Where's the Brakes?

I had fully intended to have the brakes done by the end of today. I did get a late start on the project because the cold weather returned, and it rained yesterday so I was hoping for a little sun to come out and dry the ground before I crawled around under there.

The biggest problem has actually been that nothing is going as easily as planned. Every fitting I come to is severely rusted into place. The tube nuts just end up being rounded off and then even with vice grips the nut ends up getting squished and bent instead of actually loosening up. That was ultimately why I had to order a new rubber hose. Today I couldn't get the other two lines out of the other end either, so I ended up cutting those off. I really didn't want to have to run new lines from that hose to each rear tire but that's the way it went.

I ran into more trouble trying to get the passenger side line out of the wheel cylinder. It's a pretty tight squeeze between the tire and the leaf springs so I had resigned myself to having to take off the dualies and replace the wheel cylinder, just to be able to redo the brake line. I got the tires off, and then realized getting the brake drum off requires quite a bit of work. A special socket is needed too, as far as I can tell from YouTube. Thankfully, with the tires off and being able to work from a better angle, I was able to get the old nut out of the wheel cylinder (with vice grips) so I never did have to take the drum off.

Tomorrow I have two easy connections to work with. That would be both ends of the new line that runs from the front of the motorhome to the new rubber hose at the back. I'm not too concerned about those. My new fear is that line that goes from the rubber hose to the driver side wheel cylinder. At this point, I am tempted to just put a new segment in there without actually replacing the entire piece. I'm seriously concerned that I'll run into the same problem again and then really have to replace a wheel cylinder. Not only would that delay things even longer but it's reaching the limits of my comfort zone to take the drums off of this thing.

With fingers and toes crossed, I'll have functional brakes again by tomorrow night.


Carpet in the interior is gone. Floor has been all swept up and everything. It's starting to look like the new bed platform won't be built by the end of tomorrow. I might get lucky and have time to work on it though.