A lovely sunny day and some free time provided the perfect opportunity to start on the brake lines install. But it wasn’t going to be that simple, eh? I had previously checked that the kit from Autotec was complete so today was just a case of choosing what to do first. Chickening out of tackling the master cylinders first, which will require some intricate bending (of the pipes, and perhaps me) I decided to start with the pipe from the servo to the four way union on the flitch plate. This required me to mount the servo which has been sat in a box since I removed it sometime last year. First I gave the servo a bit of a clean up using degreaser and some 1200 grade wet and dry sandpaper. Having made it look half respectable, I then turned it every up to work out how it mounted and once I had worked that out, spent a while trying to find a pair of nuts to fit the mounting bolts. With a bit of fiddling, the servo was reinstalled.

Now to the pipe which needed two 90 degree bends added for it to drop from the servo to run across the face of the heater. I formed the bends using my new bending pliers and I was reasonably pleased with how it turned out, this being my first attempt at bending. The copper is very malleable – I found this out as I had first to straighten the pipe from the coil in which they formed in the box.

At this point I decided to sort out the heater mounting since it would be behind the pipe and should be secure. I won’t detail all the frustrations but suffice to say that a legacy of the strip down was that I left some ruined mountings unresolved and so tried to sort these today involving a drill, a dremel and no real success. I then also mistakenly mis-installed the heater so having just finished it, had to take it out again. Fortunately, it was one of those days that was too nice to get annoyed, so I just put it down to experience.

I took care all day to protect the bodywork, including when I had to hop into the engine bay frequently to take care of the heater. I also harvested the bango fittings from the old brake pipes which I had completely forgotten about. I mounted them on the master cylinders at a 45 degree angle to make fitting the pipes easier. Hope that works out when I get to them. I had found the four way junction which fits on the flitch plate earlier, given that a clean up and checked for fit.

So a bit of a learning day, but progress overall, so that’s positive. It took a while to pack down the tools today, I must have got everything out at some point, but that’s what happens when you encounter old car problems.

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