RAY: Ha! We're back, and you're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers. We're here to talk about cars, car repair and the answer to last week's Puzzler. This Puzzler was sent in by John Tomisetti from something, somewhere or other, dot com. He says, "This is a real-life situation. It actually happened to me." Yeah, sure, right, anyway. Anyway, it's actually similar to a Puzzler we used many, many moons ago.
TOM: I remember the Puzzler.
RAY: Remember the name of the guy?
TOM: Of course, I do. Pritchard.
RAY: Jim Pritchard, who spent all those hours at our garage doing exactly the same thing that poor John did.
TOM: That's not why I remember Jim Pritchard. I remember Jim Pritchard because he wrecked my Lambretta.
RAY: Well, after all the brake fluid we sold to him, who could blame him.
TOM: I could have bought two Lambrettas.
RAY: Here it is. John had an '82 Jeep CJ7. This could happen to a lot of different vehicles. He just happened to have this particular one, and Jim Pritchard had a Karmann Ghia, if I remember.
TOM: Yes, he did.
RAY: Anyway, it had stick front brake calipers, so he decided to rebuild them himself. "So," he says, "I bought the rebuilding kits for both front wheels, and the kits included everything I needed--all range, dust boots, new steel pistons. I proceeded to rebuild both front calipers and was thrilled to discover that I had no spare parts left over." How could you? They only gave you four parts. I mean, jeez. In fact, he had rebuilt them flawlessly. "However," he says, "when I finished…"
TOM: That's a hint.
RAY: "I couldn't seem to bleed the brakes properly. The pedal went to the floor as if there were air trapped in the system," which is often the case when you rebuild brakes and you drain the system entirely. He said, "I must have bled a gallon of brake fluid through the system, to no avail. Finally, I take the Jeep to a shop and, using their professional equipment, they bled the brakes. They put on a power bleeder, also to no avail. Finally, they say, "You need a new master cylinder." I say, "Fine." So they replace it--three times--to no avail. They check the lines; they check the rear brakes--everything is in perfect condition. They give up. After five days, three more master cylinders, 18 more gallons of brake fluid, etc., John is at the end of his rope when he takes it to the Jeep dealer. They bleed the brakes; they change the master cylinder. Finally, finally somebody figures out what's wrong, and it costs no additional money to fix. I might add that I think he spent about $1,800 between those nine master cylinders and 2,800 gallons of brake fluid. What had happened was the following:
TOM: Boy, this is good.
RAY: John rebuilt both calipers. In other words, he took them--I can only imagine--put them on his dining room table, took them all apart, installed the new kits that he had--flawlessly, I might add--and reinstalled them. But in doing so, he put the left one on the right and the right one on the left, and by making that mistake, the bleeder--that is, the little valve you open to let air escape from the system--was at the bottom of each caliper, because he had flipped them around, and not at the top where, what?
TOM: The air goes.
RAY: The air is. If you take a liquid that has air in it too, and you flip it upside down, no matter what you do, the air always goes to the top.
TOM: You can try this out with a bottle of orange soda.
RAY: You can.
TOM: Which we do every week here.
RAY: And no matter how much bleeding you do, there is so much air, which is compressible, trapped in the system, that you cannot get a brake pedal no matter how many master cylinders you put in. What this fellow noticed is the same thing that we noticed with poor Jim Pritchard, after he bought 18 gallons of brake fluid from us and replaced the master cylinder four or five times, that the calipers needed to be put in the right place and then the thing bled just like that.
TOM: Bingo!
RAY: Who's our winner this week?
TOM: The winners. It says David and Kay Mowry, husband and wife, mother and son, daughter and father--I don't know. But David and Kay Mowry from Riverside, California.
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
