Saturday, January 2, 2010

We Have Brakes

As my friend Arch always says, life is good. Oh yes, it does feel good. We had no brakes and now we have them back. We are very fortunate to have GMC friends that come to our rescue when we run onto something that we can not fix ourselves.
Bob and Jeff came to our rescue today. Bob drove 200 miles over here from Phoenix and Jeff drove 50 from over near Silver City.
Here we are assessing the ride we just took with Bob driving. Bob told me we had either no front or no rear brakes. He said lets jack up the rear and get started. Sure enough we had ZERO back brakes.

Get that master cylendar off. So I got busy and in 5 minutes it was in my hand. Jeff watching.



Listening to Bob, out of the picture. Still talking it over.





New one going on.






Just about finished and ready for the bleeding.





Bob and Jeff.







They were both under there trying to get the adjuster plug off the first wheel.







Hmmm, I was always a good supervisor. Why waste my talents?










Here Jeff saw fluid. Bob is pulling the brake line. We found it was cracked where the flare butts up against the wheel cylendar. This was a real headache and took us a couple of hours to diagnose and finally fix.








They made sure I did the heavy work. Had the leak fixed, brake line bled, and wheel going back on. Jeff and Bob were on the other side getting rewady to adjust those 2 wheel brakes. That took Bob all of 5 minutes and we were on the road. I was able to stop on a dime again. Life is real good.



I am sure that my brakes had been gradually getting worse for a long time. I just did not realize it. We gradually lose our sight as we grow older but it is not over night. Kinda that way with the brakes. I did not realize they were bad until I could not stop at the stop sign in Dallas when the master cylendar finally failed.
I had been getting opinions from my friends for a couple of days when bob called. He said he was coming to fix our brakes. 200 miles one way. I hated it and tried to talk him out of it. Bob insisted and I am glad that he did. Jeff called and told me he was coming. I am glad that he did. This was just more than I could do and I really did not know where I was going to get this problem fixed. These guys came to our rescue and I will always be thankful to them. I knew Bob knew what was wrong with my brakes when I talked with him on the phone so I was really glad he called me. Another friend, Ken Burton, had been calming me down on the phone at night. Ken lives in North In. and could not come but he would if he had been with in 500 miles.
Teri and I are so happy to be a part of such a great group of people. They will do anything possible to help one another. I certainly hope folks look at Teri and I as a genuine part of the group.
So, there you have it. We have brakes and can continue on over the mountain to Quartzsite in a few days. Thanks to all that have offered advice. I took it all in and have learned a lot today, not only abpout brakes, but also about friends, Mates, as the Aussies say.
Dan











posted by Dan & Teri Gregg @ 5:54 PM

1 Comments:

At January 3, 2010 at 7:15 PM , Blogger carl s said...

That's awesome! I hope to meet Bob and Jeff sometime soon. If I had not been in PA. I would have been tempted to come lend a hand too. It would have been an educational experience for me too!

We'll keep in touch. See you in Quartzsite, if not before.

 

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