Over the past week or so, we’ve noticed that my car isn’t riding as smoothly as it usually does. There’s a little shimmy and shake business going on that actually made me a little nervous, like it might be on the verge of falling apart (because we’ve recently been joking about getting a minivan, except that I love love LOVE LOOOOOOOOVE my Highlander and never want to give it up, so we figured the irony would be that we’d now be forced to buy a new car).
So we took it in to our awesome local mechanic, crossed our fingers, and hoped the bill wouldn’t be enough to cause us to actually consider trading it in and buying a new car. We figured even if it cost $2,000, that would still only be about four new car payments.
THE BAD NEWS? The passenger front brake caliper is hung up—he said that’s a really bad thing and it’s what’s causing all the issues (and he can even see some blue spots, which I assume is a very bad thing). Though they’re usually replaced in pairs, he said we could just replace the one side as there’s enough room to machine the other side down, but it would be the bare minimum. To replace the full set—both pads, calipers, bleeding the brakes, and then balancing the tires—the whole shebang is $869.34.
😮
THE GOOD NEWS? That’s really only like 1.5 new car payments, so overall not too bad in the grand scheme of things. And if it makes my baby run for a few more years, I’m all about that.