Repair-It

Now we've come full circle. Let me explain.

When I get home, the first thing I noticed was my brake parts packages from RockAuto are on the front porch and one is completely soaked. Nice. I go in the house and Jamie tells me her brakes have failed. Apparently she was on her way back from the pediatricians office where Ian was diagnosed with a viral cold (he says that explains the eye symptoms). Actually she says when she put the car in reverse she noticed the brake pedal didn't feel right. That blossomed into a bigger leak on the way home leaving her with only the reserve braking. She did fine based on the report. The funny thing is, the last brake line failure on this car was in 2007, like the day we bought our house. Except I was driving. You may recall I had that fixed at Monroe because I was in no position to take care of it myself. I way, WAY overpaid for shoddy work, which comes as no surprise to me (now). I wondered if that repair had failed.

This was her first brake line failure. I said, in a way, I was glad she didn't call me frantic because I would have told her to drive home carefully on it (assuming there was reserve braking at the bottom of the pedal travel, which there was). So that was good.

The next thing I did was add some brake fluid so I could cycle the pedal and see if I could tell what was going on. I heard the fluid pissing out somewhere and did a few pedal presses then took a look. It was actually coming from the front.

I put it up on ramps (ever drive a car up on ramps with failed brakes? fun) and got under there to inspect. Here we go. This is pretty common I think, in general. Of course, the line looks great just inches downstream of this. Not sure yet how I will approach this. I think I will splice it somewhere down that line in the 2nd picture (or maybe all the way to the previous repair). I will have to pull the wheel and see if I can get in there on the upstream side. That will be the hard part.

Meanwhile I think I will put the seat in the Ranger, since that's the only available vehicle (Caprice is due for a brake job, and she can't drive stick). Plus she's driven the Ranger before.

Maybe I will get to take care of it this weekend...

Oh yeah, coming full circle. Well, you see, the Malibu was the first brake line failure I've ever experienced, and it paved the way to having line failure on all of my other vehicles over the next few years. Now it's the Malibu's turn again.

I will start a thread on replacement cars.

This has been an outrageously miserable job. I'm not even done.

I don't have time for the play by play but let me just say I got fucked by thread size.

I also did a shitload of running around. Napa, Advance, Ace, back to Napa, Autozone, Autozone. Just one of those bad jobs. Transactions at each location, by the way.

Here are some pics for entertainment. I'll fill it in later.

I had to pull the entire airbox and battery tray. I had to buy metric crow foot flare wrenches because there was no way to get a wrench on the lines where the ABS pump is located. Here's where I made the cut under the driver's door area. Got the old lines out. Lots of bends. What's this now? Many things. Backup vice grips required to hold the pump against the trans housing while I CRANKED on the nuts. Plural. Why? Because I stripped the threads on the right rear channel and ran to North Smithfield to get a junkyard pump. See the cut on the left? I couldn't get that one out so I had to cut the line and use a full socket. I also had to disconnect the coolant hose so I could get in there. Just one thing after another. It's out. Here's what fucked me. No way. Yes way. The fine thread ones are M10x1 and the coarse thread ones are M11x1.5 (both take a 12mm wrench). How did this happen?

I disconnected the left rear channel and finally test fit the new fitting. I bought 3/16" w/ metric fittings, so it comes pre-bubble flared. My thought was to run the full 51" of line from the ABS pump to that area under the driver's door. So I test fit the new line (before I removed the pump). Fit fine. Evidently lines come with the fine thread, M10x1 fittings. So when I tried to get the right rear channel one installed, it was hard to start. As they always are. A gave it some assistance with the crow foot wrench but it never got tight. I stripped it.

Except I didn't realize that one was a different thread. It turns out the LEFT side are the M10 threads and the RIGHT side are the M11 threads. BOTH fittings that go to the master cylinder are the M11 threads. How was I supposed to know this?

So I ran to North Smithfield for a new pump. But I didn't yet know the threads were different. It wasn't until I went to AZ the first time and got back to test fit some stuff in the junkyard pump that I realized what was going on. However, because M10 is smaller than M11, I was able to save the "stripped" port. I ran the correct M11 fitting in and out a few times and it seems alright and holds a good amount of torque. So I'll reuse the original ABS pump to avoid hassles with the unknown junkyard one.

The GOOD news out of this horseshit is that all the trouble I had starting the new fitting was because it was the wrong thread. I was worried that I would just have 6x the problems if 1 was that hard, but now I feel more confident.

Meanwhile, Jamie used the Ranger again. Ian likes it. Jamie does not. To be continued tomorrow. I also left a lot of explanation out so the intricacies of what I did will be hard to follow (I left out some details on other stuff I had to do). I just wanted to get this up...and I'm tired.

Day 2.

Break out the metric bubble flare kit. It makes these. The crappiness is just from the coating which is peeling. This was my first time bubble flaring. It has a few differences from the double flare approach which I am more than used to. The mandrel threads into the threaded rod. This is nice because it is impossible to wobble around while clamping down. The other advantage is that you don't need to double flare. It's just one pass, not two. Now the Malibu FSM describes a 2nd pass but the kit I have is just single pass. But based on this experience, I am happy with bubble flares.

