Little Red Corvette - Pandora Strikes Again

 

 

I didn't plan on rebuilding most of the rear brake system this winter but you make plans, the Corvette laughs.

 

 

The brakes on this car were never that good and I found out why; the rear brakes weren't working. When they failed is beyond me. Apparently, there was a small hole in the "cross over line" that carries hydraulic brake fluid from the left side of the car over to the right rear caliper. Think leak in your aorta.  Almost an entire can of PB Blaster and a week of yanking and tugging and I had it out. Pictured is the new line "installed". It got slightly bent out of shape with my attempts at pushing it through the exhaust system hangers and that funky drainage pipe thing. I guess that's what it is. I still haven't figured it what it is exactly. There are several odd tubes that look factory installed under here that I've yet to figure out what they're for. Most likely drain pipes for rainwater. By the way, I had to partially dismantle the exhaust system to get the line in. If anything, this project has cured me of my claustrophobia.  

 

 

In getting the old cross over line out I also had to remove the lines that go to the calipers. The factory spec replacements I got from are completely different from what was on there and they required quite a bit of finagling to get into place. Thanks to crude line drawings I found on the internet, I was able to figure it out. Cray cray.

 

 

Problem is, they fit counter intuitively vs. what was in there before. Apparently, it would seem, someone had done some brake work on this car. You can see here that they lie almost on the caliper which is, honestly, quite weird if you ask me. Just like about everything else on this car. And then, just as I thought I was almost finished; disaster struck. I was attempting to open the inside bleeder valve, yes, there's two bleeder valves on the rear calipers on 1968-1982 Corvettes (shoot me now), and the little bastard broke off on me. You can see the broken bleeder screw on the left side of the picture just above that rusty bolt. Quite the common problem. Now I have to replace the caliper. Either that or buy a set of tools to drill that thing out and reset it. It'll be less expensive to get the caliper off. Pandora strikes again.

 

 

I keep telling myself this is all worth it, that this too shall pass and that a bad day on the Corvette is better than a good day at work. Seeing I enjoy what I do for a living, that's saying a lot.