The Brakes

Here is another tale from the stupid mistakes department.

For some time I have been suffering from a strange syndrome with the Galaxie brakes. It seems like the brakes would start to bind and then get worse and worse until the wheels were just locked up. The last time I worked on the car it took all of the engine's 300 hp just to move her back into the garage. My task for last Saturday, therefore, was to fix the brakes. Now logic dictates that if all the wheels are locked the common denominator has to be the master cylinder so I removed the one from the Thunderbird and for the Galaxie to compare and exchange them. As soon as I looked at the Galaxie cylinder I realised what the problem was. A new cylinder has plastic plugs to keep dust out and I had overlooked to remove the plug for the brake rod. So the rod was pushing on the plug and the plug was pushing on the piston. The plug however was preventing the piston from retracting. Remove the plug and the brakes worked fine. All in all it took about 15 minutes. Of course I had expected it to take all day so I didn't bring any of the interior parts needed. With nothing else to do I was home by midday.