From Veeduber@aol.com  Thu Oct  5 23:46:30 1995
msgnum: msg17061
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 00:46:26 -0400
From: Veeduber_at_aol_dot_com
Subject: Grendel, Thursday IIb, evening



The top half of the brake drum hit the ground at about 1243.  

The bottom half is still clinging tenaciously to the axle despite a grip of
less than half a circle.  That puppy is WELDED to the axle.  The weld is
black iron oxide -- rust -- in granules hard enough to dull a drill.  I could
probably slit the remaining half of the drum into thirds, break them away
with the cold chisel.  But only if I had another cutting wheel.  

Enter now, an introduction to Northwestern humor, such as 'dry' rain or
'1-day' photos that usually take only three days (but took five in my case
and brought the preceeding admission).

The borrowed grinder is a small-spindle Makita.  The one I have at home has
the large spindle, as do most of the grinders I've seen.  The joke is that
none of the local stores carry disks for the small-spindle grinder.  None.
Zip.  Not one.  Nada.  Zero.  

Why not?  Because everyone uses the large-spindle grinder, except the
son-in-law of the man who loaned me the grinder.  That's where the grinder
came from; a present from his son-in-law, who lives in another world where
disks for Makita grinders having small spindles are common, all children are
polite and O.J. got to ride Old Sparky to the gridiron in the sky.

When the fellow came home from work I asked him where he gets new disks.
  "Never had to, yet.  But I hear they got them in Seattle."  And San Diego.
 I
offered to pay him for the disk I'd used up but he waved it away, "Naw, just
send me a couple of disks when you get home."  And grinned.  Northwestern
humor.  He'd loaned me a grinder with a partially used up disk knowing I
would be obligated to replace it, saving him a trip to Seattle.  Or San
Diego.  Or where ever it is that I can find a small-spindle #80 disk for a
Makita grinder.    

At least half the drum is off.

Inside, the brake drum don't look too bad.  Good Condition, Shelton-style.
 It's worn so thin you can almost see through it and the axle wobbles like a
stick in the mud, but other than that, I've seen worse.  Of course, I was
skindiving at the time.

With half the drum cut away I should be able to dismantle the wheel, even if
I have to leave the remaining half of a drum attached to the axle and go into
the gear box from the back.  I have a spare bearing carrier and spacer-ring,
and my buddy sent me a set of replacement bearings, and I already had a
seal-kit in the spares I brought from home.  With the replacement brake drum
and axle, I should be able to reassemble a working, wobble-free rear wheel.
 Should.  If.  Maybe.

I'll have to unbolt the locking nut with a chisel since the cheapest 1-5/8"
socket I can find was a whopping $22.  I'll have to unbolt the gear box from
the spring plate and pop loose the can over the locking nut but I'm pretty
sure I can get at it even with half the drum still attahed to the axle.  I'll
also have to open the brake line and remove the wheel cylinder but that's not
much work.  I've already slacked off the emergency brake and pulled it out to
give me room to pound on the remaining half of the drum.  So far, all the
pounding has done is break the handle of my big ball peen hammer.  That puppy
is seriously stuck.

In fact, the work looks pretty much downhill from here.  Some basic
mechanical chores, adjust my toe-in and I'll be on my way.  Except for the
rain.  And the brakes.  That is, an abundance of the former and a serious
lack of the latter.

I rigged a tent of plastic sheeting over Grendel's dented butt.  This is the
5-mil plastic sheeting I used to wrapped my engine before stowing it in the
trunk of the car I was to deliver a few lifetimes ago.   I folded the stuff
carefully and have kept it safe, knowing it rains up here now and then.  But
while the plastic is a good 12 feet long it's only four feet wide.  I have
two panels of it.  I overlapped the panels, attached them to the rain gutter
with clothes pins and draped them over some bailing wire stays I erected
between Grendel and a nearby fence.  The plastic makes a reasonably dry if
somewhat narrow shelter, under which I've built a floor from scraps of wood
and cardboard boxes.  And while it keeps me dry it isn't very warm, and the
weather is getting downright cold,
the kind of cold that makes my southern California face hurt when I step
outside.

The other problem I have to worry about has just cropped up.  Actually, it
was there all the while but I've just discovered it.  The steel line to the
rear brakes is crushed just behind the master cylinder.  Deliberately
crushed, as if to shut off the leaking right rear wheel cylinder, the one I
replaced at Shelton, along with the steel pipe to the wheel, which had been
crushed in a similar fashion.  Before flying out of Shelton on my
Grendelbroomstick I did a quick bleed-job, putting down the oozy nature of
the fluid flow to a lack of energy on the part of the person I'd dragooned
into pumping the pedal.
Now I see it wasn't lack of energy but lack of flow.  Sometime in Grendel's
checkered past someone tried to block off the rear brakes, using a pair of
dykes to crush the brake line.  As with all her other repairs, they botched
the job -- some fluid still flows through the line but it isn't enough to
fully actuate both cylinders quickly.  And with the line partially blocked,
the fluid will return with equal sluggishness, meaning Grendel has been
dragging her toes. 

I would like to replace the damaged line before starting south but a quick
tour of the local parts houses got me the usual Metric Response -- sucking-in
of breath accompanied by a sad shake of the head, as when asking for
Mastodon Nose at a Chinese restaurant. Suck, shake, "So solly.  No have." 

I wonder if these parts people have taken a close look at a modern American
car?  A
good many of them are fitted with metric-dimensioned brake components.  I
tested this possibility with the counterperson at the last parts
house I visited and got:  "Oh, you mean AMERICAN metric stuff."  I nodded
eagerly, willing to accept Albanian 'metric-stuff' if that's all they had.
 But he sucked air
through his teeth and slowly shook his head.  "Don't carry it.  We
probably will, once there's a demand for it."   I had an insane urge to pound
on the counter and shout "I DEMAND you carry American-metric stuff!"  Maybe
that's all he needed, someone to shout at him now and then.  Maybe that's all
any of us need.  Management by Volume.  I wandered off, looking for someone
to shout "Go HOME!" in my face.  No luck.

I mosied back to the house in the slow, cold rain, patting Grendel's nose as
I passed by.  It wasn't her fault.  Come to think of it, it wasn't my fault
either, unless trusting people is a fault.  Maybe it is, in today's America.

-Bob