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Date:         Mon, 25 Sep 1995 15:45:00 -0700
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         wabbott@megatest.com (William Abbott)
Subject:      Brake stories

I'm with Mike White- I'd guess Richard Palmer's old brake hoses were completely constricted and suspect the braking performance of the vehicle was sub-optimal. But doubtless better than nothing!!!

Speaking of Mr. Palmer, I wore my Netvernugen tee-shirt to the KFJC Record Swap this weekend and TWO different dj's commented on what a cool shirt it was. 'Nuf said!

I have two brake stories: 1: Rabbit brakes go very soft, fluid leaking out of rear brake assemblies, 16x,000 miles. Have Dealer replace rear cylinders. New rear cylinders provide enough back pressure to blow-out master cylinder. Dealer service department gives me a new master cylinder and another drain/flush/bleed cycle for the price of the part, because I'd already left work to come pick it up when they discovered the problem. :)

2: More than one used car I bought had black brake fluid in the resivior- years and years old. So the first time I saw this, I energeticly bled the system until I could see clear fluid running at the right rear bleeder, then did the others. And a day or two later the master cylinder started leaking. So replace master cylinder, repeat bleed performance. Phoey!

An old, yucky, but functional, brake system only requires the master cylinder seals to travel a short distance in the bore. Open the bleeder and pump hard and the edge of the seal is dragged across all the crud that's settled in the master cylinder bore. Its possible that a vaccuum bleeder would allow one to continue using the cruddy old cylinder but I've ended up just replacing them outright before bothering with bleeding, etc.

------------------------------ |######\ _==_ /######| cheers! |#######\ = \/ = /#######| Bill Abbott |########\ =\/\/= /########| '70 single cab |#########\ -__- /#########| '93 Corrado |##########\ /##########| ------------------------------ | N E T S U R F N U G E N | | vanagon@lenti.med.umn.edu | ------------------------------


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