Typical Monday

[rockola1971]

Typical Monday. I played the rustbelt brake line lottery and lost. One of my 2003 Tahoes popped one of the brake lines going from the master cylinder to the ABS manifold. I of course was on way to pickup a great deal ($500) on a Kohler 12RES Generator at an auction over 2hrs away. Luckily I only made it about 30mins from my house when she let go with the brake fluid super stinky river of you are screwed now! So I hit the country roads home. Had decent brakes for that. If a deer ran out in front of me....It would be done! Emergency brakes worked fine. I got her limped home and commenced to doing the cuss and regret life moments laying underneath the Tahoe. I found it alot easier to just cut brake line in the middle with snips. Cut lines at each end at the fittings and use a socket and ratchet to get the fittings out. Luckily I already had a brake line kit for a Tohoe at home so no need to go run for parts. On way home through the country I hit a family dollar and picked up 2 of the qt brake fluids for my party at the Tahoe. Its almost midnight and I am stringing the new line in and hope to have brakes all bled in the morning and attempt Monday plans on Tuesday minus the popping a brake line schedule destroyer.
Im thinking this is just a better party to do in the early summer and yank them all out and replace and be done with it so no surprises on the other Tahoe and Yukon Denali I have.

 

[OR VietVet]

Normally I caution against calling it an emergency brake and call it a parking brake but in this case, it truly is an emergency brake. I lost my brakes once, coming off the highway on an exit ramp. Was in the rust belt and blew a line at rear of my older Chevy pickup. I blared the horn, my emergency brake was not able to slow enough coming down from highway speed, and blew thru the stop light at end of ramp and went down in to a parking lot and thru it and down the road thru a stop sign and got it stopped on the shoulder. Took an hour to pry my ass grip off the seat.

 

[rockola1971]

Normally I caution against calling it an emergency brake and call it a parking brake but in this case, it truly is an emergency brake. I lost my brakes once, coming off the highway on an exit ramp. Was in the rust belt and blew a line at rear of my older Chevy pickup. I blared the horn, my emergency brake was not able to slow enough coming down from highway speed, and blew thru the stop light at end of ramp and went down in to a parking lot and thru it and down the road thru a stop sign and got it stopped on the shoulder. Took an hour to pry my ass grip off the seat.

LMAO I did that once too in my 99 Sierra Z71. Came off the Interstate and halfway to the stop sign is when reality slapped me in the face to tell me that my Master Cylinder was no longer with us. It all happened so fast that I had time to see no one was in front of me and nobody coming from the left when I had to go right. That is when my Sierra became a Grand Theft Auto participant of escape theme. I blew the stop sign and cut the truck hard right and pulled the emergency brake release and held there while actuating the emergency brake. It got me slowed enough that I didnt roll the Sierra and let me get to work to figure out how I was gonna take care of that mess while my office was 1hr away from my house. Went on parts run during lunch and changed out master cylinder and bled after work. Luckily no stuck bleeders. I still dont look back at that day and laugh. I do believe there is still butt pucker impressions in the driver seat of that truck. Back in that day I only took corners like that on a sportbike. That day was a very different day. I aged 2yrs older that day.

 

[B-train]

My first truck was a rusted out 1978 2wd 2500 gmc. 4 speed, 350. Blew a front line coming to a stop light. Luckily working on cars with my dad in the midwest forever taught me that I still had 1 portion working, however useless the back brakes seemed to be......

A quick downshift and ran the R's, slow pedal so as not to push the rear cups out of existence. Coasted the corner like a boss.....then proceeded to breathe again. Limped it home at a slower pace. Got out of the truck and had to pull the circa 1986 flannel seat cover out of my butt cheeks......

Kids nowadays don't realize how easy they have it for their driving experience.

 

[MassHoe04]

I had my 04 Tahoe for just a few months. One of the front stabilizer bar connectors broke. Money was tight (when is is not...LOL), so I figured I'll get to it next pay check in two weeks... No biggie.

Just about two weeks go by. Day before payday...

