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Forester brakes finally fixed
Friday, April 10 2026
Late this morning I drove to the Advance Auto in Uptown Kingston with the front driver's side caliper from the Forester. I brought it so that I would be sure to get the correct replacement, and also so I could return it as a "core," which is worth something like $60. (Presumably they take those cores and refurbish them into sellable calipers). In the process of removing the caliper, I'd noticed that it was severely corroded and only one of its two pistons seemed to be working, meaning I would've had to replace it even if I had been able to remove both 17mm bolts attaching it to the Subaru's frame (instead of breaking one of them off a little below the head, as I'd done yesterday). As I stood at the cashier waiting for the Advance Auto guy (in this case the boss, based on what he said to an underling who'd accidentally come to work even though a group email had been sent out to all the employees telling them to stay home so as to cut costs — this is what I overheard) to get me my stuff, a guy came up behind me in line with a big bottle of brake fluid, and we got to talking about brakes. He noted the severe corrosion on the caliper I was returning as a core, and I pointed out the wedge shape of one of its brake pads, demonstrating that only one of the brake pistons had been working. He told me about a mysterious brake line leak in his vehicle, and that a bottle of brake fluid now lasts him about three weeks, though he has yet to find the leak. I then told him about how I once routed brake lines on the inside of a car when I couldn't easily fix the leak in the undercarriage.
In addition to the front caliper, I also needed a replacement for the rear passenger caliper, which I'd replaced with the wrong specific device, something that was considered a fail during my last inspection attempt. But that replacement was only available at the Albany Avenue Advance, so that was my next destination. Before going there, I realized tha the mounting bolt I needed (to replace the one I'd broken) had not come with the caliper I'd just bought, so I had to as the Albany Avenue Advance Auto for that as well.
On my drive back home, I went out of my way to visit the Tibetan Center thrift store. I needed a white shirt for a costume idea that I had (Gretchen and I would soon be attending a birthday party where we had been asked to dress up as one of our past lives). I found such a shirt, and then went looking for other things I might want. The thrift store is awash in internet routers, which I find tempting even if I'll never actually use them. Instead I bought the only wine glass in their considerable collection that lacked engraving (always a bad idea for a wine glass!) and had a reasonable shape (vaguely tulipesque).
Back home atop Hurley Mountain, I immediately began replacing the front driver's side caliper. That went much more quickly than expected. I didn't even have to grind down the edges of the brake pads to get them to fit, as I'd been forced to do when replaced the pads on the front passenger side. As I working, Greg and Z stopped by briefly so Greg could loand Gretchen his guitar while he is off in Madrid. It's a better guitar than the loaner she'd been provided by the luthier who is working on her guitar. Gretchen had also made a pitcher of Arnold Palmers and insisted that Greg and Z have some, though Z was clearly in a hurry and irritated at Greg for spending so much time dropping off his fucking guitar. Meanwhile, my jar of collected brake fluid on the ground looked almost exactly like an Arnold Palmer. "That one will put hair on your chest," I chuckled.
When I test drove the Subaru a little in the driveway, the brakes were barely responsive, so I kept opening up the bleeder valve in hopes air would escape. In the process, I put a number of splotches of brake fluid on the driveway, but at some point the brakes started working very well, and with none of that horrible rubbing sound.
With the Subaru working, I proceeded to do a little landlording. I drove out to Brewster Street, where I met with the tenant on the subject of a set of steps we'd just paid a contractor $900 to install. Though they are nice and solid, Mike, another landlord down the street whom Gretchen refers to as "the Mayor of Brewster Street" had pointed out the many ways they fail in terms of building codes: the steps are not uniform, there are no balusters, and there is no flat-lying rail atop the vertical-lying handrail. I was mostly there to pick up a ladder I'd left in the backyard a year or so ago, but while there I dropped off some pressure-treated pickets to fix various issues with the fencing in the back (all of which appears to have been installed by neighbors, not anyone who actually owns or controls our property).
I then swung by the Wall Street property to see what the latest issues were with the roof trim. A piece of it had fallen from under a part of the eaves where I hadn't even noticed a problem. I collected the fallen piece and drove off, since there wasn't much I could do about it and there was no emergency evident.
Back home again, I proceeded to replace the rear passenger-side caliper, the one that I had bought the wrong part for but improvised the installation of several weeks ago. I also did some work to address an annoying rattle coming from a loose heat shield banging into the exhaust system. I didn't completely eliminate the rattle, but I made it happen over a much narrower band of motor vibration frequencies. With all that out of the way, Gretchen could schedule me an appointment at Van Kleeck's for another inspection.
Our Subaru Forester is from the 2015 model year, and eleven years is a pretty typical amount of time for a car to be needing its first replacement of brakes. It occurs to me that brake replacements is something I frequently find myself doing on our cars, since we often get them about five years after they were manufactured and still have six years after that. In the past I've also had to deal with rotting exhaust systems, and I will probably have to deal with that on the Forester as well if we don't replace it within the next few years. But it's possible we've reached a level of wealth where we won't hold on to the Forester quite that long.
With all that out of the way, I celebrated by cracking open a beer on the way to the Chamomile Wall, where I mostly worked to cover the voids between the two sub-walls in the recent extension westward. To do this, I gathered a number of large flat sheets of bluestone from high up on the talus slope to the south and southwest.
When I returned home, I found Gretchen had made a number of Ethiopian wats, including one with beans, something with kale added to the tofu and onions I'd made back on Wednesday, and a re-seasoned version of the Ethiopian veggies we'd bought in Takoma Park (they hadn't been very good — they'd had too much turmeric and not much else).
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