I can't catch a "brake"...

I'd been making such great progress on the wagon...what unfolds below was certainly the cure for that!

My brother and I have been doing a lot of work on my wagon, most recently putting new front wheel bearings in since the old ones (specifically the passenger's side) started sounding more and more like a lawn mower. The difference from that was profound, and it sure made the car a LOT quieter!

Unfortunately, on the way to put things back together, my brother pulled the threads out by possibly overtightening one of the caliper slide pins on the passenger's side. He thought that a remanufactured caliper would solve this problem, but neither of us happened to notice that the threads are not actually in the caliper itself! Oh well. At least it wasn't too expensive.

Well, one of the front sway bar links was broken, so we thought we'd change those out. I bought a set of new ones for a few bucks. I was really surprised by how cheap they were (and still made in the US, seemingly!)...something had to go wrong somewhere, and I guess it was too much to hope that installing them would be easy. It took a lot of creative thinking and finally, cheating a little, to get them installed. The factory service manual was not helpful at all.

My brother and I have different beliefs about the "why" of what happened next. I'm convinced that the car was annoyed and decided to get even, what with us having been pounding on its nether regions to get the sway bar links installed. My brother says he scared the car.

Nevertheless, it piddled* on the floor while bleeding the brakes. Part of the rear brake line blew out. Now it's at the brake shop. I guess I'm very fortunate that I didn't take the road trip I'd been planning. Nor did I take off a shed. (Sorry, Tim.) The car has no brakes at all. Fortunately, I only had to drive it across a parking lot to get there, and the parking brake is functional enough.

I have two questions:

1. What is the right way, without undue cursing and effort (ha!) to install new front sway bar links? I can't believe this is so terribly difficult, but it sure was. I'm ashamed to admit how long this took, so I won't. Especially not after someone told me they had it done in 15 minutes.

2. Why did the brakes fail completely? We basically had the front brake system bled and ready to go when the rear line ruptured. It appears that fluid can flow between the two parts of the reservoir, and that seems like a really bad idea to me.

There's a third, rhetorical question...why do I think my truckling is getting ready to do something similarly naughty? It has weak brakes at the moment, fluid is going somewhere very slowly (haven't found a leak yet) and now one of its wheel bearings is making noise. I think it's been talking with the wagon and plotting.

I keep trying to remind myself during times like this that I really do like cars and tinkering with them.

* I can't say that word, in that sense, with a straight face. Just so you know. You didn't ask, but now you know.

I can not answer the brake fluid question for sure, but I had a wierd experience with mine. The proportioning valve stuck to one end, and the front brake fluid was transferring to the rear reservior in the master cylinder. The only brakes that were working were the rears, and they wore out quickly, the drums were worn so far that I had to replace them. My rear cylinders were extended to the point that they leaked. I ended up replacing most of the brake system, except for the lines themselves. If you need a proportioning valve, GM does not make them any more, and the only resonably priced ones are from a junk yard.

The weak brakes sound similar to the issue I had. My brakes would barely stop the car, and in fact I had an accident because of them. I was standing on the brake pedal coming to an intersection, and rolled out about a foot or so into the intersection, whereapon a wide utility trailer caught my front bumper, and ripped it off of the car.

The easiest way to swap out the sway bar links is to use a nut breaker on the self locking nuts, and you have the old ones off in about 5 minutes.

As far as your truck, I had two cars a long time ago, so that if one had a problem, I would have a car to drive while it was being fixed. Well, if one was in the garage for a repair, the other was there too for a sympathy visit. I think it is the nature of vehicles to constantly have little issues, and when you find one, you are more aware of the other car's which become magnified in your perception. The issue may be valid, but you only notice it, because your attention is focused on that area of the vehicle.