boy oh boy did i have a bad day and i learned not to show off

[RV77]

if we lisened to our bronco's problem telling, they would never leave the drive way %)[/QUOTE]

Mitch - I was going to leave a smart-ass comment yesterday about your rig falling apart on you .....while on a beaver hunt......but I will leave contructive criticism.

I truely believe in preventitive maintenance.You cant use the excuse "it just started doing this or that". You had to felt the vibration from the HB long before yesterday....am I correct ?

Did you have the "gut" feeling that your brakes were 100% fixed ?

Im not going to rag on you....Im just saying....why take the chance for a few minutes of glory ?

I wont/dont drive any of my vehicles if there is a chance of bodily injury to me or someone else.......and not to mention the dumbass look on ones face for not fixing it "last week ".

But Im glad in the end you could laugh it off and learn from it.(hopefully)

 

[broncomitch]

lol ya i lurned from it. funny thing is there was no vibration at all. and i had it off a few weeks before and it looked ok..ish lol small cracks around the rubber but nothing toooo bad.

but the brakes felt grate. i drove around the block a few times getting on and off the brakes and was very impressed how well they worked.

i was even thinking of driving it to the car wash right before that all happened.

had some nabors come over and talk to me about it, they said good job on telling those parents off, and a chev wouldn't have broke, i replyed. your probbly right, a chev cant even drive down the road to use the brakes ;D (diehard chev guy lol. he's cool tho)

 

[Devin]

2nd, the brakes where working perfect till i slamed on them as hard as i could.

Then they weren't working perfectly, were they? %)

 

[broncomitch]

ummm ya they where.
that rod was not broken before hand now was it?

so when any of your guy's bronco brakes something, dose that mean it never worked before hand? so your driving a unsafe truck.. right? so why you guys hounding me on something that you do as well and that no one has any control over and for something that was not my falt and happens with age. i didnt know that was going to happen.as with none of you know when something is going to happen.

 

[WyleCoyote]

I think you guys aren't reading everything in the first post...Correct me if I'm wrong Mitch but what I got is:

1. Brakes weren't bled when you went to back out, that's how the soft top hoop got bent
2. You bled the brakes immediately after that happened, and then went for the drive
3. HM ate itself without warning - you bashed it back together just to get home
4. Kid ran out in front of you so you dynamited the brake pedal and the brake push rod broke.


Doesn't sound like you were doing anything unsafe after the initial roll out of the garage without the brakes bled. After you bled the brakes it should have been all good - the other stuff wasn't predictable!

Glad you managed to swerve and miss the kid, hopefully he crapped his pants and learned to watch for cars. If I ever catch my son running on a street, he won't be able to sit for a week.

 

[Devin]

ummm ya they where.
that rod was not broken before hand now was it?

so when any of your guy's bronco brakes something, dose that mean it never worked before hand? so your driving a unsafe truck.. right? so why you guys hounding me on something that you do as well and that no one has any control over and for something that was not my falt and happens with age. i didnt know that was going to happen.as with none of you know when something is going to happen.

Ok, I stand corrected, your brakes were working "perfectly" (with the exception of the fact that a good hard application of the brakes was going to explode the push rod). Maybe I am wrong, but I believe that a correctly functioning brake system is supposed to allow "panic stops".

It happens with age? Then maybe get in and take a look at the condition of your vehicle's critical systems from time to time. This story could have had an absolutely horrible ending. I am glad for you and the kid(s) that it didn't.

 

[sstlaure]

Ok, I stand corrected, your brakes were working "perfectly" (with the exception of the fact that a good hard application of the brakes was going to explode the push rod). Maybe I am wrong, but I believe that a correctly functioning brake system is supposed to allow "panic stops".

I agree with Wyle on this.....do YOU do a panic stop - slamming the brakes to the floor every time you drive your Bronco? I doubt it.

I had a serpentine belt fail on an S-10 Blazer I had. It failed at 70mph going through a corner - lost power steering, lost power brakes, but I got it to a stop. Was I negligent in not checking my belts every time I went out (car had less that 50K miles on it and had no indication of a bad belt.)

Have you NEVER had something spontaneously fail on your vehicle. I think we should cut Mitch a little slack. I'd be willing to bet most on this board have had something fail on them at one time or another without warning.

 

[broncnaz]

While I'm sure that most of us have had stuff fail on our vehicles we are just pointing out that if your vehicle is falling apart on your way to show off that your "bronco moves" Its a sure sign that you shouldnt be driving it without figuring out why it all happened. Brakes needed to be bled right off the bat that a sign something is wrong even if they did work good right after the bleeding. I would question why they needed to be bled in the first place.

