Hello viewers and welcome to Episode 27 of stuzbot refits his LSV. [film rights still available]
Well, after another nearly full week of life and the weather getting in the way again, I managed to get out today and have a crack at getting my replacement brake lines fitted and the new LSV on. Not much to report. It all went reasonably swimmingly....
Apart from the obligatory Laurel & hardy moment when I refitted the body of the old LSV to hold the various pipes in place at that end, while I manipulated their other ends into place along the chassis rail at the front. Dabbing delicately with my piece of kitchen roll on the join I'd just tightened at the front end and smugly congratulating myself on the lack of leaks, I turned my head and saw a nice puddle of brake fluid dripping out at the old LSV on the back, as I'd forgotten I'd taken the bleed nipple off and not put it back on again. Cue comedy gold as, like the Little Dutch Boy, I lay half under the motor with my thumb over the dribbling bleed nipple port while simultaneously blindly stretching my other arm up into the back and groping round trying to find something to temporarily plug the hole.
Anyway, such diversions aside, I eventually got everything fitted and, much though I wanted to smash that whole area into a million pieces for most of the past couple of weeks, it's always nice to see a shiny new part fitted on your wagon:
Anyway, I bled up the new LSV and put a bit of pressure in the system by turning the ignition on and pumping the pedal a few times, then checking for leaks. Touch wood. No sign of any so far.
I then fetched the missus for a bit of brake pedal bashing while I bled everything up. Here I have to confess, I diverted from the Gospel According to Toyota. I did have a glance at the manual a while back on the process for bleeding up a braking system with ABS and I remember there was a lot of stuff about pumping the pedal XXX times, turning the ignition off, turning the ignition on, pumping the pedal YYY times, putting your right leg in, your right leg out, doing the hokey-cokey, etc.
I couldn't be arsed with looking all that up again, as it was getting on for dinner time and the missus was wanting to get on with that. So I just did a quick bleeding in the time-honoured fashion of my ancestors for now: pump the pedal til clear fluid comes out the bleed nipple, then hold down pedal while nipple is tightened again. Rinse and repeat a couple of times for good measure". I also only did the back brakes as, any motor built after the flood will have dual circuit braking and nothing's been disconnected further forward than the mid chassis rail.
So here's where it gets a bit 'two steps forward, one back' [which is quite good for me, as I usually end up doing the opposite!].
As I said, no leaks so far. So that's a plus and the brakes are working again. That's yer two steps forward. The one step back is, the brakes seem to be 'turned up to eleven' now. I just rolled back and forth in the carpark at very slow speed, but the brakes were gripping like demons. Absolutely stopping dead with the slightest press of the pedal. So much so, it makes me wonder whether they had been slowly leaking for quite a while before the LSV went, as they are about twice as pokey as they used to be.
All is not completely idyllic though. As I'm getting a 'thunk!' noise when the brakes engage. Almost like they're thumping into place instead of clamping smoothly. I've tried to record it here on my phone, it sounds a bit odd in the recording; a bit deeper than in real life. But should give you a rough idea. Excuse the dull visuals and the phone fumble in the middle. There's also a bit of a squeak sometimes, but that just sounds like yer everyday brake squeak to me. after all the motor has been standing for about 3 weeks, so the brakes will likely be a bit rusty, what with all the rain we've had. ..
So, what might be causing this? Is it because I did an old-timer brake bleed instead of the complex ABS bleeding routine given in the manual? If needs be I'll give it the proper bleeding routine over the weekend. I just wanted to give it a quick sorting tonight before dinner, to see if there were any leaks or anything.