27, 28, 29 July 2020

I Finally Got Rid of Those Pesky Drum Brakes: Just not the way that anyone would recommend...

27 July 2020: Waking up in the woods by yourself is always an interesting feeling. Firstly, you are never the first one up; all the woodland creatures and insects have been up since sunrise and are now making quite a racket. Secondly, you realize once again that you are very alone. Based on the location of other campsites and the complete lack of people I had seen on the trek out, it was likely that I was the only person for at least 5 miles in any direction. That doesn't sound that much in the age of 10 speed automatic transmissions and jetliners, but when you're on foot that distance represents 1-2 hours of walking, or much more if that fall you just took broke your ankle instead of just bruising your pride. 

Fun Fact: If Ken falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, he still makes a (very loud) sound.

    So I packed up camp and started the 10 mile trek back to the Cougar, still amazed at how long this 10 miles hike seemed even when compared to the multiple 700+ mile days I have driven so far on this trip. About 3 miles into my trek, I saw a dog running around in the woods! Weird, because I didn't see an owner, but it's always a good thing when you run into a friendly dog! This is how the interaction went:

 

    Dog: *Turns around*

    Ken: ##*^%  BABY BEAR *Frantically looks around for Momma bear*

    It wasn't a dog, it was a baby black bear. Those of you familiar with bears will know that walking up on a baby bear in the woods is one of the more dangerous situations you can get yourself in. While even large black bears can be scared away under normal circumstances, a mother bear will viciously attack anyone she deems to be a threat to her cub. I wasn't a fan of my chances of escaping unscathed if I had to go up against an angry 150+ lb momma black bear. I had weight on my side, but she would have claws, teeth, and maternal instinct on hers. 

    And just like Chuck Norris, the only thing scarier than seeing a momma bear is NOT seeing momma bear, because that means she is probably behind you. Whirling around, I made sure that she wasn't. Hand gripping my tiny 3" pocket knife, I made as much noise as possible while trying to locate momma bear so I didn't walk right into her. As baby bear bolted away from all the noise I was making, I slowly made my way (with my head on a fast swivel) along my original path. Luckily, I never did run into momma bear, but that certainly got the heart-rate way up!

    And no, I don't have any pictures of the cute little baby bear. I firmly believe there are only three types of people who have pictures of baby bears; people who took them at zoos, people with reaaallllyy long lenses that took a break from taking pictures of their neighbors daughters to go photograph some nature from a mile away, and stupid people who didn't realize how much danger they were in. 

    A few miles down the road, I almost stepped on a rattlesnake. Now, I firmly believe that there are only three types of people who have pictures of large, angry looking rattlesnakes who are currently staring them down; people who took them at zoos, people with reaaallllyy long lenses that took a break from taking pictures of their neighbors daughters to go photograph some nature from a mile away, and people who are almost as stupid as the ones with pictures of baby bears. 

    So please enjoy my picture of the rattlesnake!

    Unfortunately, this snake proved to be much more difficult to scare of the trail than the bear, and as much as I disliked my chances of winning a fight with a bear, I liked the potential outcome of hand-to-hand combat with a rattlesnake even less. Despite this, I could not, in good conscience, leave him sitting on the trail where he was because I was sure that someone would step right on him and get bitten. 5+ miles from the nearest road, their chances of survival if the snake decided to inject a lethal amount of venom was very low. 

Fun Fact 2:

    So grabbing a stick that was definitely not sturdy enough to ward off a strike if the snake so desired, I starting pushing/tapping the snake to get it to move off the trail. Not the best move for my health, no doubt, but I channeled my inner Steve Irwin and decided that it was early enough in the morning that the snake still needed to warm up a bit more before any energetic actions, and I could not live with myself if I left it on the trail and then saw paramedics running past me in that direction later in the hike. 

    Thankfully, the rattlesnake decided that my assumption that he was too cold to do anything crazy was correct, and he slowly moved off the trail. But not before stopping to 'rattle' at me to show that he was very upset that I was disturbing his sunbathing. Now THAT is a terrifying sound, but also an absolute bucket-list item! (What, I've got a weird bucket list - don't judge.)

    The rest of the hike was pretty uneventful. I did pass several people on the way back, which reassured me that moving Mr. Rattlesnake off the path was the right move. As I made my way back to the Cougar, I snapped this picture of her through my horribly foggy camera. Let this be a lesson to you; if you spend a bunch of money on a nice weather-sealed camera, make sure you keep some money set aside to also get weather-sealed lenses, otherwise your pictures will still look all foggy. 

