Ferrari Mailing List: Welcome Back!! Rob's Front Wheel Bearing Adventure Continues!

[Robert W. Garven Jr. (robertgarven]

> I think the reason I was drawn to Internet Ferrari sites was the
> technical information available from experts and novices alike.
> Whether the other members know it or not this is the most important
> part of this Internet Ferrari community. I feel that I have learned
> many things here and hopefully others have learned from my mistakes,
> and hopefully I have also. This intro is special because of the
> problems I encountered today at the end of my what was to be a simple
> wheel bearing replacement.
>
>
>
> I spent the morning putting on a 18mm rear anti-roll bar, which will
> be another post and chapter in My “Ferrari for Dummies” series. I was
> then going to bleed all my brakes after assembling the front hubs
> rotors and miscellaneous bits from yesterday. I am still concerned
> about the safety of the spline wheel nuts, (see previous post) but
> decided not to be too paranoid (Hell what’s a wheel coming off at 100
> mph!).
>
>
>
> Anyway I whip out my ultra cool brakeman bleeder and proceed to do
> all the wheels starting at the RR. I end up at the RF and have a
> steady leak coming from the bottom of the hard line I had so much
> trouble getting together yesterday. I tightened it as much as I could
> and when that did not stop the leak I drained the reservoir and took
> the hard line off. It did not look so bad so as an experiment I
> reversed the line, filled up the reservoir and to my horror both
> fittings were leaking. I have been told that if you strip or screw up
> the caliper hole that it is a real problem so I removed everything on
> that side and here is what I found. I hope that once again that some
> of you will respond with some suggestions!
>
>
>
> I am posting several pictures of the caliper hole and the fitting.
> The threads are fine and there are some concentric circles deep in
> the hole. Since I am not an expert and never have had a caliper apart
> I am once again hoping some of you will look at the pictures and tell
> me it is hopefully acceptable.
>
>
>
> On the bottom hard line caliper end fitting I found not only very
> fine cracks in the nut that holds the flared fitting in the caliper
> hole and on closer inspection found some very small hairline cracks
> near the end of the line itself (Could that make it leak, drip, drip,
> drip one drop every two seconds?). That makes sense and after talking
> to a few friends that seems like I need to replace the line. Cool!
> What is troubling me is that after switching the line around I was
> still getting leakage from the caliper hole, as well as from the
> cracked line which ended up in the end of the rubber brake line on  
> top.
>
>
>
> Here is my plan, order a new line and see if that fixes it. I am sure
> that it will be expensive so if any of you look at the pictures of
> the caliper hole and see something amiss let me know soon! I would
> hate to get a new line just to have it leak due to a problem with the
> caliper!
>
>
>
> Thanks again in advance for all you help. I was really looking
> forward to driving the car after having it apart for a month on this
> wheel bearing service, and kind of bummed I could not go to Monterey,
> so thanks again for any advice that will get e on the road.
>
>
>
> I think my main mistake was taking off the lower fitting trying to
> hook up the line after replacing the caliper. I should have just
> loosened it and before fitting the caliper on the rotor. I should
> have tried to get the top fitting inserted first, maybe with them
> bottom caliper bolt in place! Instead I spent about an hour or two
> wrestling with the line, unfortunately damaging it and hopefully not
> the caliper!!!
>
>
>
> Rob
>
>
>
> once again here are the pics
>
>
>
> http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?p=136013229#post136013229
>
>
> Robert W. Garven Jr.
> robertgarven [at] avenuecable.com