Admitting defeat is never easy. However I think I may as well own up to this one. Last Saturday I began the process of attempting to replace the front brake pads and rotors on my 2002 pt cruiser. This however proved to be more difficult than it seemed and I ended up taking it to CNC Tire in Massillon Ohio on Monday.
I was able to get the tire off, then the caliper and even the pads. After some pounding with a rubber mallet the rotor itself came loose so I figured I was out of the woods with this one right? Well not quite. You see to remove the rotor completely you also have to remove the caliper mounting bracket. SO back into the toolbox I go to find the right metric socket / wrench for the job only to find out that the heads on the bolts must be an odd size as my 17MM is too small to fit and my 199MM was too big and began rounding off the corners on the one bolt that I tried to remove. The only SAE socket that was even close was a 3/4″ but it seemed like it would round off the corners more quickly than a 19MM. Once I realized this I called CNC tire and they said that they would be able to do it monday if I dropped it off on my way to work (which is less than 2 minutes from there).
In the end it is a little frustrating because it should have been something that I could accomplish on my own, but at the same time they only charged me $70 and they flushed and bled the whole brake system for me which was something I was going to have to take somewhere and have done eventually anyways.
I was however able to remove the cracked mirror on the drivers side and replace it with a spare one I had received when I ordered the passenger side one off of ebay a year or so ago. Pictures and documentation of that project are to follow along with an update on the Mercury Comet as I begin to work on it here in the next few weeks when the weather warms up again.
Thanks for reading, please feel free to comment 