Its more of a questioning his judgement in order to show off instead of thinking this vehicle may just not be safe enough to drive. His statement about showing that it moves would lead me to believe it has been sitting for a while to do repairs or needed repairs.

Kids are kids while they shouldnt be in the street they were and he knew they could be in the street. Maybe driving slower would have prevented the failed brakes and almsot accident. In residential areas I expect kids to be in the street. Yelling at the parents I have no problem with if the kids are always in the street. But I doubt they really care much from the sounds of it.

All in all parts failing is not the whole issue here. I'm not trying to bag on mitch but its a good example for others of what not to do just to show off. If there is any question about the condition of your vehicle fix it or figure out why something has failed and test out fixes in a safe place. Before showing off.
The first 3 strikes(brakes, balancer, no gas) should have been a show stopper. Although I guess it was in a sense.
Have I ever driven my bronco with broken items? yes I have. Once the clutch linkage broke at about 1am in winter also in layton utah I drove it because there was hardly anyone on the street at that time and it would be relatively safe to do so. Recently I broke the rear diff in my bronco I drove it 16 miles back home mostly on dirt roads with no traffic and a short drive through a residental area at slower than normal speed just incase.

 

[broncomitch]

they needed bled cus i just got done installing the new master and booster and had to run some new line's from the booster to the block on the frame.

after i bled the lines the brakes worked very well, made 3 trips around the block going a little faster each time i came to a stop and they never even started to get soft after sitting. they work better then my friends stock booster set up on his 77.

i just got done putting my tranny back togauther and was very exited to drive it and show it off that, yes it can move, after a year of sitting.

i have read post from guys on heir that there restoring there bronco and get exited that it can almost drive again and sure enough, take it down the road with panels missing and no brakes at all.

as for the rest of the maintanance on my bronco, the front and rear axle need new seal's and im going to put heavy duty axle shaft joints in the front and other then that besides my hiring harness its all new.

charging system (all new) motor (fully rebuilt a few years ago)new starter, new fuel pump,power steering pump,water pump,4core rad, trans and Tcase (rebuilt) , ujoints on the drive lines,brake line's,pads rotor's,calapers,brake cylnder's,all bran new stuff.

so once i get my gears ill rebuild my front and rear axle, and once i do my cage ill replace my wiring too.

oh new fuel lines too

lol

 

[SpareParts]

It sounds to me that he was just taking it on a test drive after fixing things. Just so happened he had a good excuse to go left instead of right, past the girls. Almost everybody has pulled their Bronco or what ever out of the garage and forgot to check something. Bleeding the breaks should not be one to be forgotten, harmonic balancer ane the break push rod are just accidents as well as the misconception of having enough gas. I say cut him alittle more slack.

David

 

[sprdv1]

Oh, OUCH, sorry to hear that..

 

[Devin]

I agree with Wyle on this.....do YOU do a panic stop - slamming the brakes to the floor every time you drive your Bronco? I doubt it.

You are an engineer, correct? And you work for a car company, correct? Tell me, do you design a brake system that has a push rod that will fail after a finite number of panic applications? If so, please tell me what cars these are on so that I never drive them. You don't design critical pieces like that to fail. Sure, maybe this one was one of the ones out on the tail end of the probability curve, but:

Mitch indicated that it was something that "happens with age". Maybe I was reading into it to much, but that statement sounds like there was something wrong like corrosion of the part or something.

Sorry, I shouldn't have read into it so much.

 

[WyleCoyote]

Damn, Devin, do you have a reason to be hating so much here? A part broke, it broke under stress, it's a 30+ Year old part, Sh** happens...Lighten up!

 

[Devin]

I thought that I apologized at the end of the last one. Just rubbed me the wrong way. I have kids and stories like that scare the hell out of me.

 

[sstlaure]

Devin,
I've got kids too. 2 & 5, I keep them out of the street and safely playing within the confines of my fenced in back yard.

Obviously parts aren't designed to fail after x number of applications, but all parts can fail eventually. Have you ever heard of any vehicle that lasted forever without anything failing on it ever? I haven't.

The part could have had an inclusion (particle within the material creating a stress riser.) This high load applied could have caused it to fail. Who knows. I just know for certain that EVERYTHING manmade will fail at some point.

I don't have these problems yet because I just sit in mine in the garage making engine sounds dreaming of the day I can take it for a spin.