I have fire fox with add block plus so do not see any adds or links to any thing other than the normal Garden Web stuff. They use to use google adds that will match things with the context of the post and that could be what is happening. I believe the GMC is an '85, it belongs to my step son and he also has a small Chevy Pick up extra cab. It is in the back round in a couple of the pictures. It took two hours to get all the stuff out so I could take it to the transmission shop. I found things I haven't seen for a couple of years but I knew they were there. Admittedly there were a lot of food wrappers and water and gator aid bottles in the mix. Have to clean it out every couple of years weather it needs it or not. Gets a bit too homey in there at times. I found 3 pole saws, 4 pole pruners, 7 extensions for them, 4 loppers, 8 ropes, 3 saddles, 3 pair of spikes, 5 shovels, 3 polaskis, 4 machetes and a cane knife, 3 digging bars, 3 rakes, 2 brooms, 1 scoop, 2 pitch forks, 27 burlap tarps, a soil sampling auger, 2 root feeder tools, 3 chainsaws and a blower, gas and oil for them and a 5 gallon gerry can, a tool box with drawers full of tools and 2 extra trays of tools, a couple of Thomas guides and various tools and parts on the dash board. I am sure there is more I overlooked. The guy at the shop said it would take a day to fix. He has been in business a long time and thinks he has the part that is needed in the back amongst the things he has collected. People that keep stuff knowing it can be used some day are my kind of people. I have been doing smaller trees lately and am doing more consulting also. 40 years of climbing has been hard on the knees and other various parts. No more big ones unless I can use the ladder to get up there. Then gravity is my friend working my way back down. Here is the last job I did before the rain. It is a sycamore. After that I did some pine trees about the same size that I finished Sunday Now I am working on crepe myrtles and fruit trees plus a four trunk giant bird of paradise. Here is a pic of a larger one of those I did a couple of months ago.

. There NEEDS to be some residual pressure in the lines when the brakes are not applied . . . this keeps the seals tight against the bore; which prevents leakage. Even though the piston still moves; it does not mean that it moves freely enough . . . time will slowly accumulate gunk; and brake fluid by definition absorbs water from the air . . which can eventually accumulate and start rust / corrosion. If the line is plugged; you'd not get decent braking out of that wheel. Besides; pressure in a closed system is the same everywhere . . . I'd say it's new caliper time . . . Bob

First, a brake caliper is a device that squeezes the pads from the sides against the rotor. If you think of a "vernier caliper" where you are measuring the thickness of an object from the sides, you get the picture of a motion that the brake caliper reproduces, hydraulicly. Second, brake calipers do seize and often times parts are available to rebuild them, as well as there are replacement calipers, both new and remanufactured. It comes down to considerations of cost, availability, and a fair profit for the shop doing the work, while limiting potential warranty exposure. As some others have mentioned the parking brake is often part of the rear brake calipers on many cars, and without seeing one, I would expect this is the case on the Mazda. IMO the rear calipers that incorporate the parking brake have been a weak link, and very troublesome poprtion of the brake system on four wheel disc. The movement to systems that use small brake shoes that fit inside the rotors in the rear have been a major improvement, except for the fact that we are seeing these rear shoes delaminate in high road salt areas, but thats a different story. The addition of the parking brake to the rear caliper makes it more difficult to repair in the feild. Plus no regular shop is going to have an acid bath that will allow them to completely remove all of the rust and scale that builds up in the caliper slides. So a tech has to improvise the routine and tools that he/she will use to service that portion of the caliper. Trust me, it's not easy in many circumstances and can take a considerable amount of time and not always produce a satisfactory, if not durable result. So given that single point, a shop/tech has to ask why even bother spending the time attempting a difficult task, where the outcome is not assured? Plus we have not even disscussed the actual servicing of the piston and the e-brake components in the caliper! Combine that with the fact that the "cheaper, faster, etc. attitude also applies to how many shops try to hire techs and you will see this becomes even more complicated. "It takes less talent, and less time to replace a component than it does to remove a component, rebuild it, and reinstall it" Think about that, less time means of course more time to do more work, as in other cars. Less talent means a less expensive work force. That actually means an over all a cheaper cost of doing business, and to a degree a cheaper form of auto service to the consumer. But this comes at a trade-off to some other consumers who might be better served on an individual basis. Jason, in your position, where you think having the tech repair the caliper would be cheaper for your MIL you are partially correct. But, for a shop to routinely do that level of a repair, they would have to hire a more expensive tech, who quite often would be doing more difficult work, which means he/she would turn fewer labor hours a week. The shop would in fact have to use a much higher labor rate and the net result ultimately would be you would get the caliper rebuilt onsite, but the end cost to your MIL, might be the same, if not higher than the bill as it's presently being quoted! By repairing the caliper, the shop wont be making as large of a profit on the parts either, yet the profit margin per hour that the shop needs must be met or the shop will fail as a business. If this all seems like doubletalk, I'm not suprised. But the bottom line is, the shop is making the correct call by replacing the calipers instead of repairing them. There are techs out there that can and do rebuild calipers on a fairly regular basis. (Me) It's actually expensive to do it that way in most cases, so it's done more out of necessity. Frankly having looked at this many times and quoting replacing calipers VS repairing them, I can actually make more money repairing them dollar wise for a single job. But since we can normally replace them in a fraction of the time for slightly less gross profit, and have all that extra time to do a different car. It becomes a wise choice that ends up costing my customers less in the long run to routinely replace instead of repair calipers.

Thanks for the responses. We spend half the time feeling stupid and half feeling suckered. On balance I do agree with macybaby and others that it is better to be doing it ourselves so we can stop, regroup and change course. If I had come home and found the faucet installed (with holes in the marble that would not match a different faucet) it would have been so much worse. If the range had been installed without my being here to see the ding when it was unpacked I would never have had the opportunity to get that corrected. My mother, who does not have much tolerance for upset, procrastinated on getting a new range -- she just couldn't take the "stress" of picking something out and scheduling a delivery. She said she just wanted to look at the spot where it goes and command, "Stove, be there." I found this really funny for some reason, and when I get irritated about what's happening in my workzone here, I think about that.