Bus Update: New brake lines

It's been a while since there's been a post about the bus - May was the last one - but there's a good reason for it.  Transition and apartment living haven't lended themselves to bus work.  Just letting it sit unused in the parking lot was driving us crazy, though, so we did a little stealth work this weekend (disabling a vehicle in the parking lot is discouraged at this apartment, so we're choosing to broadly define "disabling" - and also do our work after-hours).

Two of the biggest things keeping us from driving Sixer on a regular basis are the brakes and the exhaust leak.  The latter of those might take some serious effort, but according to the samba the brake issue was a pretty easy fix.

Our problem is that the bus would pull to the left when braking hard - we discovered this when a light turned red and Kyle hit the brake pedal like he meant it.  Prior to that we were babying her pretty well.  The samba reiterated the root cause:  "Sometimes the hose collapses inside & does not allow the fluid to return after braking."  Pulling to the left indicates there is an issue with the brakes on the right.  So, new brake hoses in the front of the bus (both sides).  In the above photo you can see the old hose and the new one.

Kyle hit the old hoses with PB Blaster every day for a week or so, which made the project relatively easy.  Unscrew the nuts, pull off the tabs, remove the old hose.  Thread on the new hose, torque down the nuts, replace the tabs.

Bleed the brakes, replace the fluid in the system.

Take her for a test drive.  No more pulling to the left!  All in all the project was pretty quick, and greatly eased by the tasty IPA we bottled a couple weeks ago.