Side note on metric brake lines. Apparently 3/16" is the standard smallest size, even though that is 4.7625 mm. But "metric" 3/16" line comes with the right bubble flares and metric fittings (M10 is standard, see my M11 tale of woe in the previous post). The M10 and M11 fittings are both advertised to work with 3/16" line. I believe bigger than 3/16" becomes truly metric.

In the future, the following may be of help to someone:
- Bubble flare = metric fittings. Identifying a bubble flare is easy as it's just a dome, rather than the edge that the double flare has.
- They could be M10 or M11. M10 appears to be the standard but M11 is freely available. They all take a 12 mm wrench.
- If it looks like a 3/16" line, it IS 3/16" line.

Due to the design, I think bubble flare fittings may require a bit more torque, as you don't have that nice edge to bite into the fitting and seal. It's a much larger surface area interface. Or that's my current theory.

Making progress. Both rears are installed. Left side channels are the M10 and right side are the M11. I know this.....now. That right rear fitting held torque just fine, by the way. Turns out an M10 in an M11 hole doesn't really strip it. Not a whole lot of torque was required so I should have known something was up. Then again, aluminum is soft and I've always feared aluminum threaded anything. This is the first line retainer. It is roughly above the front subframe. I took my time and managed to get the new lines routed. The large lines, by the way, are fuel feed, fuel return and evap. Later I straightened them out as best I could. On the right you can see the steering rack and bottom of the intermediate steering shaft boot. When I realized I would have to use the M11 fitting on the ABS end of the right rear line, I thought I'd have to cut the line and make a splice somewhere near the ABS pump. Then I felt embarrassed. All I had to do was cut off one end (the very tip) of the 51" line I bought and replace one fitting with the M11. Since I cut the rear lines long under the car I still had plenty to work with. Here I have the left line mocked up with the union and the right line floating. I then marked the line and cut appropriately. Now I have both lines done. This is the next retainer in line and I didn't mention before that I had to drill out the rivet holding it in place. It's strange because the first one just floats and the others downstream are bolted. I screwed around with my rivet gun and finally realized I needed a long 5/16" rivet, which I did not have. I found a bolt that worked. Unfortunately due to the angles of the new lines I was unable to get them to go into this retainer (it wasn't for lack of trying). So I just put back the 3 fuel lines and ran the new lines above it. Remember that line I had to cut just to get the fitting out of the ABS pump? Well I decided to bend the new line from the pump down to somewhere under the radiator that I could access. This was my third and final union of the job. You can see the pump and the line going up around it. To get access to the mounting bolt (just one - the other side has a rubber-isolated tab which just slides into a slot), you have to pry the plastic shield out of the way. It came out from the top, by the way, and it naturally got caught on every single line and some other stuff as I fought it out. Just a reminder that this is the original pump that I was able to reuse. Fortunately I never installed the junkyard one. Here she is with all the lines connected. For the top 4, I used the 12 mm crow foot flare wrench on the end of an extension. And for the side fittings (which go to the front and rear channels of the master cylinder), I used a regular flare nut wrench. Remember that Monroe brake line repair back in 2007? They used compression fittings. I paid like $250 for that repair. I imagine people get robbed there every single day of the week. Kind of sad. I will say these haven't leaked or given me any problems but it's clearly not the right way to repair a line. Then I bled. Jamie was in CT for Easter so I spent a good 35 minutes looking for my Mityvac. I eventually found it. On this car, proper bleeding order is RR, LF, LR, RF. The split is diagonal rather than front/back. I could feel it when I operated the brakes briefly while putting it up on the ramps initially. There was a little yaw.

Everything buttoned up. I bled twice around with the Mityvac, and used a full quart of fluid. The brakes feel about as they did before. The pedal may be a bit lower, so it may need to be bled the regular way. But it's totally serviceable. I actuated the ABS on some sand and it works as normal.

Bonus footage.

Here's how much of the ABS pump and lines you can see with everything in place. Nice.

Begin disassembly. This is a shot under the fuse/relay box. I was trying to figure out how to remove it so I could remove the support plate. But I couldn't figure it out so I just bent the plate about an inch or so up which may have slightly increased my room. Realizing I would have to pull the battery and tray. The two rear lines running along the frame rail. One of them definitely seemed to be touching the frame which is crazy. This is the drain line that sits under the battery tray hole. Surprisingly fancy. B-bodies have no such accoutrements. While I was at the junkyard I asked what he'd give me for the car.

"If you drove it in?"

"Yeah."

"$375," he said, without delay.

Other random tidbits: the tires have 10k on them so I rotated them front/back and reset the pressures. They're wearing pretty well but it was time for a rotation.
The car is also due for an oil change.
I should have taken a pic while it was in the air but the rear frame area behind the bumper is pretty rotted. I think it would affect crash worthiness.
I think I still want to replace the car for that reason.

Didnt realize you were all the way up at Warwick Autozone on Sat. You should have stopped by for some Ham.

Those threads are stupid, but it's good to know that there is a bubble flare tool available somewhere. I ended up buying s section of metric line to get the bubble flare for the RMW.