new finagled stuff

when we picked up the 86 after getting back to Sterling. the man said better get the brakes checked when you get home. will they have never been the best of things at any time I have owned them. but we were getting a brake light on the dash. on and .off petal felt good and the car stoped as it normal does. so something to check out later. later was yesterday. we had gathered parts and and went for it. I hate doing mechanical work to begin with and this little caddy is the most miserably thing to work on. everything crowded up and in a awkward place. first thing we discovered is that you have to pull the rear hub to change a wheel cylinder??? then the question is why, 4 small cap screws hold the hub on but 5 lug nuts hole the wheel to it?? one side the emergency - park - mechanical brake works the rear shoe the other the front? then it's front disk time and I always end up pinching my finger in the calipers. try as hard as I can some how one of them gets a chunk taken out. Ok finally we are back togather. discover that the reservoir is a combination one as one end bleeds (on the car and me) the whole thing goes down. but with the help of my long suffering assistant we bleed the brakes front and rear. light stays one. centering plug is one way? no big thing bleed to the front. light stays on . open the rear jab the brake and bleed to the rear. light stays on. check fluid level. add. light stays on. pull wire off reservoir sensor. light stays on. flop wire around light goes on and off. Hugh. get to looking hard. there is one more sensor on the brake booster. pull it off and light goes out and stays out. what the world is going on. start checking and find that GM spliced a vacuum line into the brake booster line. it had split on the end. as it sucked air it caused a vacuum leak that the sensor was picking up. then of course the other end of it was buried in the back of the engine. did I mention I hate working on this car. but at least we now have new brakes all around, the tires rotated and while we were at it I cleaned out the engine room again. every tune up on a late model cars should involve a thorough shaking of the vacuum lines. way to many fitting and splices. oh ya the light is now off to. that's what I was after . I'm not getting anything newer then this one. to much stuff to give you fits.

I hear ya. Just put new tires on the Buick but had a wobble in the front. Ended up replacing center link, idler arm, shocks, repacking wheel bearings. Still a little bit of a wobble so I replaced the wheel bearings and did brakes while I had it apart and rotated front wheels. 98% of the wobble is gone. I too, am not a fan of mechanical work but hate paying someone else to do it.

Now if I could just fiqure out how to fix the A/C so it works all the time. It cools great for a period of time then no A/C. I either floor it or throw it into neutral and rev it up and A/C kicks in again and good to go. I've added several cans of R-12 which seems to work for about two weeks then it begins again.

PS: Hey Ed, black tape over a dash light that is on works pretty good.