Same picture, circle added for emphasis. You're gonna need to zoom in. 

    After I left Smokey Mountain National Park, I caught the last bit of the Tail of the Dragon again, which was as incredible as it was the day before. Here's what my rear seat looked like after the short jaunt through the tight bends of Route 129; my nicely stacked coolant bottles (purchased in preparation of the aborted Texas radiator job) and box of random food/stuff were scattered across the backseat, making my previously neat and tidy (okay, 'kind of' neat and tidy) rear seat look like it was hit by a tornado.

    

    At the gas station, I was again reminded about how lucky I am to be travelling across the country in my Cougar. Several employees from the gas station and attached McDonalds came out and sheepishly asked if they could take pictures of the Cougar as she sat there, dirty and proud. I'm sure she loved that!

    Gassed up, she carried me to Huntsville, Alabama, without complaint. Well, I say without complaint, but that almost imperceptible stumble was still there, but didn't cause me any issues other than background stress. After promising her I would pick up a new Blaster 2 coil in Huntsville, she brought me to my hotel. Unbeknownst to me, my hotel was right next to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, a huge indoor and outdoor exhibit that focuses on the past, present, and future of U.S. space travel and science. As a huge space nerd, it extremely hard to convince myself that I couldn't take the risk to go in there and walk around. I had to content myself with looking out the window. Once this pandemic is over, I need to go back and visit. 

    Exhausted from my 20ish mile trek, I fell asleep almost immediately in my hotel room. 

28 July 2020: Today was a mountain biking day, so I called up a local shop and rented a very nice mountain bike. The only snag was that they did not rent bike carriers to mount the bike outside the car, which is an interesting business decision but since almost everyone drives boring SUV/CUVs now, I'm sure most people can just throw them in the trunk without much concern. Well, it wasn't much problem for me either; four bolts later and the passenger seat was replaced with a shiny red mountain bike!

    Where there is a will, there is a way. After leaving my seat with the bike shop as collateral, I headed off to Monte Sono State Park. Now, Monte Sono certainly is not a highly traveled mountain biking destination. You won't see people raving about it on the MB forums or speaking in hushed whispers about its difficulty or speed. But it was empty, had a good mix of highly technical and more endurance focused routes, and was small enough that I could easily circle back to the Cougar and eat the rest of my lunch. 

    Every time I mountain bike, I remember how much I love it. While it can be said that a good car responds to your lightest input, a good mountain bike responds to your mere thoughts. Body position and counter-steering, which most people don't even notice are how they actually control a bike, are rarely conscious decisions, and the bikes suspension guides you over rocks and roots that you consider impassable, even as you go over them. They truly are impressive pieces of engineering.

    Unfortunately, most of the good ones cost as much as the Cougar's front suspension, so it looks like I'll be renting for a while!

The Joe Shirley Fire Tower, which was used by NASA to track the Sputnik 1 and Explorer 1 satellites.

    After a good day of riding, I returned the bike, picked up the coil from the local Advanced Auto, and headed back to my hotel. I had planned to update this blog there, but after hiking 20 miles and biking for 5 hours over the last three days, my body was beat up and I was exhausted, so I went to sleep almost immediately. But not before I picked up my radiator from the front desk!

29 July 2020: The day started off pretty normal. Wake up, pack up the room, pack the car, gas-coffee-breakfast, get on the highway: destination Richmond, VA. I was making good time, cruising in the fast lane and lazily winding my way through mid-day traffic in the smooth and relatively input-free way that the Cougar and I have become so accustomed to over the last month. My general driving style is to keep my speed 3-4mph faster than the flow of traffic then scan the road and plan my routes so that I have to make the least amount of steering, throttle, and brake inputs possible. I prioritize the inputs in that order, i.e. I would rather change lanes than change throttle position, and if that's not possible I would rather come off/add throttle than brake. This method of driving has the dual benefits of keeping me engaged in what can easily otherwise become a monotonous experience while also giving me a sense of control and a clear mental picture of the road and drivers around me. Just like on a race track, looking as far ahead of you as possible can help you navigate the road more efficiently, and help you map out the basics of how certain drivers respond to changing situations and give you at least a vague idea of how they will make driving decisions in the near future, such as when a semi joins the highway next to them. I've gotten pretty good at this over the last ~8000 miles, and it is interesting to see how the average driver changes from state to state. 

    I'm writing all of this to give an explanation for how I avoided touching my brakes for long enough that I completely missed the fact that my driver's rear drum had stuck engaged, had enough time to wear all of the friction material off the shoes, and then disassemble itself while I drove down the highway. 

