Brake rebuild, new 30 year old mirror

I have been pretty busy doing work on the '58. The brake master cylinder was leaking real bad when I got the car. So basically, no brakes. I have been weighing lots of options for repairing this, most of them centered around upgrading the brake system as well. I was pretty set on going for a brand new front disc brake conversion with a power boosted dual master cylinder. This would be a really fantastic upgrade, but it would run about $500. My last $500. I was about to settle on a new stock master cylinder ($100) when I found a rebuild kit for only $20! This is the stock master cylinder, rebuilt at home. I disassembled the unit, cleaned it thoroughly, and honed out the bore. I found that the compensating port (sort of a bypass port) was completely clogged and the bore was filled with gooky gunk. I assembled it with new parts, filled it with new fluid, and bled the air out. So far, so good; no leaks. I mounted it back on the car without even repainting it. Two things:
1. People, you can put all the teflon tape you like on the threads of the main brake line fitting (that's it there coming out and going to the right) but THIS WILL DO NOTHING. Brake lines seal by the compression of the cone on the line sealing against a conical seat. The fitting's threads just provide the force to accomplish this, they do not seal anything. This is not house plumbing. The previous owner clearly did not know this.
2. Normally bleeding brakes involves forcing fluid all the way through the lines to expel any air.
In this case, since only the MC was leaking, there should be no air anywhere else in the brake system. The only air should be right at this same fitting. I used a trick I learned from my brother Dave. I left this fitting slightly loose, and had an assistant pump the brake pedal. This forced fluid out of the fitting, but it pushed the air out as well. By catching the forced leak with some rags, we were able to bleed the air out right at this fitting, and we did not have to bleed the entire system. This worked great, and the pedal feels rock hard. I think we have brakes.

I needed an outside mirror. The reproduction stock ones are expensive, and I'm not sure I like the look of them anyway. I bought this replacement mirror at K-mart about the time I had my first car. I don't know what it was for, since I clearly did not use it on that car. Now I have had it, still in the box, ever since. Didn't think I'd ever use it, so I have dutifully brought it to every swap meet I have ever vended at, and nobody ever bought it, for like five bucks. It must be destiny, so I dug it out and installed it, a brand new, 30 year old, five dollar, K-mart mirror. See, you cannot buy that fun kind of history if you buy a car that already has the mirror on it. I like it. Oh, the extra hole was already there.


Finally, for no reason, I'll show you this pic of a dog taking a ride on a '58 Impala convertible. Photo: The HAMB, of course.

Tech- Mirror glass replacement

I broke the passenger side rearview mirror on my trusty big white pickup a while ago. I somehow backed it into a branch of a neighbor's tree that's near my driveway. A rarity; I pride myself in my backing abilities, but I was attempting an extremely difficult backing-up trailer-turning maneuver and ran out of space.

-

I bought this replacement-glass-kit-thing at the local Advance Auto parts store. It is actually a plastic, not glass, mirror that's probably about 1/16" thick. It's somewhat flexible, and the idea is that you can cut it to fit your mirror. Don't know how well it will work, but at only $7, we'll give it a try.

The first thing to do is to get all of the remaining pieces of broken mirror glass off of the mirror back. To do this, I had considered repeatedly backing the truck into the same tree branch, since it did such a good job at removing most of the mirror glass in the first place. Hmm, that might be too tricky, even for me. I settled on using a 1" putty knife and a razor-holder tool to pick the pieces off manually. The razor tool was to slice through the adhesive holding the mirror parts stubbornly to the backing plate.

-

WARNING: when you do this, you will inevitably cause many small sharp pieces of mirror glass to litter the ground. This could cause someone to get a nasty cut at sometime in the future. So I drove to the parking lot of the place that fired me and did it there.

-

I somehow did not cut myself doing this. So even if the replacement mirror doesn't work, that was a major achievement.

Next, hold the mirror panel up to the mirror back plate, and draw around the outline with a marker. Make sure you are doing the correct side! One side is pretty blurry; this is the back side. The other side is covered by a thin plastic protective sheet, lift up a corner and you'll see the nice clear reflection; this is the front side.

This is the blurry side.

Cut out the mirror. I am using a set of big tin snips. I love this tool, it cut the plastic easily. You may have to do some sandy-sanding around the edges to get a nice fit. Take some time here or everyone that ever sits in the passenger side will comment on what a poor job you did. You know how they are.

The kit comes with some double-sided tape (my brother D once pointed out that ALL tape is double-sided, only some are sticky on both sides). Peel and stick the tape onto the back of the mirror, put it in place, and you're doney-done. As a bonus, on my truck, the mirror backing plate itself is curved, so the plastic mirror panel can adapt to this and now has the good convex shape like the original glass panel had.

-

This would be an easy fix on most cars, even older cars for which replacement mirrors or glass is not available.