CaaaARGH!

We made our first trip down to Jacksonville today (to the Regency Square Mall for our Jax contingent). Since we live in a nice, but small locale, we now need to trek to Jax for a JCPenney portrait studio, a decent-sized mall, Costco, etc. I figure we'll get there about once per month, assuming our car will make the trip.

That's the problem, though. Our #@!& car has had an issue with its rear brakes since we bought it brand new, and no matter what we try to do to remedy the problem, we fail. A good friend of ours who is very knowledgeable with cars helped me change the cars pads and rotors in February this year, so I figured we'd be in the clear for a couple of years.

I was wrong.

Today, as we were pulling into the mall, we heard a nasty grinding noise coming from one of the wheels. We took the car to Sears, and after a full inspection, they declared that both real calipers need to be replaced because they were seized up. The 6-month old rear brake pads were already worn down to the metal. What is even worse, it seems that Mazda not only has supplied us with a defective brake system, they charge over $400.00 per caliper to replace them.

So, yes, I'm mad at our car. I'm trying to figure out if I can do these repairs myself for a whole lot less, or if we should just sell the car and cut our losses.

The silver lining in all of this is that, even before they knew of our duress, a couple from the church called and left a message on our machine, offering to let us borrow a car as much as we wanted over the coming weeks. Praise the Lord, it's already parked in front of our house. If only the repair could go as smoothly.