Good news.. the slow truck happened to bring in my rotors sunday. Almost bad news.. I overslept and did not wake til 2:30pm and today's forecast was for rain. Good news... it didn't rain. Good news... one of my neighbors I hadn't personally met before was changing the oil on his mom's car and I just happened to ask him if he had any metric sockets (I only had standard). He had a whole 125 piece set and graciously offerd his expertice and hands on helping me out before the sun went down.

The process took us 6 hours.. we had a hell of a time getting the passenger side caliper and caliper bracket bolts off the darn mount on the first wheel. The previous work I had done.. the shop must have used a high torque impact wrench or something to tighten those bolts. I weakened my bad back getting those out, but they finally budged after trying sevarl times with a can of WD-40.

I accidently broke a cotter pin, so it was another trip to the auto parts store halfway through the first wheel. The second wheel was more forgiving on the entire process. Unfortunately on the first wheel.. we had the rotor off and was trying to get the outer bearing off with a screwdriver by prying around and around. The screwdriver slipped and it went up my right nostril. I bled for about a half hour before it finally clotted. Didn't let it stop us though. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

New rotors, pads, lubed berrings, wheel seals and a nice brake cleaner sprayed where required and I am happy to say that my braking is 150% improved. It's a small miracle and very satisfying. I am getting a slight burn odor, but I suspect that is because we ran out of brake cleaner and I could not clean the opposite side of the last rotor (I wiped it down as best I could with a fresh paper towel), so I suspect some of that original oily stuff is still on the rotor and will hopefully just burn off.

Overall I am very satisfied that a newbie like me learned to do the job in 6 hours. I am very grateful for my neighbor's help. I had showed him the trick my brother's told me about using the rotor and the spindle bolt to knock out the center bearings with a good pull (he's a novice auto mechanic starting school soon and loved the practice).

Good thing I opted to replace the rotors.. the front passenger side had a nice groove in it and the pad material was all gone, so the backing plate was pressed on when stopping (that explains the bad metallic sound I was hearing).

Thanks to the assistance on this forum I have learned alot. Really appreciate it!