home I did some more pricing of stuff I would need.  As I was doing that I realized one reason there was a difference between what the other guy paid and what I was quoted.  The other guy had a low end back up camera installed.  I was going with the high end Pioneer model that includes a geeky park assist feature, it is significantly more expensive.

I have been going back and forth in my head about it ever since.  Part of me is hesitant to tackle the job myself.  Yes as a youngster I probably installed a half dozen radios in my old vehicles but this is an entirely different ball of wax with many more moving parts.  It is a radio install, a back up camera install, GPS install that need to be wired in to work with my Bose amplifier and factory steering wheel controls.

I think if I do it myself I will be able to get it all working but part of me feels like the SSR needs to have something like this professionally installed so it turns out as well as possible.  I don’t want anything about the final product to look half assed. So at this point I am really undecided.  I always hate walking away from a “do it yourself and save major $$” opportunity as they normally are a source of personal pride.   I guess I will just keep saving my money for now and pull the trigger in a few weeks one way or the other.

So my bachelor weekend will be busy for sure.  I plan to start my Saturday with a 10 mile group run.  Saturday night I am going to a party for a co-worker whom recently retired.  Machete just arrived in the mail so I would like to watch that sometime as well since it is definitely a Shawn-only type of movie.  Throw in the normal house chores and round two of the Rav 4 work and you have yet another busy weekend on the books. It’s fine though, just sitting around just never will feel comfortable.