No brakes, don’t speed. Stop the car, and let’s bleed.

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You know the saying, ‘you never appreciate what you have till its gone? Well when it comes to brakes I could not agree more.

It is a petrifying situation. Pushing the pedal all the way down to the ground and having 0% response.
There we were.
3 towns away from home, and no brakes.

I believe in the ‘no man left behind’ motto so there was no chance I was leaving Ned anywhere and having him towed home.

So, true to our heroic lifestyle, we crawled the whole way home using back roads, avoiding death, and other cars laughing at us.

I’d also like to add that I think the world has forgotten to acknowledge hazard lights in the appropriate manner. For the love of God, if you see a car with those two signals flashing, be courteous to them. You wouldn’t run right in front of a person in a wheel chair or crutches and then suddenly stop creating an obstacle for them, AND possibly causing a pedestrian accident. So why in the hell do it when the danger level is taken up a few notches?

Once Ned and I were back home safe we found the problem. The master cylinder had lived a good long life, but that was the end of it. So the next day we took a trip to Pepboys got the new/rebuilt part. Turns out if you take the core out, and bring it in to Pepboys, they give you a rebuilt one for 15 bucks. A pretty tits deal since you have to remove the core anyway.

Jude recommended we bleed out the brake fluid since this will probably be Ned’s first time in his life, and news flash to those unaware: Brake fluid goes bad with time regardless of what bottles say, so its good to change it once in a while. Not as often as oil of course but don’t let it go past 20-25 years.

So after rotating the tires, we got to work. The fluid looked like watered down brownie batter, when its suppose to be clear.

We did make one mistake though. Ned has power brakes which means when you bleed them, the car needs to be running. We had him off. An easy fix really since we just had to re-bleed them running.

But all in all, it was just another experience and now when it comes to bleeding brakes, Ned and I got this.

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