2/6/13

Well, the parking brake thingy is on a “Raisin” headed to my house for delivery as we… well, as I type.  It will have been delivered by the time you read this.  So I'm thinking that the plan of attack for Saturday will be: get Lil' Wiggly up on jack stands, crawl under it, remove the old brake lines, remove the superfluous fuel lines, remove the mechanical parking brake mechanism, drag myself out frumunda the car, finger out how I'm going to get my rickety old ass up off of the floor, look at installing the hydraulic parking brake master, and perhaps some brake line routing options.  I suppose it might even be possible that we’ll have some of the requisite material to start the actual bending of brake lines… but I'm not going to hold my breath.  I mean, we DO have the lines, but they are all really long.  I'd have to do a bunch of curlicues and switchbacks to use what we have at hand.  No, what we otter do is what John suggested: take the line we remove to the store and buy two lines which make that length, plus a foot or so.  Of course the length of the two segments will need to be known so that the parking brake handle isn’t in the back seat or attached to the firewall, but I think we can get us in the ballpark.  I was just thinking that if we’re both working on my car, while it is in the air, one of us could be installing the brake pads while the other is removing the lines underneath.  I, of course, will NOT be asking John to abandon his car’s progress to work on mine.  I'll get the pads in eventually.  We’re not really ready for them anyway… we’re close, but not quite there yet.  At some point we’re going to have to finger out an alternator as well.  John tells me he’s working on a one-wire unit in a modern shell.  I've found them on Summit but they are exorbitantly expensive.  I'm thinking a trip to an alternator/generator repair place with a “core” unit will be in order.  Oh, did I mention that we cut away the superfluous material on the A/C and power steering bracket to reduce it to just an idler?  Well, we did.  It turned out… pretty well, not pretty, but acceptable.  The problem is the bits I had to cut off were right on top and in plain sight.  We really should have the thing sand blasted so it is a nice uniform shiny aluminum.  We won't, but we should.  Well, I've got to pee so I guess I'll call it a rant for a little while.  I may be back if I get bored later.