I run out from work to pick up lunch about a mile down the street.
I pull into the parking lot at work and the brake pedal goes right to the floor!
No brakes at all. NOTHING!

I was conditioned to the Jeep I had prior to the Tahoe, where the parking/e-brake was a lever on the center console.
In a panic, I didn't hit the parking brake pedal on the Tahoe (I don't think it would have worked anyway...but, I didn't react to try it even...).
I shifted to N to slow then P. The engine immediately stalled, all lights on the dash lit up and took two tries to get restarted and moved out of the way.

I know! Not good!
Everything was OK after, so I guess I was lucky I didn't do any damage.

I'll never do that again.

I did not know that the broken connector rod on the stabilizer was rubbing on the rubber brake hose while the bar was moving around unattached.
The connector rod rubbed right through the hose and all the fluid pissed out when the last layer of rubber finally let loose!

I learned that ignoring a cheap repair like the stabilizer connector rod can end up being more expensive in the end.
I was now faced with a new connector and a new brake hose.
Still fairly cheap, but could have been avoided.

 

[tom3]

Kind of surprised that the brake line at the MC, being that far up, would have failed. See a lot of the underneath lines give out, some pretty quick actually if run in winter time, but never seen a line under the hood do it. Be nice to have a manual tranny when that happens too.

 

[rockola1971]

Kind of surprised that the brake line at the MC, being that far up, would have failed. See a lot of the underneath lines give out, some pretty quick actually if run in winter time, but never seen a line under the hood do it. Be nice to have a manual tranny when that happens too.

Line failed at the frame directly under the drivers door.

 

[B-train]

Gotta love the new plastic coated lines on the newer stuff...........not sure why it tool 30 years of salt and failures to figure out/implement. But, going forward we can all laugh at our older rides and reminisce......

 

[MassHoe04]

Gotta love the new plastic coated lines on the newer stuff...........not sure why it tool 30 years of salt and failures to figure out/implement. But, going forward we can all laugh at our older rides and reminisce......

Other than living in the desert (or OR)... There is no perfect solution.
Better, yes. Perfect..? No. None that I have found yet. I'll keep looking.

I had plastic coated brake lines on one vehicle. The coating covered up the fact that lines were rotting underneath the coating. Corrosion entered from a cut end and started from there and worked its way through under the plastic coating...

That may have been poor installation or improper cutting techniques used by whoever did the install of the replacement lines, but it happened.

 

[B-train]

@rockola1971 I think I found your spirit animal from Monday. LOL

 

[rockola1971]

@rockola1971 I think I found your spirit animal from Monday. LOL

Very Close. The Butt was seriously dragging a mile behind me but I managed to get the line in, bent to shape and fittings attached under Master Cylinder and at the ABS manifold. Lotsa fun there. Now to break out my Tech 2 clone and use the automatic brake bleed function. Luckily the master cylinder never went dry so its just the one line that is all air and I believe it feeds the rear brakes via the ABS manifold.

 

[rockola1971]

OK I milked this one long enough. I started to bleed and found that the front 2 cracked free fine. Then eventually the driver rear bleeder broke free. The passenger rear wasnt having none of it so I kept soaking it down with PB Blaster since I didnt want to have to replace the caliper. It was only around 3yrs old. I kept at it and finally early this afternoon it turned less than an 1/8 of a turn so I kept on it with PB Blaster and it finally broke free at dinner time. Dodged that $75 bill for another caliper. It was so full of air at the rear that It took forever to get fluid out of the rear calipers. I cracked the rears open and started the auto bleed functon of the tech 2 and ran it like 5 times. Then I finally started getting fluid and air out of drivers rear. Still nothing out of the other side. After lots and lots of manual pumping I finally got fluid out of the passenger rear. Ran a few more auto bleed cycles and had son do lots of manual pumping and got steady fluid out. Went all the way aroun manual pumping and pedal firmed all the way up. I dont believe I actually got any out of the front calipers at all. It seems the line that busted ultimately fed the rears. The line was the forward one of the master cylinder and the lower right port on the ABS manifold.

I really hate steel brake lines.