Finally cracked 1000 brake jobs this morning on a 2015 Civic

Been turning wrenches for 12 years at a shop outside Houston. I keep a tally on my toolbox lid with a sharpie. Did a simple pad and rotor swap on a customer's car and realized that was number 1000 for me. It's just a number but it made me think about all the stuck calipers and stripped bolts I've fought through. Anyone else track little milestones like this or am I just weird about it?

3 comments

3 Comments

blair_nguyen7d ago

That 2015 Civic you did - those are actually kinda finicky with the rear electronic parking brake. Gotta put it in maintenance mode through the dash menu before you can retract the caliper piston. I found that out the hard way on my 89th or so brake job (I think), spent 20 minutes confused before I Googled it. Cool that you hit 1000 though, that's a solid run. I just use a little notebook in my toolbox since sharpie smudges on the lid in this Houston humidity.

rileygarcia7d ago

Yeah the parking brake thing gets me every time on those newer Hondas, I almost took a hammer to the caliper before I learned the dash trick. I do the same with my toolbox lid but switched to a paint pen after the sharpie turned into a blurry mess in this humidity, makes me feel better seeing all those marks add up over the years though. Do you ever flip back through your notebook and remember which jobs were the real pain?

drewr157d ago

Feel that pain on the electronic parking brake thing. I had a 2016 Pilot a few years back that taught me the same lesson real quick, wasted a whole hour fighting it before I gave up and looked it up. Thousand brake jobs though, that's legit man. I don't keep a tally myself but I got a dent puller I've used on probably 500 or so dings and dents around my own cars, it has a bunch of scratches from all the times I slipped. Nothing wrong with tracking that stuff, it's cool to look back and see how much experience you've actually piled up.