ThreadJack....or...
How a rusty brake line saved my life.
During my salad days, I'm in the city (Chicago) visiting my parents in my well salted cancer riddled VW beetle. The floor pan has rusted out under the drivers feet and I have an old Ouji board covering the hole under the rubber mat. In the alley behind my parents house I'm trying to park in front of the garage door on the apron so as not to block the alley. I back up and then step on the brake and the bug rolls right into the trash cans. WTF! The brake pedal went right to the floor and my right elbow is soaked with brake fluid. I step on the brake again and see a small stream of fluid shoot up between the seats like a squirt gun fountain. The VW brake line for the rear brakes runs through the inside of the car and it has a rusted out pin hole right below my right elbow. I have to be in Aurora (about 40 miles away) at work in two hours and I've already missed a few days. So I cut the line further up in the front where it's less rusted and crimp it in a few places and flatten the end and fold it over a few times and clamp some vise grips on the end. Top off the brake fluid and test the brakes to see if I need to bleed them. Not like I'd have the time for that, but it seemed like the adult thing to do even though I was an adult only in chronological terms (
upper 20s, maybe 14 or 15 between the ears). Front brakes worked, so off I go headed for work with the thought in my mind going over and over "DO NOT SLAM ON THE BRAKES". I'm on the Kennedy Expressway (I-90) headed towards the airport doing about 55 mph and traffic is tight because the left two lanes are barricaded off with the dead battery blinking light horses (
that you never see any more as replaced by orange plastic barrels) for construction. I'm keeping a prudent distance
(because my brakes are questionable and I am an "adult" after all ) behind a big white airport limo when he slams on the brakes in a panic stop. I swerve left and pull between the barricade horses into the nearest closed off lane and come to a stop maybe a car length a head of the limo and then hear a loud noise. I look back over my right shoulder and see a 10 wheel semi truck with its front grill where the rear window of the limo used to be. It occurs to me that the limo's now non-existent trunk probably had more viable steel in it than my whole VW does, and that if my brake line hadn't rusted out that I would have just panic stopped instead of swerved out of the lane.
I never did see why the limo panic stopped, when I looked back there was nothing in front of the limo, maybe someone spilled their hot coffee?
Yes, I was late for work, but it was OK.
...sorry folks about the threadjack, I was overwhelmed with a sudden need to share. I get that a lot but it usually comes out the other end.
OK, back to the sucky GM talk.