I was slowing down for a traffic signal, foot on the brake, when the pickup truck in front of me went into full panic-stop mode. Nose down and tail up. I hit my brakes hard, and after a couple of seconds, the pedal went soft and dropped about two inches! Fortunately, I still had enough brakes to stop without hitting the truck. I slowly and gently made it the rest of the way home, frequently testing the brakes.
When I got the truck into the Grant St. Garage, the problem was evident right away, because a puddle of brake fluid started to form, just under the driver's seat. Turns out that the extra force of my panic stop was enough to blow a pinhole in one of the rusty brake lines leading to the rear brakes. When I got underneath and took a look, I was surprised to see that both the brake lines and the fuel lines were a seriously rusted mess. I got right to work, and was surprised and pleased that the small segment with the hole came out without much difficulty, although it finished twisting into two pieces as I turned the brass fitting loose - it was corroded and stuck to the pipe. The bad pipe is shown below the new replacement pipe I bought from Autozone.
Of course, that new pipe is a bit too long, but that's a standard practice. They come in just a few lengths, and you have to shorten them and use a special tool to put a new flare on the end. I used to do that as a teenager, when I worked during the summers at DeWitt Brothers' Garage in Fannin, Mississippi. But that was about 40 years ago, and I hadn't done it since!
Here's the idea. First, you use a pipe cutting tool to shorten the pipe. This shot is actually mocked up on the cut-off piece, which I used several times to practice making the flare. Look closely, and you can see the blade to the left of the tube. You tighten the blade against the tube, and alternate turning and tightening until the pipe is cut. By the way, you use the exact same process when cutting pipe for your bathroom sink, for instance.
You use another piece in the kit as a gauge, to tell how far the pipe should stick out:
Then, here's where I made my first mistake. There are two kinds of flares, single and double. I made a double by putting that little tool above (it's called a "mandrel") in the pipe, and using the clamp to force it down.
You then repeat the process without the mandrel to complete the double flare. To make a single flare (which is what I actually needed) you just do the process once, without the mandrel. The final step is to use another tool to gently bend the line to shape:
I was pretty dubious about my flare anyway. Even after trying multiple times, it was always off-center, and not very pretty. More about that in a minute. By the way, Autozone lets you use those tools for free (with a refundable deposit), which is pretty sweet.
So, I put that new pipe in place in the truck, and then set out to bleed the brakes. I was actually happy to use my new MityVac vacuum brake bleeder, which I had bought after getting frustrated with my pressure bleeder one too many times:
The black end of the hose in the foreground fits over the brake bleeder screw (which is hollow and has a nipple to attach this to), and the fitting at the back of the tank attached to the air line from my compressor. The compressed air makes a vacuum, and when you open the bleeder screw, fluid flows and you can purge all the air out of the system, restoring the brakes. Except... that didn't happen. I pumped and pumped, and never got any brake fluid. I tried the bleeder on the front brakes, and it worked great. But no joy at the back! I called a halt to consult the Internet oracle.
What I found was a ton of posts about how hard these rear brakes are to bleed, and a couple of things I didn't know. First, there is a bleeder screw on the ABS (Anti-lock Braking System), and you often have to bleed it after getting air in the rear lines. Second, there's a pin in the proportioning valve to the rear brakes that sometimes sticks and won't allow fluid to flow. The fixes involved various permutations of pounding on the valve or on the brake pedal. Here's a photo of the ABS unit - you can see the bleeder valve sticking straight up, and the pin is under the round black cover at the front.
I put the MityVac on the bleeder screw, opened it up, and was gratified to see a slow flow of fluid coming through. While that was going on, I used a dead-blow hammer to gently tap on the ABS and the proportioning valve, even though the pin didn't seem to be tripped. At one point the fluid flow seemed to increase, so I think that tapping actually did some good. After that, I checked the brake pedal with the engine off, and was happy to see that the brake warning light was no longer on. I bled the rear brakes again, and all seemed well, Except... I checked, and there was seepage at that joint I made.
So, back to the Autozone, where I talked to Rafael C. at the counter. He was just great. A former mechanic, he offered to make the next flare for me. I immediately accepted, and his was fine:
That Autozone is at 877 East Chestnut Street, and I definitely recommend it! I put it on today, re-bled it, and all is well. While under the truck, I noticed that I also had some seepage of antifreeze at the hose to the heater, and was able to tighten that up as well.
So, the truck is back on the road, but this isn't the end of this saga. Those lines under the truck are terrible, and I'm going to replace them all at once, both brake and fuel, using stainless steel tubing. I'm rebuilding the rest of the brake system at the same time. Kelly Williams is going to help do mine, and then we're going to do his nearly identical truck too. When I told Kelly about what was going on, he shared this story:
There was some group of years of these pickup trucks that were made with bad steel in the lines, or something - a lot of them fail. In my case, it was a friend's pickup, towing a trailer with my steam car in it, sailing down an offramp.
Yes, Kelly has a steam car, a Stanley Steamer! Here's a very extensive history of that car:
I don't think Kelly will mind if I share a photo as a teaser to encourage you to go look!
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