Brake Lines, Bleeding

After replacing the whole passenger's side hard brake lines, from the master cylinder to the back drum, I went to bleed the system. Soon as we started the drivers side line in the Swiss-cheese panel and halfway through the cabin ruptured; nothing can ever go easily. So that all had to be replaced, but like I did on the passenger side I replaced the 60" single hard line from the bulkhead to cylinder with a 12 inch line from the cylinder through the firewall, connected to a 51" straight line to the Swiss-cheese panel. Once all the lines were replaced we were close to bleeding the system and hurricane Scott struck again, as he was tightening the brake-line into the drivers drum he sheared off the bleeder screw... again. So the whole drum came off, thankfully the screw had sheared in such a way that we could pretty easily get it out, then replace it.


Once all the line were in and we tightened up any places with leakage we were ready to bleed the brakes. The process took quite a while since all the lines were completely dry all the way to the back two drums. As we were bleeding Scott found a hole in the boot behind the brake pedal that was leaking brake fluid, but it was a very very slow leak that only put fluid through when the pedal was pumped. Chances are the seal underneath the boot isn't perfect, so that will have to be inspected and hopefully won't require a whole cylinder rebuild... again.

Brake System

The last post was very in depth of the refurb of my front driver's side caliper, the 2 back drums and other caliper got the same treatment, once that was done I went to bleed the brakes and one of the lines under the Swiss-Cheese panel ruptured.


So with one line ruptured I decided to replace the hard lines that go to the drums as well since they were easy to access and looked in a bad way. I got the new lines on Saturday night but when I went to bleed them Sunday morning they were dripping, not a huge leak but enough that I needed to sit down and tighten the ever-loving piss out of them. One of the lines running along the floor of the pan seems to have a bad thread and wont tighten down to not leak, so I'll probably have to replace it too.

Before:

After:

Brake Refurbishing

So with the Sonett capable of moving under it's own power an important part now is making sure it can also stop. I live on a gigantic hill, about a 45 degree angle, steeper in places, so a good set of brakes is pretty important.

So first was the front disc brakes, I had to check if the pads were still good as well as clean off the massive amount of rust and repaint them.

The caliper was absolutely disgusting, covered in spiderwebs, dirt, grime, rust, and dust. So I blew the whole thing out with the air-compressor, and cleaned it off a little bit with some brake cleaner. The bolt you see there is occupying the hole for the brake line, just to make sure no rust/dust/dirt/etc got in there.

Once the caliper was off it was easy enough to remove the pads and check them. They look pretty near brand new, makes me think the guy before me replaced them and then never drove the car. They got sprayed and wiped over with brake cleaner, a little bit of sandpaper on the surface to add a tiny bit of grip.

Next the whole caliper and all it's loose parts got gone over with the wire brush, it didn't even look like the same piece of metal after I was done with it.

Once the caliper was wire-brushed back to metal I wiped off the rust/dust and air-blasted it with the compressor. Then I sprayed it with Krylon anti-rust, high temperature resistant black paint, I thought about painting them red or some other performance caliper color but I had black and I'm not that flashy.

Once everything was painted and dried I reassembled the caliper, slide in the pads and it was ready to bolt back onto the rotor.

I reattached the brake line (after cleaning it of course) and bolted back on the caliper. I cleaned the rotor and everything else I could reach with brake cleaner. Repainted the suspension spring, tie-rod, and  A frame after wire brushing off the rust. Cleaned off the frame around there with water and had one good looking wheel arch area.

Before:

After: