Air Filters Back On

I'd been running the engine with no air filters on, although I know there's risk with this.  Anyway, I had a little time, so I refitted them on Saturday, and was surprised how much difference it has made to the engine idling - it seems smoother now, and more responsive, even though it's still not moving the car.

LHS Air Intake & Filter Housing

RHS Air Intake & Filter Housing.
(Note all the tags, still in place to ensure everything went back in the right place after servicing the carbs).

Liz, my wife, was driving by on Saturday, so I managed to persuade her to come out to the garage, for the first time since I've had the car there, just to check it out and hear the car running.  She lasted about 2 minutes standing beside the car while it was running, before she needed to leave for the preservation of her ear drums.  I've just got used to the noise (or I'm just going deaf quicker than I thought), but the car is noisy in such a small enclosed space, with no silencers on the exhaust!!.  At least she's seen the set-up, so knows the conditions I'm working in.

I'm still not moving the car because I haven't been able to get there to find the leak in the front brakes - lack of being there is why I didn't add a post in the last couple of weeks; I did pop round there a week or so ago just to run the car, and found the brake reservoir completely empty.  Just confirms the leak, but the fact that it's draining without any system pressure suggests that it should be easy enough to see once I can get the car up so I can get underneath it to watch for the leak.

The reason for me not getting out to work on the car has been the temperature.  The garage where I have the car is not heated, and the temperature last weekend in the Toronto area had dropped as low as -25C at times, which wasn't at all conducive to working on a car!  On Friday, it was up to +15C, so I was quite happy taking my time to refit the air filters - I could still feel my fingers when I finished (unlike the last time I ran the car - the heat from the car heater on my way back home made my fingers feel really painful as they had got so cold when I was in the garage).  The swings in temperature that we're experiencing here this year are crazy.  Hopefully this warming is a sign that spring is on the way, albeit a bit early, and we won't see much more snow.  (The snow that fell last week has just about taken a day to disappear with today's warm temperature).  (Woops, spoke to soon about no more snow - the forecast is for snow this coming Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday, at least - oh, well!!).

Today on the Brakes

I knew the brakes weren't working when I bought the car; I mentioned previously that the level sensors in the reservoirs were shot.  So today, I installed the two new reservoirs with sensors.  I had also cleaned, rust-treated and painted the bracket that holds the bottom reservoir, because it was badly corroded whenI removed it to get the old reservoir out.

Top Brake Reservoir (Front Brakes)

Bottom Brake Reservoir (Back Brakes)

Having refitted the reservoirs, I proceeded to bleed the brakes.  I used a low-cost kit that I had bought from Canadian Tire to allow me to bleed the brakes on my own.  It basically consists of a fitting for the bleed screw, a bottle and a length of plastic hose.  On top of the bottle is a fitting with a non-return valve.  The bottle also has a magnet fitting to allow me to mount the bottle where I could see it.  It worked well, as I was able to monitor the fluid going into the bottle from the drivers seat, while I was depressing the brake pedal.

Before starting, I removed each of the bleed screws to make sure they were clean and clear; all were OK.

I started with the two inboard back brakes.  Easy to get at, once the back seat was removed, both sides bled fine, with virtually no air coming out of either side.  The front brakes were a different matter altogether.  The left side I pumped for about 5 minutes (probably way too long when I think about it), but couldn't get rid of air through the plastic hose.  Same problem on the right side.

By the time I had finished trying to bleed the front brakes, I was out of time for the day, so I cleaned up, then decided to run the car for a short time before I left.  The car started fine, but it wasn't long before the garage was full of fumes - guess that was just confirmation that there's a leak from somewhere in the brake hydraulic circuit, and the leak is near a surface that gets hot when the engine is running.

Some of the smoke from the leaking brake fluid - this was after 2 days.
Same day was much worse.

Don't know how long (or how much smoke) it will take to burn off all the brake fluid, but I'll try to find the leak before running the car again.  Probably going to need a bit of help with this one!!