Robert Jones writes:
>I've been having trouble getting the system bled (I've been fighting
>with the idea of throwing another $40 into this project for an EZBleed),
>although today at lunch I tried again and got closer to a solid pedal.
>(How many of you have gone home at lunch to fix your car because it was
>such a nice day you had to drive it :-)
Although I don't want to insinuate that Robert, here, is repeating the
same idiotic thing that my husband Chuck and I did last year, I will
relay this incident anyway. After rebuilding our calipers and putting
them back on the car, we had a hell of a time getting the air out of
the system. We must've gone through two gallons of Castrol LMA. It
seemed impossible that we would ever be able to get the air out of the
system because some doofus designed the caliper with the bleeding screw
at the bottom. How is the air that rises to the top of the caliper
chamber ever supposed to get out? We tried all sorts of things --
removing the caliper from the wheel and holding it "upside down" with a
piece of wood or something wedged between the pads and then bleeding.
Our nosey neighbor kept insisting we were starting bleeding from the
wrong wheel. "No, no, we're doing it right!" we screamed. Finally,
one of us said (I think it was me, but I want to remain modest, so will
admit it could've been Chuck) "Are you SURE the bleeder screw is
supposed to come in at the bottom?" Sure enough, upon closer
inspection of the Haynes manual, we had the the calipers mounted
_upside_down_! Once we figured this out, we had the brakes bled in a
matter of minutes and they've worked great ever since!
Other stuff:
The blue 66 'B is back on the streets of Boston! All thanks to Chuck.
I did next to zed mostly because my hands get too cold to work either
in the garage or in our shitty New England spring weather (really, it's
Raynaud's syndrome and it cuts off circulation to my fingers, I'm not
just trying to get out of sworking! Unfortunately, it also interferes
with driving in chilly weather top-down :-( ) We've got
newly-reupholstered seats, new carpet set, new spark plugs,
newly-adjusted valve clearances (amazing how bad the compression can be
if you're just a little off), and most importantly, a New Exhaust
System. We went with the stock system and the car is sooo quiet now I
think it's stalled at red lights. But it's got a nice sound to it
anyway. It's weird to be driving it again because I feel so
conspicuous in it. Last night a guy in a 320i zapped down his window
to ask us about our car. I'd forgotten how much attention the B gets.
For a while last summer/fall, it was our only car and I got used to the
attention. Though I do remember when we first got our Acura, driving
up to Maine was not as much fun because the toll both operators weren't
as friendly.
Lydia Gregoret
lydia@rosa.mit.edu
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