<VV> California Dreamin' Part Three - Repairs and a Homer DOH! moment

[Sethracer at aol.com]

Part Three – Repairs and a Homer DOH! moment 
Wednesday morning was my day of reckoning for the brakes.  While talking with 
others at the convention, I had heard about Steve Poe’s  accident. So when I 
had to jack up the car to troubleshoot and repair the  brakes, safety was high 
on my list. I borrowed two amazing aluminum jack stands  from Jeff Ballard 
(Thanks Jeff!) and dove into the right rear brakes. From  earlier indications, I 
was pretty sure something was loose on the right rear.  After jacking up the 
car, I pulled out my few tools, including my tube wrenches  and tightened 
every thing again. Nothing seemed loose. I opened up the rear  master cylinder – 
it was dry inside. So I opened a new can of brake fluid and  poured some in 
slowly. Without my touching the pedal, the fluid slowly came  dripping out the 
right rear line. At this point, I have to admit to an earlier  error. In this 
complex 4-wheel disc-brake system, all parts of the system, not  including the 
hard lines, were all new in the last two months in this final  build up. There 
were two exceptions. Two stainless flex hoses, the ones from the  rear hard 
lines to the trailing arms were retained from the earlier system.  During the 
first bleeding of the system, about two weeks before, the left side  had 
immediately leaked at one end of the line. I had two new lines ready to go.  I 
removed the left side and replaced it with the new line. I could visually  verify 
the line was bad, the end-fitting had cracked on the contact face.  I should 
have immediately replaced the  other old line on the right side. But I didn’t. I 
just put the replacement line  on the shelf. That remaining old line is the 
one that failed after the track  event. My bad! DOH!! Of course, my one spare 
line was now sitting on my shelf –  about 300 miles North. With advice from Jeff 
Ballard, I visited a local  hydraulic supply place, and, although they didn’t 
have the “-3 line”, pretty  much a racing-only part, they knew who did. I 
called “Scott’s Hot Rods” in  Oxnard, about 15  miles down the coast. They had 
an almost identical part in stock, a little long,  but usable. I brought the 
part back and, with a friend’s help, (Thank You, Bill  Sweet!), installed the 
line, bled the brakes, restored a hard peddle and  re-balanced the front rear 
settings. Since I had the car up in the air, I  installed the race tires for 
Friday. Doing this work in the middle of the day  caused me to miss Bob Anderson’
s presentation of the Corvair differentials. That  is one tech session I 
really wanted to attend. The engine still sounded like a  threshing machine, but 
it was still running. At 5 o’clock, Barbara and I  returned to the B&B to 
change into warmer clothes for the Beach Party. Yeah  we hit the wine and cheese 
again, too. Aside from being a bit chilly, we enjoyed  the beach affair. The 
food was great, and plentiful. We sat and swapped tales  with the LeVeques, Fred 
and Sharon Bybee and others who drifted in and out. The  ocean breeze finally 
got us, so we eventually returned to the B&B and did a  walking tour of 
downtown Ventura. There were six thrift stores on one  block in the downtown area. 
Thank goodness  they were closed!  
Thursday was the slow day. I spent much of the day helping Tim Chew and  
others from his club set up the autocross track layout. We had a large open area  
with only a few centrally located light poles to plot around, and plenty of  
pylons. Tim’s original design included a two-lap run, but it became evident 
that  it would have been too confusing for many. We lengthened the second part of 
the  course and included a few sweeping turns before the straight finish and 
ended up  with a 50-55 second course (for most cars). I missed the Virtual 
Vairs meeting  while working with some customers but managed to attend the V8 
Registry meeting  in the evening. We even missed the wine and Cheese affair! 
Barbara went to  dinner with the LeVeques and came back just in time to pull me 
out of the end of  the V8 meeting. I was watching a great in-car video of a V8 
Vair passing several  cars at a track event. Russ Brandenburg did a great job 
with the meeting.  Early to bed on Thursday, because Friday  was the Autocross. 
 
Next, Part Four – Autocross and final day  events.



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