Nemesis

2005

Volkswagen

Jetta GLI 1.8T

Black

I'll learn what to put here eventually.

Car was running perfect up until 2013 when the rotors needed replacing and my uncle didn't want to spend money on it at the time. Car sat in our driveway, under pine trees, gathering dust and pine needles. I wish I had taken pictures of the weather stripping, so many leaves and needles in there, and after 1.5 years in the open if you so much as opened a door you'd have a bunch of debris falling into the car itself, so cleanup was tedious when we began to ressurect the girl. Cleaning out all of the clothes, garbage, fungus (yes, fungus had begun to grow on a floor mat, thankfully only the floor mat and not the carpet itself), and a bunch of nature stuff that fell in was an exhausting yet worthwhile task. Once the interior was in half-decent shape, I started her up (First time in over 7 months being started) and moved her into the garage for level ground to replace the rotors and brakes. I tidied up the interior more, and then moved on to the wheels once my dad had got home.
Now, I'll make you aware that I know absolutely nothing about cars, but I can sure say that this was an amazing learning/bonding experience with my dad. We got the lugnut covers off with an alan wrench, and discovered that my uncle had replaced one lug on each with with a lock nut. We panicked, thinking that if the key were somehwere inside of the car that I had either vacuumed it or thrown it in a pile with a bunch of the stuff I had found and thrown away. Thankfully the key was in the driverside cagro thingy on the door (excuse my lack of knowledge as to what it's called), so we got the wheels off and found another surprise waiting for us. Once we had disengaged the caliper and got it off the rotor, we saw that the screw that holds the rotor in place was nowhere to be found, rather a solid piece of metal in the hole where it was supposed to be. So, we switch to a different wheel to see if all of them were like that. Nope, the others had the screw, so we proceed to leave the screwless rotor alone for now and focus on the ones with screws. Calipers off, begin unscrewing, and what happens? The screw head breaks off from the body, leaving half of the screw still in the hole. Well, that explains why there was no screw on that one rotor, my uncle had tried to change the rotors before and broke the screw inside of the hole. Well, no worry, we drill the rest of the screw out seeing as how it's just to make aligning the wheel with the rotor a lot more easier.
Finally, rotors changed and new brake pads installed, we put the wheels back on and take her for a test drive. *Thump thump thump thump* is all that we can hear coming from the RL wheel. My dad assumed the rotor was too thick (or something close to that, can't remember exactly) so we went on the highway and just applied the e-brake to break in the rear rotors faster. That didn't help so we just left it alone so we could research what was wrong. This catches up to present day, and I feel as though that when we drilled out the screw that was stuck inside of the hole on that particular rotor, we left a bit of the screw still there, and now it's making contact with the rotor. I'm not sure, but I've put more work into this car than I have with anything else before in my life. Here's hoping it works out :)