Well, Craig (CZboyovski) came over today for me to change out his front brakes. He told me there was some grinding when he hit the brakes, so my worst fear was that it would need not only pads, but rotors. I took a look at his rotors through his rims and there weren't any gouges in them, so I figured his pads weren't THAT bad. Little did I know...
This first pic is of the pad that has the clips (the one you fit into the piston). Notice where I have the ruler....yes folks, that's all metal. There was almost NO pad left on this one. The one closest to the outside looked like this:
About only 1/8 inch of pad left on this one. Now, if he had let this go any longer, those rotors would have been chewed up like my mom's meatloaf.
It gets better though...we do the driver's side tire with no problems, (except that I forgot a C clamp to compress the piston so I had to run and get one) but the passenger side front tire wouldn't come off. One of the lugnuts was giving us a hard time, and the lugs were on a bit tight...plus they were kind of flimsy. We ended up getting a breaker bar with a deepwell 19mm socket and we stripped the lug!
So then we called up some auto shops to see if they could get it off, and found one that would look at it right away and it was only about 8-10 blocks away!
"They sounded kind of 'ghetto'" Craig told me. I should have listened to my instincts....we get to the shop and there's these 3 Arabic looking guys, who aren't really speaking English to us. Now I'm not being a racist at all, but it would help to talk in English so I can understand what's going on! They ended up taking a half hour to chisel off the lugnut (and scratched the inside of his SVT rim, but that's what the centercap is for
) and then the head guy asks Craig if he wants another lugnut and stud, as they had to cut off the stud. Craig tells him "Well, I only have $10, so we can get another one sometime, unless I can run to the ATM real quick." Then the guy accuses both of us of being some guy that ran off in a blue truck on him without paying him $10 or something. I actually had to PROVE to this guy that I didn't own a blue truck, but a red Contour, by showing him my Ford Credit card with the VIN on it. I was like "Umm...WTF? Why should I have to prove to you that I'm not a thief?"
He then tells us it'll be $30, so I gave Craig a $20 and told him to just go to the ATM after we left here. He went ahead and ordered the lug and stud, but it was taking awhile so he actually had us go to the parts shop for him (He gave us $2.00..remember this) and get the parts, as I told him I could pull the stud in myself. I go to the parts shop and he had only ordered a lugnut...how did they expect me to put the lug on without a stud? So I had to pay an extra $2.50 or something for a stud! Here's the best part though...we're driving back to my place, only a few blocks away, and we notice the wheel shakes a bit. We get home to pull the passenger side wheel off and ALL 3 LUGNUTS ARE LOOSE! They didn't even bother to tighten them up!
Anyone in Erie, PA, if you're thinking of going to A&B Performance on 10th St. near Cascade....think again. Worst place ever.
On the bright side, Craig now has nice new brakes in the front.
Bringing high performance camels to a strip near you. Is that H2O in his hump? Nah it's Nawwwsss! 
