A Visit to Jack's

In my last post, I mentioned that there were two (of six) brake lines that I was unable to remove.  I was fearful that if I put on too much pressure, the hard line would shear, and then I'd be stuck!  I decided to pay another visit to Jack Miller's shop in Bainbridge.  An independent BMW service facility, Jack's Auto and Aero has been involved from the beginning of this project.  In fact, there's a brief video of the shop in my very first post.

Turns out that this was a very wise decision!  Jack was astonished at how tight those two brake line connections were.
They weren't corroded, just stuck.  On the front, I had slightly rounded (come on, I mean very slightly!) the corners of the flare nut with my Craftsman flare wrenches.  Jack was mildly disrespectful of my wrenches, until his mighty Snap-on tools wouldn't budge it either.  In the end, he had to resort to Vise-grips and a lot of torque.  Fortunately, the line didn't shear.  The nut was ugly but still usable to tighten:

Things were even worse on the rear, due to the tight clearance.  Jack unbolted the bracket from the trailing arm and gently bent the hard line in order to get better clearance, but still couldn't break it loose.  He had some choice words for that!  He said he'd never seen anything like it in his long career.  In the end, he had to apply some heat from a torch - scary because brake fluid is very flammable - but that worked and it finally cracked open.  In this shot, you can see the flare wrench on the hard line, and the bracket we had to remove:

I know, saying "we removed" is like my mother used to say: "We killed a bear - Daddy shot it."  But I did hold the light and one time held one wrench while he was tightening with another!

The torch was already out, because there was another reason I wanted to go to Jack's.  This winter, when the car is snowbound, I have a planned project that will require removal of the exhaust system, the driveshaft, and probably the transmission.  When I was at Jack's last November for the annual state inspection, he said that I should let him get the nuts off the exhaust system junction, because they rust in place, and are impossible to get off without heating them cherry red and then quickly trying to turn them.

That was another good choice, because those nuts were really, really stuck!  All four of them.  Jack had to heat them over and over, and try, and heat some more, but finally they all gave way.  

That was a good learning experience for me to watch, both to learn how quickly a good torch will heat something cherry red, and also how to try to remove the nuts.  Jack was only using a 3/8" ratchet, and applying only moderate torque.  If he had twisted the stud off instead of removing the nut from the stud, then we'd be faced with removing the exhaust header and catalytic converters from the engine, drilling out the old stud and pressing a new one in.  Not fun.  Also, if you pound on that connection, even a little, it often destroys one or more of the expensive oxygen sensors.

Once he got everything off, he coated everything with anti-seize compound and installed brand new copper exhaust nuts.  In the before and after pic below, you can see two of the oxygen sensors - they are right there in the way!

Jack has been doing this for a long time, and he knew just what to do.  Doesn't take long to tell, but this process (two brake hoses and four exhaust nuts, plus bleeding the brakes and a couple of other checks) took two and a half hours.

Jack is a member of the independent BMW service professionals organization bimrs.org.  That used to be called the IAIBMWSP - the International Association of Independent BMW Service Professionals, and Jack still has the old banner hanging.