Oaken Gearbox

Redoing your brakes is one on the simpler auto maintenance tasks, especially if your car has disc brakes all the way around. That being said, keeping your brakes working is pretty important, so it's well worth the extra time spent to do the job right, rather than stopping at simply throwing new pads on and calling it a day. I've probably redone the brakes on 4 or 5 vehicles at this point, and I've learned something new each time. 1. Brake Pads. This is the most basic step of brake maintenance. Brake pads are usually equipped with a metal clip the creates a high pitched sound when the pads are worn too thin. This signals that they should be replaced before they damage the rotors, or even the calipers. I inspect my break pads twice a year when I swap summer and winter tires, so I usually replace them before they get that worn. When installing new brake pads, make sure they slide freely in the caliper bracket. The new pads should come with new metal shims and packets o...

Photo courtesy of our garden last summer While browsing the news during my lunch break last week, I read an interesting story published by the BBC about the limitations of a vegan diet. As the popularity of such diets has increased, nutritional scientists have found several vitamins and fats that are both essential to brain development and can only be found in animal products such as meat, milk, or eggs. In fact, a vegan diet is not recommend for young children and nursing mothers, and even other adults can be left deficient in essential nutrients. When sharing what I'd read with my wife later that day, she pointed out that this is yet another result of the Fall (of man in Genesis 3). Under God's original plan, without death, all creatures must have subsisted entirely on a plant-based diet. Yet now, in our fallen world, God has made us genetically dependent on a type of animal sacrifice. We are unable to return to the utopia for which we were created. Unable, at least, unt...