If It Ain't Broke...

Subtitled: The Un-Brake Problem.
So, on Thursday, my car started making a horrible noise. It was coming from the front passenger tire and started as soon as I backed the car up to leave for work Thursday morning. Rock happened to be up and came out to the back porch when I stopped the car almost immediately and got out to look at the tires. I told him what was going on, he listened to the noise as I backed out of the drive, but since the car was driving fine, I decided to go on to work and deal with the noise later. I talked to Rock most of the way to work, trying to describe when the noise was louder, when it went away, etc. He thought it was probably a wheel bearing. He had me check the tire when I got to work to make sure it wasn't too hot. (I was supposed to check it at lunch, too, but I had the radio up too loud to hear anything then.) It did make the noise most of the way home Thursday night, though. Friday, Rock and I went to out to test the car and see if we could narrow down what the problem was and where we should take it for repairs. We put the car in reverse and it made the noise again, then we dropped it into neutral and let it roll forward. It made the noise again. This time, Rock decided that it must be the brakes. Since it was the brakes, we weren't willing to take the car just anywhere to be fixed. I don't know about where you live, but around here, brake jobs are the single biggest rip-off in car repairs. No matter what, if you take a car in for brake repairs, the mechanic is going to fix the brakes, then tell you that the brake pads were "worn clean through to the rotors" and "It was scraping metal on metal" and that they had to replace the rotors, too. (Please hear this in my best imitation of a redneck drawl.) After hearing this bullshit for three or four brake jobs, I am not interested in being ripped off again. The only place I will take my car for brake repair is the Best Mechanic on Earth. BME lives three houses up from my mom and I've known him since I was 14. His garage is behind his house and his dad lives next door to him. In bad weather or power outages, he rounds up the older neighbors and takes them to his dad's house, where they have a generator. In short, most honest mechanic ever. So, on Friday I called BME and asked him when he could take a look at my car. Yesterday was his earliest appointment, so we dropped the car off Sunday night and he worked on it yesterday. I called him about 5:00 last night to make sure the car was ready. His reply, "Yeah, I think I got ya ready to roll. Ya ain't gonna to believe what was makin that noise. Ya had ya a rock, stuck between the rotor and the brake guard, scraping against both of 'em. I flipped that outta there, and it was fine." We picked the car up last night. Total charge? $28, for the oil change he did.