I'm not at all surprised that the rear brakes on my car were an absolute mess and near impossible to get off of the car in one piece. After all I haven't worked on them for the last 5 years, but damnit this was a total pain in the ass.

    The front's went so-so this time around after only having one bolt give me a bit of an issue. But that turned out to be nothing really major and was taken care of quickly.

    The passenger side rear brake however had something against me. After remembering how to remove the parking brake cable assembly I was getting ready to remove the caliper bolt and the 12mm bolt snapped after trying to break it loose. I ended up having to remove the caliper completely, grind the end of the bolt flat. Then drill it out and heli-coil what's left. Hopefully after covering the bolt in anti-sieze it shouldn't give me so much trouble next time.

    The rotors themselves came off rather easily which had me totally amazed but then we hit issue #1 of the night. I'd called ahead to Kendal and asked her to pick up the rest of my brakes at Autozone since I might not get off of work in time. Since I already had two sets of brake pads from Hawk Performance sitting at home I figured she'd understand that she needs to get the rear rotors for me, apparently I needed to be more specific. I had a lovely set of Duralast brake pads sitting in her car which was exactly what I didn't need. I decided to call it a night after all this frustration and to just get it taken care of in the morning. Little did I know that the morning would prove even more difficult than the night before it.

    10am, and I'm standing at Autozone where the kind gentleman is informing me that they don't stock my brake rotors and it'll be a 2 day order to get them here. I take my refund and head home. I make one call to Advance Auto Parts in Kendallville and then head in to pick up the rotors they have. I swear though Autozone never stocks a damned thing for me, yet the old Advance Auto Parts I work at never fails to have it in stock right away that very day.

    After the drive back home I clean of the rotors and begin installing them. Everything is going nice and smooth until I try to install my new racing pads from Hawk. They don't fit. I find this odd as all rear brakes on 90-94 DSM's are the same so it's not like they sent me the wrong one's, or did they. I check the backs of the pads against the box and all the numbers line up, so then I compare my new pads to the old, and realize someone somewhere made a big mistake. Although nearly equally tiny in size, they are far from the same pads as what I removed from my vehicle which makes me wonder wtf I just ordered.

    I head in and pull up Hawk's website and check the listing for the 1992 Mitsubishi Eclipse. I always look up Eclipses since some sights list more for them than its Talon and Laser cousins. I find exactly what I'm looking for at the bottom of the page, the matching part numbers for the pads I hold in my hand.

92 Eclipse listing

    Then I decide to check those part numbers against the 1992 Eagle Talon and find to my horror that someone dropped the ball and listed pads only for the Eclipse that don't fit it. If I'd looked up the pads for the Talon I would've not ordered these bastard pads that seem to fit nothing at all.

92 Talon Listing

    So now I've got to put my old pads back on and roll the car back outside the garage and figure out how to return these pads tomorrow at work so I can get something decent in their place. Although these little bastards are so friggin small I can't imagine they do much of anything at all to actually stop the car.