[Slick61]

I had HOPED to drive out to Malibu this weekend, but first wanted to get my brakes sorted out. They had pretty much sucked since I bought the car & I decided to see what I could do about it. When I pulled the fitting out of the grommet on the booster, I discovered that the grommet had split approximately 75% of its circumference. Replaced that with a new grommet & it was somewhat better but still a ways to go.

Decided to install a reservoir can. Wanted to place it as inconspicuously as possible, but did not like the idea of placing it above the header onthe passenger side (also didn't want to drill the wheelwell. Decided to use the location for the windshield wiper reservoir. Ended up using the same holes & hardware... just took the bottle & cleat off. Plumbing it was another matter... wanted to keep the engine compartment as clean as possible. Made a fairly good compromise, running it along the frame rail, then up the back to the intake. Had an available bolt hole on the bellhousing that worked great for zip-tying it in place. Ran the hose to the booster under the crossbar holding the puke tank then around & up behind the master cylinder.

THEN, it was time to bleed the brakes. When I replaced the pressure switch last fall, I wasn't sure what type brake fluid was in it, so topped off the reservoir with sythetic dot 4. At the time, I had heard that all dot 5 fluid was purple (NOT the case), & that some cars had dot 3, others had dot 5.

So... drew some fluid off of one of the calipers & poured it into water... it separated quickly, so knew I had dot 5 in the system. Bummer. (just to re-assure myself, I poured some dot 3 into water & it mixed easily & turned cloudy) Vacuum pumped as much fluid as I could out of the reservoir (to try & get as much of the dot 4 out as possible), then filled it with dot 5 & started bleeding wheel by wheel. Funny aside, I had no metric wrenches, so had to make a tool run (for a 7 mm wrench) before I started. Was pretty easy to tell when I'd removed most of the old fluid as the new stuff was purple (the old was not)... so I just continued to draw fluid til it ran purple. Cracked my vacuum can lid on the 3rd wheel, so was time for another last-minute run to the parts store before they closed. Luckily, they had a cheesy plastic bottle in stock for $10. I think I ended up going through approx. 1.5 pints.

Man, dot 5 fluid is not cheap ($28.95/qt.). I also ended up buying 20 feet of high pressure power booster hose at $3 per foot. YOW.

Will find out tonight if I did it right or not. (was too late to fire it up last night... it rattles my neighbor's houses)

wish me luck...