A. Autozone is evil.

B. Discount Tire is good.

So, I nearly hit a dairy cow last week, and in the process of panic stopping my car made weird popping noise, followed by scraping brake noises. I finally got around to fixing it today:

1. Crawl under car, see metal shavings everywhere, 1 year old autozone pad shattered!?!=new pads needed.

2. Drive to NAPA, buy $Ceramic-Carbon fiber$ pads.

3. Drive back to parking lot, start to loosen lug nuts, only to find two are stuck.

4. Realize that my swingset tubing “cheater” is somewhere at home in Montpelier.

5. Realize that August Stafford has my sledgehammer.

6. Drive to Discount tire, assuming that since they tightened the nuts, it is their problem.

7. Explain to Discount tire employee what I want, he asks if I have any other problems.

8. I remember that my left front tire seems to be loosing about 10psi a month.

9. Sit at Discount Tire for an hour.

10. Am informed that my tire had a large plug repair done elsewhere (Parney's).

11. Discount tire replaces the ~$130 tire, even with 35,000 miles for $12, including siping.

12. Return to parking lot, install brake pads. (40 minutes).

Not only did Discount tire match the lowest price I could find when I bought the tires, and throw in siping for almost nothing, they've replaced three tires for me, for $12 a piece since then! (This isn't a cheap shot at BFG tires, the first one had a massive sidewall tear from a piece of rebar, the second wouldn't balance after a bad ball joint wore it out of shape, and the third had a poor repair done elsewhere!)

On the otherhand, Autozone's crappy brake pad, with something like 12,000 miles and nearly 75% life remaining nearly gave the Holstein cow a lesson in the Newtonian physics (4500 pound car at 60mph hits a 1300 pound cow...). The moral of the story is never to buy the cheapest brake parts!