So I was all ready. I popped Cherry outside to bask in the sunlight while I checked her over. Tighted up the seat bolts, which I’d not noticed were loose yesterday. Popped her out on the paving… and noticed a drip. Hrm, I went in to get the spanners – perhaps that brake hose was a touch loose. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.
I looked at the calliper closely before tightening it up. No brake fluid visible at all.
Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.
Shit, the seal has gone on the brake caliper. Still, with an hour and 15 minutes I can probably change back to the incredibly grotty grimeca calliper that came with the bike. Sprinting in, I switch into my bike gear, lock up the back of the house for a quick getaway and grab tools and the folding workbench. Clamping the calliper in the vice I manage to free the (obviously never been touched) bleed nipple and I (amazingly) detach the severed brake hose and chuck it unceremonioulsy in the bin. Grabbing the bike I run it back round next to the bench. I whip the calliper off the bike and jam it, still attached, in the vice and… with some force, manage to get the (already somewhat rounded off) hose off it. Pausing to drop the leaky caliper from Claire into the bucket of brake bits I attach the hose to the grimeca calliper. Because it lost it’s copper washers when it was originally fitted it’s always had to be done up tight. I get it done up and whack it unceremoniously back on the bike. It’s still oozing fluid. Off it comes, tighter still. I stick it back on the bike.
One squeeze of the lever and it becomes apparent that something is ‘very wrong’. The fluid gushes from the joint above the caliper (there’s two between the hose and the calliper). I go to tighten it and realise that it’s cracking. It’s not *meant* to be taken apart and done up so many times.
Fuck.
I run to the (thankfully) emptied (this morning) dustbin and tip it up. Out rolls the severed end of the old brake hose. I manage to jam it in the work bench with a spanner, and separate the two sections of the old hose. Amazingly, despite 10 years of neglect they come apart without snapping. I grab the new hose… and… it’s a different fucking connector.
At this point, up to my elbows in highly toxic dot 4 brake fluid, it becomes abundantly clear that without a new brake hose my bike is going absolutely no-where. And given the condition of the two callipers I have, even then the likelyhood of a quick departure is slim.
Almost ready to cry I ring the MOT station and cancel the MOT. So, the MOT, it didn’t happen.
And y’know what? New brake seal kits, not cheap. So now I have to rejoin the MZRC, because it gives an insanely good discount on parts. Not that I don’t want to rejoin the MZRC, I love the MZRC, but the fact that I’m having to spend the money on that… so that it makes getting the rest of the bike sorted… that’s bad. *sighs*.
