After driving around in what was a thoroughly unsafe vehicle because my brakes were wearing low, I went to my friend Kayte’s place today to get them replaced. Kayte’s husband, Jim, is a mechanic, and has a pretty nice home garage set up, and he graciously offered to do the brakes for me.

So I drove down, we jacked up the car and took the wheels off, and took a look at the brakes. However, after working on them some, we looked at the rotors that I had and realized that I only had half of them. Not only that, but the half that we did have… didn’t fit.

So I called the local Pep Boys where I’d special-ordered them and spoke to somebody about it. They had it on record that I’d already picked them up, so i asked them to check their inventory and make sure, at which point they realized that they still had them (duh, since they weren’t in my possession) and I told them that I was coming to pick them up.

So Jim and I drove the 45 minutes to go pick them up, and brought the incorrect ones with us. They gave me the rotors they had in stock, we verified that they were the right size, and drove the 45 minutes back. Somehow, the idiot guy at the counter convinced me to test the rotors on the other wheels, even though I knew that the holes drilled into the rotors didn’t fit the wheels at all. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d returned them anyway, because they don’t carry rotors in stock, so I wouldn’t have been able to replace the other ones anyway.

So, the upside: I learned how to replace brakes on my car, and it’s easy as hell. The downside: I only got half of them done. It’s really not much of a downside, though, because it was the rear brakes that were the ones that really needed to be replaced anyway.

I am kind of pissed at the guys at Pep Boys, though, although they really don’t have much to be responsible for, since it was listed right there in the computer as a part that fit my car.

(Please excuse the pitiful pun of a subject title; I couldn’t think of anything wittier.)