Tuesday, February 21, 2012

All Brake Lines are not Created Equal

My garage time last night started with some carb work on Glinda’s right side. She wouldn’t idle for Victoria, so I played with things trying to clear out any crud that might be lurking in passages and was successful. Glinda stayed running for Victoria on her commute today.

With that success, I moved on to Lucy and the routing of the two new front brake lines. The first one (the shorter of the two and, ironically, the one procured by the lovely Loriann) took me about 45 minutes to install. It took a litany of under the car, inside the car, at the front wheelwell, repeat before all the bends were perfect and the fittings at both ends were snug. After bending the second one and attempting to thread the inside fitting into its car-board mate, I discovered the line fittings were metric. Both the NAPA counter guy and I missed that 3/16ths brake line could come with metric fittings (it was in the wrong display tube at the store as well). Anyway, by the time I'd pulled the tube back out, I'd wasted over an hour. Needless to say, I was MIGHTILY frustrated. I ran by a different NAPA today and bought the correct line, I should be able to get it installed and the brakes bled by bedtime. I'll still have to install the gas tank before she's ready to drive, but I have everything to do that job and I’ve done it before, so it should go smoothly. I really want to get her back on the road tonight since I’m leaving for a west coast visit with my fabulous folks Thursday morning VERY early and I want Lucy to be the car that sits in the parking lot the five days I’m away. I feel strongly that, given Glinda’s recent misbehaviors, the Suburban needs to be available as back-up.

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