Brakes

Last weekend, I took the 308 on a three day Ferrari event up to Kelowna, BC.  After I got home, as I was washing the car, I notice that the right front wheel had considerable more brake dust on it than the left front.  A while ago, I thought that I felt that it had been dragging, so I had ordered new brake hoses.

I tried to get both front and rear hoses, but there was only a single rear one available.  Since then, I've tried two other suppliers and neither have the rear hoses.  Rather than just change a single rear hose, I'll keep the new one as a spare and hopefully before I need to use it, I'll be able to source a second one.

So to change the front lines, I first sucked out any extra fluid in the brake reservoir.  That way, when it comes to bleed the brakes, the old fluid will just be in the master cylinder, lines and calipers, so less to bleed before the fresh fluid is coming through.

I put the car on the lift and pulled all four wheels as I'll flush the rear lines too.  The front hoses run from a flange near the steering rack out to a flange on the wheel support.  The outer end is fairly accessible.  One has to bend back a couple of tabs that lock the nut that holds the hose fitting in the flange.  I undid the flare fitting on the hard line.  Then it was difficult to get a 24mm wrench on that nut.  I tried several things, but finally moved the hard line out of the way so I could get a 24mm socket one the nut and removed it with an impact wrench.  Trying to do anything else simply was bending the flange.  The inner end was more difficult.  The flare nut was almost inaccessible.  I was only able to get the flare wrench on it in one location and it was already tight against the steering rack.  I ended up whacking off the 9mm end of the wrench to make it short enough to swing in the space available.

Once I had the wrench so it would swing, the flare fitting came loose easily.  Then I cut the old hose close to the fitting so I could use a 17mm deep socket to unscrew the fitting from the nut on the backside.  Since this nut also had tabs locking it in place, I didn't need to have a wrench on that inner side.

These hoses were the original to the car since they have a December 1977 date on them.  For those purists, the yellow band on the right was on each hose.  However, they have to be added during manufacture, so I could not slide them onto the new hoses.

I started with the new hose at the inner end, first fitting it through the flange and threading the nut onto it.  Then I was able to use a 17mm crow foot wrench to tighten the fitting and nut together.  The hard line fit nicely back into the new fitting and the stubby flare wrench tightened it up.  The outer fitting was fitted through the flange, lock plate and nut.  Getting the lock plate and nut aligned and tightened took a couple of tries, but eventually everything was tight.

In hind sight, I wished I had undid the hard line at the caliper end and removed it as my initial screwing around had bent it along with bending the flange, so the flare nut didn't align with the hose correctly.  I spent an extra 15 minutes or so getting everything back in line.

If I had removed the hard line, cut the hose and removed the old fitting from the back side, everything should have lined up again.  At least it did on the second side.  That also means that one doesn't have to flatten the locking tabs on the car, so the flange doesn't get bent out of place.  The lessons learned meant that the second side only took and hour and a half vs. four hours.

After looking at the front pads, I ordered a new set, so the bleeding will have to wait until they arrive and are installed.