Archive for August, 2009

Last night, I bled the rear brakes.  That was my first time bleeding brakes.  I had bought a brake bleeding kit, the type with the hand held vacuum pump, a while back.  However, when I tried to loosen the brake bleeder screws I found that they were seized!  After a quick look online to figure out what to do, I went to my local Checker Auto Parts store and got a can of PB Blaster.  I used a wet paper towel to dampen the bleeder screw and sprayed on some PB Blaster.  Man, that stuff reeks!  After about 5 minutes I used the side of a crescent wrench and lightly tapped the bleeder screw.  Then I dampened the screw with the wet paper towel again and sprayed some more PB Blaster on.  I did the same to the other side.  Then after waiting another 5 minutes, I decided to give loosening the screws a try.  The screws came lose as if they were never rusted shut in the first place.  Amazing stuff – that PB Blaster.  However, my garage will stink for days.

Anyway, I followed the instructions that came with the brake bleeding kit.  I bled all of the old black grimy brake fluid out while putting in the new Wilwood 570 degree brake fluid.  I did that to both sides.  The dang vacuum canister lid broke!  Why is everything made out of cheap plastic nowadays!?!  I grabbed some superglue and put the vacuum canister lid back together.  If there are any leaks, the vacuum pump will not work.  Fortunately I was able to get it back to the point where it was creating vacuum, but not as strongly as before.  Stupid plastic crap.  Anyway, I bled both rear drum brakes.

After I bled the brakes, I set the preload on the new Caltracs suspension.  I just turned the traction bar until the leaf spring stop just touches the leaf spring, then gave each side a quarter turn extra.  I did this with my wife sitting in the driver’s seat.  I had a bear of a time tightening the nuts that go on either side of each traction bar.  The nut is 1 1/8″ in size.  I found a wrench that could just barely fit in there and do the job.

This morning I took the car out for a test drive to make sure the brakes still work.  I took the car down a side street near my house, went up to about 15 mph and did some hard stops.  Man that brake pedal feels solid now!  Before I bled the brakes, I could push the brake all the way to the floor.  Now, I can only push it about 3/4 way and it won’t go down any more.  Its like a rock.  No problem at all stopping the car.

Then, when I put the car back into the garage, I noticed that my front right tire looked really low.  I checked the pressure – it was only 19 PSI.  Hmm.  Not good.  I put it back up to 36 PSI.  I will have to keep an eye on that thing.

Today Keven and I went out to pick up the new tires I ordered for the car and to have the place I ordered them from (Desert Rat) mount them on the rims.  The place had no problem mounting the new 4.5″ x 25″ ET Fronts on the front rims.  But they ran into a snafu with the slicks – they did not have the right sized socket to remove the bead lock screws on my slicks.  So, we had to trailer the car to a different Desert Rat.  There, they told us they could remove the bead lock screws but would not put them back in after mounting the new tire, for liability reasons.  Fine, we said.  So they took off the old 10.5″ x 29.5″ slicks and put on the new 9″ x 30″ slicks.  It is a very nice fit – the tire tucks in under the lip of the wheel openings easily now.  We trailered the car back to Keven’s shop and put new bead lock screws in.  Here is what the car looks like now!

By the way, the reason we changed the fronts from 26″ to 25″ is because the 26″ tires were rubbing against the fenders whenever I turned the wheel.  What I did not realize is that the 25″ M/T ET Fronts are much narrower than the ordinary 26″ street tires that were on there.  So, I probably could have ordered 26″ M/T ET Fronts and they would have worked just fine.  The 25″ M/T is 4.5″ wide.  The 26″ M/T is 5″ wide.  The original 26″ street tire is 5.5″ wide.

All in all it took us 6 hours total to change the tires.  The car is a little high up front in the picture because we had to crank the torsion bars up so the transmission pan would clear the tail of the car hauler when loading or unloading the car.