In August 1967 I was driving my one year old 1966 1600 from NY to Calif. with
my buddy Glenn, he was going to Stanford, I to Berkeley. We had stopped in
Chicago to fix a squealing from the front brakes, and left down the Governor
Adlai Stevenson Throughway to St. Louis early Sunday morning. Outside of
Chicago I put my foot down to stop, when I discovered to my horror that we
had no brakes. I pulled over to the shoulder, avoiding traffic, checked to
see there was no fluid and found that I had worn a hole in the brake line
with the front wheel. (My adjustment was almost lethal.)
We made it to a motel in St. Louis with the handbrake and waited out Sunday
night. On Monday morning we got to a local parts house and showed them the
cut brake line. When told it was from a Datsun 1600 (what is that, they
said) they finally figured that it would take three or four days to get the
part. Just then a grease monkey from the back came out and said, "Where did
you get the Chevy brake line?"
Sure enough, it was almost an exact fit with little bending, an hour later we
were on our way. The Chevy line is still on the car 32 years later. Too bad
they went to metric 2 years later. So the moral is, if its an early SAE car,
try Pep Boys or the equivalent for an American car part.
Gary C
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