Slip Slidin' Away (Post # 139)

Slip slidin' away,

Slip slidin' away.

You know the nearer your destination

The more you're slip slidin' away.

Left front wheel cylinder  and the offending
ball.

The two types of bleeder valves.  The shiny new
"improved" valve on the left and the old-fashioned ball
valve on the right.

The Alfatross' persistent brake problem continues to puzzle me even as I continue to try to trouble shoot it. I know! I know! It's a simple system with only so many things that can go wrong.  If I had a dime for every time a person helpfully suggested that perhaps all the fluid leaked out (without me noticing!), or maybe there is air in the lines, I could fly The Alfatross back to the Alfa factory in Italy and get them to do it!  

A few weeks ago  I was, under the car, working on the Alfatross' left front wheel cylinder. For some reason the bleeder wasn't acting right. When I opened it up to bleed the system (for what seemed like the tenth time!) I couldn't get a good flow, just an erratic dribble of fluid. I took the bleeder out and immediately saw that the pointed end was flattened and concave. What the . . . ?  I used a fine wire to probe the opening.  It seemed to be contacting some kind of obstruction but there was no way to look inside the bleeder opening. 

I did not really want to remove the whole wheel cylinder because that meant the wheel, hub, lug nuts, rondellas, drum, and shoes would have to come off too--a lot of work!  But I couldn't see any way around it.  

Normal bleeder on the left and the damaged bleeder
extracted from the left front wheel cylinder.  Note the
concave deformed tip caused by contact with the ball.

At that moment I realized that the SiriusXM radio was playing Paul Simon's song, Slip Slidin' Away, and I thought "Ain't that the truth"!  A year ago I thought I was coming down the home stretch with this restoration and now I feel like I'm farther away than ever!

I saw what the problem was as soon as I got the wheel cylinder off: a small steel ball was lodged in the bleeder opening.  The original 1955 vintage bleeders on The Alfatross' wheel cylinders used a steel ball to seal the opening.  The bleeder screw had a flat nose with a shallow concavity to keep the ball centered.  We switched over to the new, supposedly better-sealing bleeders with pointed ends during the restoration, but somehow this one steel ball was not removed.

So does the story have a happy ending?  No, I'm still slip slidin' away! This simple repair did nothing to ameliorate the overall brake problem (more about that in the next posts), but I am glad it was found and fixed.  And yes, I did do a thorough check of the other three bleeders, all of which were in proper order.