while driving on local roads he had a sudden and instant loss of brakes , fortunately he was able to control the vehicle and limp the short way home, as a standard safety measure all cars with dual brake systems have a valve that retains at least one circuit for this type of issue,
on investigation Phil found that the off side front wheel arch was leaking fluid, and spraying out when the brakes were applied, this was behind the suspension strut in the hard line, not the flexi to the calliper !
a call to myself and we determined which line had gone by using the heritage site for parts, fortunately the part is still available and a kidney wasn't needed to be sold to purchase it..... from memory it was just under £30 including the VAT , this is a hard line that runs from under the front valance beam around the offside wheel arch and off to the rear brakes , a union was located under the valance, and just before it disappeared under the car in the wheel arch
so yesterday with the new part and some new fluid ( Dot4 ) we carried out the work on his drive , as i advised the car shouldn't be driven until fixed
jacking up the car and taking off the wheel showed the issue right away , there was a large ' nick ' out of the pipe behind the top suspension mount ( it later transpired the PO had the suspension frame renewed just before Phil bought the car, the damage must have been done then )
offering up the new part confirmed it was all good to proceed ( even if it was bloody cold , lol )
the union was a 13mm and the brake pipe nut was 11mm , i used a special brake pipe spanner , as they grip better for the very tight unions , it came apart nice and easy with no spray as the system was not under pressure due to the leak , and then the front union was undone, again , once and easy , the damaged pipe was wiggled out, and the new one went in very easy around the suspension struts , air conditioning pipe and wiring , i thought this is going very well , ensure the pipe ends were clean after removing the end protectors and did up the unions, and snapped the pipes back into the clips, these are very brittle and a few have broken , a small job for the future
back on with the wheel and time to bleed the brakes, as it was the rear line we did the back wheels first after jacking up each wheel, as you can imagine a lot of dirty milky fluid came out with lots of air bubbles until the new fluid was pushed through , we did the old fashioned way with Phil on the pedal ( up, up , down , down , etc etc etc )without the engine or ignition on.
i was expecting bad fluid from the damage due to it soaking up water, but wasn't expecting the dark varnish coloured old fluid , it was almost the colour of coffee,,,,,,,
after all four wheel had been bled we turned over the car to check it out, the system sucked in some fluid to pressurise the system and the system needed topping up , all in all it took just under 1ltr of Dot4 to fully flush the system ,
the damage seemed to be caused by the frame replacement somehow, but would have been hard to spot once the suspension was in , so not really anyones fault, just one of those things i suppose, and no damage or injuries were incurred , and a fluid change was also needed,
just routing maintenance in the end i suppose
after that we installed a new aerial mast after having to take out the motor due to some of the old nylon had broken off inside, that was worse than the brake pipe , lol
a happy Phil once more
BB
