CLANK XVII: More Brake Woes
As you may remember, last week I was waiting on new front brake hoses for
the Clankster ( my TR2 ). They had been shipped from Pennsylvania on Thursday,
the 23d, so I really had scant hope last Friday of receiving them. Sure
enough, I arrived home Friday afternoon, and there was nothing. I got on the
phone and complained bitterly to a britsh-car buddy about the slowness of UPS,
and the need to spend yet another TR2-less week. Then I hung up the phone,
went out front, and... There were two medium-size UPS boxes sitting there in
front of my door! YAH! The fabled brake hoses had arrived!
The next morning, I got up bright and early, and was out in the garage by
6:30. Shortly, I discovered the first nasty surprise of the morning: My new
master cylinder didn't match the hydraulic fitting on the pressure output port!
Apparently, the turkey who put together the clankster's brake system had
neglected to change the hydraulic fitting! He had just force-threaded the
original coarse-thread Lockheed fitting into the fine-thread Girling master.
No wonder the threads had been gone! It looked like I was going to have to
replace that particular piece of tubing. No problem, I have a tubing cutter
and a double-flare tool. And the Girling fitting was the exact same type as
used on present-day American cars.
Nasty Surprise #2: There is a piece of hydraulic tubing that connects the
tin-can fluid reservoir to the brake master cylinder. The threads on the
fitting that screwed into the cylinder were munged. I pulled that particular
piece of pipe out of the car, and *guess what*, the threads on those old
Lockheed hydraulic fittings matched one of the dies in my tap&die collection!
Seven-sixteenth NF, to be precise.
Nasty Surpise #3: the new brake hoses were about an inch shorter than the
ones that had been in the car! Apparently, when converting from drum to disk
brakes, they had found a longer Lockheed hose from some unknown british car,
and used it to match up to the disk caliper. URG. This was a more serious
gotcha. To fix it, I was going to have to do one of two things:
1) Find a ninety-degree fitting of some kind to let the hose exit straight
away from the caliper, instead of pointing straight up, and needing a similar
90 degree bend in the hose.
or
2) Relocate the chassis end of the hose. This would involve welding a new
mounting lug somewhere, and replacing much of the hydraulic tubing in the car.
Obviously, #1 was the easier choice, if only I could find the right adaptor.
I went down to the auto parts store. Nothing. It used to be, that every
respectable car parts store had a large cabinet full of miscellaneous hydraulic
fittings. No more. They said "Go across the street to the radiator shop.
They do brakes there." So I went to the radiator shop. The radiator guy took
one look at me and my hose, and said "That's brake stuff" "I wouldn't touch
brake stuff with a ten foot pole." "Liability is fierce on that stuff. Try a
racing shop"
So I motored on down to Frey Racing in Santa Clara. No luck. There was no
90 degree fitting made that would successfuly screw into that caliper. There
just wasn't enough clearance to swing the protruding end of the fitting. Not
wanting to make a 60-mile trip for nothing, I bought four sealing washers, and
a really neat book by Carroll Smith about fasteners and automotive plumbing.
This is a really neat book! This guy goes into nuts and bolts with more detail
than I ever imagined possible!
Back home, I was stuck with alternative #2. Out came the torch. I
fabricated a couple of hose end mounting lugs, and welded them to the frame in
such a place that the hose would not be stretched, nor would it foul anything,
etc etc. Then I fabricated new tubings to go to the new lug locations, and
bolted the whole mess together.
Now, it was about 6:00pm. I poured DOT5 into the reservoir and the
EZ-bleed. Hooked the EZ-bleed up and pressurized the system. Went around the
car and bled each nipple. Then I went in and got the wife. "Honey, would you
step on the brake while I go around and check for leaks?" Good thing I did,
too. One of my hydraulic joints seeped like an S.O.B. when she stomped on it.
I tightened it up, and it seeped MORE. Apparently, ther was something wrong in
there. Swearing, I evacuated the hydraulic fluid from the system. Took the
offending junction apart. Looked inside the female inverse-flare fitting: Was
that some corrosion in there? Sure was... What to do? Brake experts will tell
me I'm fulla sh*t here, but I really wanted a running car. I took that
fitting, and a new piece of tubing with a nice flared end. Daubed the tubing
with a bit of valve grinding compound. Put the fitting in a vise, stuck the
tubing in it, and lapped the seat. Back out to the car. I cut the flare off
the end of the original tubing, and put on a new flare there under the car.
Now, doing double-inverse flares In Situ does not rank terribly high on my
list of recreational activities. Especially in the dark. Especially when I've
already been working for 12 hours. But you gotta do what you gotta do, you
know? Got the flare done, put the whole mess back together, bled the system
again. This time it worked. Got a usable, but mushy, pedal. Let the car off
the jackstands, and drove it around the block. Went in the house, washed off,
and went to bed.
The next morning, I bled the system again. This time, the pedal came out
nice and tight. BTW, I consider this to be the "secret" of getting a good
bleed with DOT5. You bleed it once, let the car sit overnight, then bleed it
again. As the car sits for those eight or ten hourse, all the little bubbles
coalesce to form big bubbles. Which you can bleed out of the system without
incident.
Victory was mine! I had working brakes! But there was still one more
detail: The differential pinion seal. The day was spent renewing this
article. Well, mainly, getting the old one out. It would have gone faster, if
I'd figured the proper technique up front: you take a power drill, and drill
right through the seal. Then you drive a taper punch through the hole, and
lever the damn thing out. As it was, I spent a lot of time attacking the seal
with chisels, screwdrivers, etc.... Strangely enough, it turned out that the
existing seal had been installed BACKWARDS. Go figure.
- Jerry
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