Subaru nuts, bolts, and rust

 "Keep the prospect of death, exile and all such apparent tragedies before you every day - especially death - and you will never have an abject thought, or desire anything to excess." - Epictetus

 I had to take the little Subaru to my mechanic.  The work it needed was a bit beyond my abilities and tooling.  The initial jobs that I asked him to take care of were replacing the struts for all four wheels, and to replace the last remaining (driver's side rear) CV axle and rear wheel bearing.  

In October of last year, I replaced the passenger side rear CV axle and rear wheel bearing myself, which turned into a real quagmire.  I had the necessary parts to do the other side, but really didn't have the time or energy to repeat the process.  I fobbed all this work off on my mechanic, and paid the price.

He said it was nearly impossible to get the axle free from the rear hub.  He ruined three wheel lugs during this part of the job below, which had to be replaced.

Then he had to replace the struts.  The rear ones require removing the rear seats to access the upper bolts.  Better him than me.  When he got to the front struts, he found one of the springs missing a chunk, so that had to be replaced. 

Below:  New strut

 That's the suspension issues.  

I had also asked him to source an oil leak.  He found two - on each valve cover gasket.  The engine has to be lifted and shifted slightly off to one side to get at each one.  While pulling the spark plug wires, two of them broke, so those got replaced as well.

Below:  Valve cover.  No room to pop it off and change the gasket

 Below:  New spark plug wires!

The battery was almost toast, so it was replaced, and the terminals were so corroded that they had to be replaced as well.  Lastly, I asked him to recharge the air conditioner refrigerant.  All this labor added up.  On the bright side, the only time I had to invest was the time it took to drop off and pick up the car.

Below:  New battery and terminal lugs.

 I was supposed to have a day off between three day shifts and three night shifts, but they scheduled Hazwoper refresher training, so I lost half of that day.   The other half I used to pick up the car and to take a nap.  

I have to say though, while I only drove the car back from the mechanic to the house, it feels much tighter in the suspension, handling and steering.  The mechanic (and the younger fella who helps him) said the whole job was a nightmare, and I laughed and said yep, tell me about it bro!  They got some more beer out of the project, so hopefully that made them a little less disgruntled :)

The repairs cost about as much as the vehicle is worth at this point in its life, but I'm not replacing it.  The car should now be reasonably safe and reliable for as much longer as it's needed.  This is still cheaper than years of payments.  I'm not interested in impressing anyone by owning a new car - I don't care much what others think at this stage.