<VV> Portland (Greg Bilodeau)

[NicolCS at aol.com]

Greg mentioned that his brakes locked "ON" during the drive home - here's a  
little more detail:  After lifting the throttle and pulling over, Greg's  
Spyder quickly stopped itself - and I do mean quickly!  Greg's Spyder  has 
original metallic brakes (original as in THE original linings) and these  things just 
don't fade, no matter how hot they are.  How hot were  they?  I have no doubt 
the drums were at least red-hot. When the relatively  new brake hose exploded 
(KA POW!), flaming rubber bits were scattered under the  car and I stepped on 
a few to extinguish the flames.  Naturally, all four  brakes were smoking 
heavily and after the explosion, the smoke was thick - we  were thinking that a 
fire inside all that smoke was quite likely. Luckily  not.  
 
We swapped Greg's car for the Binion EFI Corsa on the trailer and  again hit 
the road in the desert heat. The reason the Corsa was on the  trailer?  It has 
a cracked piston - I took it to the convention just as a  display piece.  
Under Greg's skilful care, he was able to avoid the rpms  and loads where the 
cracked piston was knocking and he nursed it 200 miles to my  place.  About 30 
miles from home, the Corsa started smoking out the exhaust  and at the end (and 
I do mean the end) it had used 2 quarts of oil in about four  hours of driving.
 
Back to the Spyder. Evidencing the heat, the brake drums had  white-orange 
dust on them and them and the inner surfaces were purple.  The  dust caps were 
purple too and once the drums were off, we found that the  wheel cylinder caps 
had burned up and most of the wheel bearing grease  had flowed out and was on 
the backing plate.  All of the brake springs were  loose and sagging. I had 
what we needed to put things right and get him back on  the road - all except 
for a master cylinder.  We took the one off of my  Corsa and put it on the 
Spyder and all was well - for about 5 minutes, then that  master cylinder failed 
and the pedal went to the floor!  Remember, we just  drove a car 200 miles with 
that MC and it seemed fine!  The local NAPA had  a new MC in stock ($36) and 
Greg was on his way in the AM.
 
The original metallic shoes still looked fine.
Craig Nicol