Pay The Man

I'm getting ready to take my family on our annual beach vacation. The need to drive on sand to reach good fishing spots is the sole reason I've owned a series of 4wd Suburbans. I sold the last one last year and instead bought a '93 Toyota Land Cruiser. I used it last year with no problems. After vacation, the Land Cruiser was off the road for 10 months. I re-registered it in June and began driving it again. I found that last year's small exhaust holes in the headpipes were now larger, and that the car would be unlikely to pass inspection. Normally I'd replace the whole exhaust, but this would've been nearly a thousand bucks. I sourced both headpipes (available only as OEM parts) and replaced them. This, of course, revealed holes in other places in the exhaust, but they're still fairly small so I left it be and called the exhaust inspection-worthy.

Then, prior to inspection, I checked the handbrake. Last year it was sticky, but now it was frozen solid at the levers that move the brake shoes. I spent two hours beneath the back of the car, lubricating the levers with Silikroil and beating them back and forth, back and forth, with a hammer to loosen them up. I got the handbrake to go from frozen solid to yank-the-lever-seems-like-its-doing-something, pronounced it inspection-worthy, and took the car to the inspection station.

I have a lot of cars pass through my hands, and take them all to the same inspection station a mile from my house, run by some Lebanese guys who like BMWs and give me the maximum benefit of the doubt. When the guy backed the Land Cruiser out of the inspection bay, I breathed a sigh of relief as a saw the brand new sticker, but he said that the right front end was pretty loose and strongly recommended I have a look at it ASAP. I thanked him profusely.

I used the car for a few errands, and noticed that, sure enough, the right front wheel was starting to squeak and squeal, with the noise abating during braking -- classic symptoms of a bad wheel bearing. At work we have a truck jack; I jacked up the front wheel and grabbed it at 6 and 12 and shook it, and sure enough, the wheel bearing showed a lot of play. I do wheel bearings all the time in my cars, but the Land Cruiser is a six thousand pound vehicle; I preferred not to tempt fate with jack stands.

Directly across the street from where I work is a truck repair shop. I brought it in there. They fixed it for $326. This drives part of me nuts since the cost of the bearing is just a few bucks, but this is perhaps only the third time in the past ten years I've paid anyone to do anything on any of my cars other than tire balancing.

Sometimes you just have to pay the man.