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Excellent!
FWIW, I will have various tools and such in the Explorer if you need to do any troubleshooting at SITM.
I will be glad to have your assistance. I was talking with a neighbor last night and told him that we were taking it next weekend and he was very surprised. I told him if I was going to breakdown I would rather it be with 50 other owners than somewhere all by myself,lol.
So we drove the car quite a but last night with stop and go city traffic, interstate traffic and a few low speed twisties.
That led me to think of a few things I could do before the trip. We have hot air flow coming in the cabin so I decided to take a look at the vacuum pod under the air housing.
Of course the air filter was upside down
But I also found this small gift
I removed it so I hope it was not some secret guru way of increasing air flow........
So then I move to the transaxle and drained the manual trans fluid. It looked really gross so I am sure it had been a while. Filled it with fresh redline and moved to the clutch hydraulics.
That is where the latest self inflicted wound came.
I pressurized the system before cracking the bleeder on the slave..... and I am sure you can guess what happened next. I was good to about 10 pds but as I took it up over 12 pounds I blew out the blue hose
So for now she is still up on the bars, I removed all of the heat shields on the bottom end to improve access. I have a message in to Roger and hope to have the new blue hose by Wednesday when I get off work. That gives me two evenings and a morning to make the repair before leaving Friday at lunch to SITM.
Wish me luck
I see this as a good thing. Hose failed in your garage on the stands. Not out on the road 150 miles from home
better this way!
Thanks Guy. I read that yesterday and was grateful for the glass half full attitude but the more I have thought about it the more I see the wisdom and favor in your statement.
The blue hose was probably original and the outside fabric is tattered and torn. I am sure it was just a matter of time.
I have only done this job once and with a skilled helper. I would prefer to do the master and slave at the same time as the blue hose with a well planned for and thought out future date, but that was not in the cards. The time and money just don't line up this time around.
I see this as a good thing. Hose failed in your garage on the stands. Not out on the road 150 miles from home
better this way!
Well, it failed under pressure. It normally doesn't see any pressure. It's just a "feeder" hose. From what I have read, they can be in pretty poor shape and still function just fine.
Sorry to see this happen though. It's a PIA to get to.
Fear of this exact situations is why I chose to vacuum bleed mine from the calipers (and slave cylinder) when I changed my fluid.
That method does have it's drawbacks, and each person has to make his own choice.
I really am the luckiest guy that you know. I went down this evening and was doing some prep work for the part (blue hose) that is coming in tomorrow. Took the driver front wheel off, laying all of the ground cloth, organizing tools and such.
I discovered that the pressure caused the blue hose to pop off of the master cylinder. It didn't actually break or crack..... it just popped off. The new hose will be here tomorrow and it is the same job but it makes me feel better about the other things that it could have been. For some reason I had a nagging feeling that I may have mucked up the MS.
I think the blue hose itself will be fairly easy, or at least uncomplicated. Getting that hard line off of the MS is the difficult part and it looks like I have avoided that altogether, for now......
The blue hose showed up yesterday thanks to 928Rus, but unfortunately my helper did not I have removed several more items on the bottom side to make the reach a little easier. I was able to verify that the elbow nipple on the MS is intact. Unfortunately it is at an impossible angle to attach the new hose. (I can hear the chuckles in the background)
I had hoped to avoid removing the MS from the body of the car but that is where I am at now. I hesitated removing that by myself because I am sure I cannot put it back by myself but really the car cannot be driven either way so I just took it off. The hardline going to the slave appears to be preventing the kind of movement I need on the MS to get it out from behind the brake booster in order to access the elbow nipple and attach the new blue(now black) hose.
I put a crowes foot wrench on the hardline but I could not budge it at all. I have an appointment with my buddy for this afternoon/evening after work.
With last nights no show I feel better about reminding him several times throughout the day about our very important task for this evening.
Last edited by medipedicman; 04-12-2018 at 06:35 AM.
Bad news. Master cylinder is shot. After working for 3 hours we took it back out and took it apart. The seals are toast. If there is an upside to this crappy situation it may cure the slight rpm surge that I had when I floored it above 3000 rpm. It felt like the clutch was never fully releasing.
One local hope for the part at 8:00 am. If not it looks like I will be driving a GM AGAIN to SITM.
Update since last post on Thursday night prior to SITM.
Fri morning- 8:00 am sitting at the one parts house that has a truck already scheduled from Atlanta suppliers. He can add to order but the order normally comes in at 4:30 as he is the last stop of the day for courier. Well that won't work. We start looking at 944 clutch master cylinders that he has in stock and I start talking about stripping the guts from one of those and using it in my housing. Of course that is a dumb idea but it gives me the chance to once again tell the story of our caravan scheduled to leave at lunch time for a car show in the mountains. After discussing several equally dumb ideas he finally said that he had the drivers cell phone and sometimes his wife meets the driver as he first pulls in town. Now were talking. The price quoted was twice the price that I could get it elsewhere but if his wife meets the driver then I could have it close to 2:00 pm same day. So I pay the man and tell him that we will talk at lunch. I head back to the house to clean up the carnage left in the garage from the previous nights disaster. I had to make the call of shame and let the other drivers know that I would not be traveling with them through the mountains today. Much to my shame, no one was really all that surprised.
With the help of fresh rags and squeegee's I absorbed most of the 5 gallons (only slight exaggeration) of brake fluid that was all over the floor, the car and ALL of the tools used the previous evening. I finished up before lunch and realized that I had a couple of hours to kill so I ended up going to the lunch that I had set up with the other drivers before their leisurely drive through the mountains. I got a call from the parts man during lunch and he confirmed our 2:00-2:30 time to pick up the clutch master cylinder.
After having a nice lunch and lining up my friend to help install the part I went and camped out at the parts store.
The delivery arrived by 2:30 and I was out the door to begin my 30 minute commute by 2:45. My friend was sitting in my drive when I got there so we started right away. We had just done this job twice the night before so figured we could do it in about an hour. In fact we did have the MS installed and the brake booster secured in close to an hour but that is when the real work began. BLEEDING the system. Wow, that took forever. By the time we were finished and took a test drive it was 5:45ish. I was so happy with the work that we had done and in the time frame that it was accomplished. I ran up the stairs to announce to the world (wife) that we were done and ready to go. I just needed to take a quick shower and out the door. Her response was..." Oh, did you get it fixed? Well I still have a few things to do before..." WHAT??? I rarely if ever get angry but I was dumbfounded for sure. We ended up getting out the door by 6:30ish and had a uneventful, mainly interstate drive to Banner Elk, NC. We arrived shortly before midnight and after exchanging pleasantries with a few friends we hit the hay.
What a great weekend. Lots more fun stories about the trip and new gremlins discovered. I will save those for another day.
05-26-2017, 08:51 AM
I have removed several more items on the bottom side to make the reach a little easier. I was able to verify that the elbow nipple on the MS is intact. Unfortunately it is at an impossible angle to attach the new hose. (I can hear the chuckles in the background)
Now were talking. The price quoted was twice the price that I could get it elsewhere but if his wife meets the driver then I could have it close to 2:00 pm same day. So I pay the man and tell him that we will talk at lunch. I head back to the house to clean up the carnage left in the garage from the previous nights disaster. I had to make the call of shame and let the other drivers know that I would not be traveling with them through the mountains today. Much to my shame, no one was really all that surprised.