It has NOT been a good morning. Yesterday I put on the new rear wheel
cylinders and the clutch MC I rebuilt. Today I put on new front brake bads.
While putting on the left front I noticed that the A-arm has a *crack* where
the lower end of the king pin attaches. *groan* Anyway went ahead and put on
the pads and bled the brakes. Bought one of those MityVac kits - the really
nice SilverLine with all the goodies. But I can't really tell if it was
working very well or not. It seemed to be pulling a *lot* more air than I
would have expected. Finally got my wife out to help and finished it off the
old fashioned way. Very little air then, so maybe the vac was pulling air in
the line around the fitting or something. Anybody have any experience with
these things?
But anyway, I went to bleed the clutch, and bled, and bled, and bled. Both
with the vac and with my wife pumping the pedal. It looked clean when she
would pump it. But the clutch won't release! Aarrgghh!!! Maybe there is
still air in the line. When I got the car it had who knows what kind of MC
on it, sitting at about a 45 degree angle from upright, and was loosely
mounted. Had the pedal raised WAY up above where it should have been. But it
worked, and seemed to work well. I'm wondering if it produced a longer
stroke at the clutch (I would have thought that might have popped the piston
out) and thus sort of compensated for a worn clutch.
So the main question I have now is: How much travel should I see at the
clutch slave cylinder? Just looking at it, it looks like something between
1/2 and 3/4 inch. There's still the possibility that there is air in it
(sucked the MC dry at one point yesterday) or that the rebuilt I did on the
MC was a failure. I really don't want to put a clutch in, as I live in a
townhouse and can't really pull the engine here.
At least my wife is being an angel through all this. She said its my baby
and it needs me.
And to top it off, the tranny in our 92 Dodge Caravan started making an
occasional *clunk* yesterday.
"It never rains, it doesn't even pour, it FLOODS!"
Eddie
1971 Midget (behaving badly)
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