Driver's Door Repair

It took an extra week, but I did get the Banana back on Friday.

As mentioned in my previous post, I went to pick up the car last week and couldn’t get in it due to the driver’s side door not opening. I had been having problems with the door, but the shop couldn’t recreate it until I showed up.

I left the car another week and they replaced the door latch mechanism. So far it has been working fine.

On the way home I noticed a couple of things. First, I drove with the top up as it was insanely hot that day. My usual rule is that, unless it is raining, the top goes down. With the top up I could tell that the air conditioning is not blowing cold. It was cool, which made the trip home bearable, but I’ll need to get that fixed.

Second, when I got home I noticed that the small, quarter-pane window on the driver’s side will now not go all the way down or all the way up without a little assistance. Perhaps the motor is going out or perhaps something is now binding it. I’ll have to get that addressed. My main fear is that it is an issue with the window that was causing door issues and that the expensive door latch repair won’t fix them.

Finally, when I bought the car I had the front brakes done by CW Performance. This was back in 2022. Ever since then they have been squeaking at low speed. Now I don’t drive the car all that often so perhaps it is just some sort of build up on the brake pads, but they suggested that I pay for a brake job without replacing the pads, which have plenty of wear left on them.

I did that but the brakes are still squeaking. (sigh)

I can say the squeaking isn’t as bad (there is some improvement), so I’m going to try to do a little hard braking the next time I drive it and see if that addresses the issue by burning off anything on the pads/rotors.

Overall I haven’t been happy with CW Performance this go-around. I plan to have the A/C looked at in the Spring, and I’ll have them look at the window at that time as well, but I’m not sure which shop I’ll use.

There does seem to be a number of independent shops in Greensboro. One literally has “independent” in the name but there doesn’t seem to be many reviews of it, while another, while not a single marque shop, has insanely high reviews for automobile repair.

In the meantime I hope to keep driving it (with the top down) and hope the window issue doesn’t get worse.