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Restoration Journal of a 1958 Porsche 356A Cabriolet
Monday, July 25, 2005
Brakes Complete - Except for a Leak
Seems like it's been a long time since I've touched the car. It's really only been about 6 weeks but it's been 6 weeks with no car activity at all. It's just the beginning of the Texas summer. If you followed my posts from last summer, you know that I tend to favor indoor activities this time of year. Strange as it may seem, we actually had a cool weekend this past week and Theresa was motivated to work with me.
We finished off the brakes by filling and bleeding the lines with DOT 5 brake fluid and chasing the leaks. I chose DOT 5 because it is a synthetic fluid as opposed to a mineral fluid as in DOT 3 or 4. The synthetic fluid will not eat away at the rubber in the system over the years. One benefit of the DOT 5 is that when you get it on paint, it won't take the paint off. One word of caution - don't put the DOT 5 in a system that previously had DOT 3 or 4. A reaction will occur that will slowly eat away at the rubber in the master and wheel cylinders.
I was shopping for a power bleeder by Motive Products when someone suggested that I use my air compressor to bleed the system. I modified the cap of the fluid reservoir to accomodate a compressor fitting. Once the reservoir was filled with fluid, I opened the bleeder valve and put about 20 psi of air pressure to the reservoir. Slowly the fluid would purge through the system pushing all of the air out. Theresa operated the regulator on the air compressor while I laid under the car and caught the fluid coming out of the wheel cylinders with clear tubing watching for the bubbles. As you can see from the photos, I had a leak in my tubing from the reservoir at first and fluid ended up all over the place.
We are not actually 100% complete. The tee at the rear brakes is leaking for some reason. I'll have to dig into that soon. We also completed the parking brake assembly on Sunday. We can't go yet, but we can stop.
Other activities this weekend included filling the transmission with fresh gear lube. I want to run Swepco 201 in the long term however in the short term I want something cheaper (Swepco is over $50 per gallon). After about 1000 miles, I plan on flushing the oil out and filling it with the Swepco. In the interim, I used Sta-Lube hypoid 80/90w which is a GL4 rated oil. I have found others are running this oil with good results. Sta-Lube is made by CRC Industries and is a good brand. I have used their other products in the past with good results.
Next on the agenda was to pull the wiring harness a little bit further. This is one of those frustrating jobs that will take time. It's really a two-person job as one looks at wires and the other looks though various wiring diagrams and the vendor literature. We have at least pulled all of the wire to it's general location and we can now start installing lights and switches in a temporary fashion. Joe Leoni's books are a big help with this.
Next major task is the passenger side door. It was getting difficult to work on it with this door closest to the work bench so we rolled the car out and turned it around. Many of you haven't seen this side of the car yet. As you can see, the lower few inches of the door has rusted away and will need replacement as I did on the driver side door.
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