    

    Immediately I came off the throttle, threw on my cautions, and weighed my options. I had no shoulder on the left side of the road, so I needed to get over. Mercifully, there was a decent sized hill coming up, so I made my way across the two other lanes and onto the right shoulder where I was able to coast to a stop, pumping the brakes like a madman to get some pressure in the lines. Thankfully, I was able to get some brake response after my frantic pumping, but only barely enough to hold me steady on the incline. I popped open the master cylinder and observed that both bowls were still acceptably full of fluid, which was quite confusing. I felt around to see if any of the front or rear brakes were abnormally hot, which would indicate a stuck wheel cylinder or caliper, and the driver's rear drum did seem hotter than normal, but not enough to justify to me why all my brakes were gone. I saw no leaks under the car, but I was rather rushed, as one is on the side of the road while getting constantly buzzed by semis. I got back into my car and buckled in, then got on my phone and realized that there was an Auto Zone only 1.1 miles away. So I made the decision to limp it there. By rapid pumping I was able to get enough pressure to stop me, and downshifting could do the brunt of the work as long as I had enough space. The risk to my life of sitting on the tiny shoulder was less than that of slowly running into someones rear bumper. So I slowly rejoined the highway and limped to the Auto Zone parking lot without incident. 

    I walked in and bought a jack and stands, and by the time I got back outside a sizable puddle of brake fluid had pooled under the drivers's rear tire, the same one that had been a little warmer than I thought normal. So I jacked it up and pulled the tire and drum off, and several brake drum springs and pieces clattered to the ground. 

Well, that's never a good sign... And neither is seeing that the brake shoes you installed only a year ago were now worn down to the metal. There was not a speck of friction material left on them. 

    The wheel cylinder appears to have failed in dramatic fashion, seizing wide open in such a way that it pressed the shoes out and applied the brakes till all the material was worn away, which then caused the disassembly of the adjuster and parking brake assembly, which explains why I didn't have the emergency brake either. I honestly have on idea how this happened. All the pieces are still there, and none of them look broken or damaged (other than the obviously blown wheel cylinder). I just can't imagine that the brakes can just disassemble themselves once all the friction material is worn through. If they can, that seems like a massive oversight. 

*DISCLAIMER: You can monkey-rig a lot of things and be absolutely fine; you should not do that with brakes! What you are going to read below is the best way to do a bad thing!*

    Well now I was screwed. No one in a 50 mile radius had the 2" shoes I needed in stock, and the 1.8" can't be installed in the 2" drums ($30 wasted). Even though the Auto Zone I stopped at miraculously had a single wheel cylinder in stock, when I reassembled the drum with the spent shoes and applied the brake multiple times to see if that would hold, it over-extended and destroyed that wheel cylinder. 

    At that point I would have had a massive problem if I hadn't ran into an incredibly curious and kind local mechanic. Apparently, '69 Cougars on jackstands in the local Auto Zone parking lot are not a normal sight, so he pulled over to see if he could be of assistance. I had come up with the idea to plug the rear brakes and the master and proportioning block, but he was the one that pointed out that regular bolts wouldn't seal. Graciously, he volunteered to head back to his shop and weld a brake line into a line fitting and seal it off with a weld so that I would have a leak free seal! It worked perfectly! No leaks, and after a quick bleed of the front brakes, I had a harder pedal than I had ever had in the car! 

    I can't thank my new friend Evan enough for helping me out! I won't post any more info or pics of his shop on here because I'm not sure if this is the kind of advertising that he is looking for, but he saved me big time! He has an awesome shop and quite a few older trucks and cars hidden around if you know where to look! He even went back into his shop and made another plug after I managed to drop the first one into the dime-sized hole in the frame rail! (I couldn't do that again if I tried a million times, but it went in on the second drop at 10:00pm.)

    So, after stopping at a gas station to fill up on 93 and grab a coffee and some protein bars (everything was closed and I just was not feeling fast food), I got back on the highway and continued onward to Richmond. The drive was rather uneventful. I tested the brakes every 20 or so miles just to make sure that they were still working, but otherwise it was business as usual. There are very few people on the road after 10pm, so it was easy to keep myself in a position on the road where I would have a sufficient amount of decision space to make a safe move if I lost brakes again for any reason.

    I made it to my hotel at 1:30am, once again covered in grease and sweat. I'm making way too much of a habit of this. 

    I am headed out to pick up all the parts I need to rebuild my rear brakes as soon as I publish this update!

    Thanks for following along!

    Ken