Modern Vespa

This is an email I sent to a friend last night. This took place right square in the middle of a 2000 km drive to a new job:

Intro: Last spring when I took my car to a shop in Abbotsford I had the brakes checked. I had been hearing some very loud grinding when the brakes were damp but it would go away after about three brake applications. The brakes themselves were getting down but by no means dangerous, they did say that the rear drums did have deep grooves in them and the noise I was hearing was the brake shoe contacting the edge of the groove in the drum. When I left on Saturday morning I was well aware that the brake pedal travel was increasing and at my first chance in Ft. McMurray or Edmonton a complete brake job would be done. Oh, yea, my emergency brake was virtually non existent as well. I was told that the cables had stretched and would have to be replaced when the brakes were done.
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> Back to this morning:
> I slept well and got up early first stop (?) Tim Hortons for a coffee... As I approached a red light at the highway crossing I applied the brakes and my foot went right to the floor!!!!! Fuck!!!!! Luckily no traffic was coming and I rolled across the highway and into the Tim's parking lot. Bad judgement - the only place to go was straight towards the building. a quick stab at the pedal produced no results Fuck!!!! A quick yank on the emergency(yea, right) brake gave no hint of slowing the Jetta at all. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Thoughts of my picture on the news and in the papers were zooming through my head.... Four quick, mad stabs at the flaccid brake pedal and I swear the Lord Jesus himself had heard my cries for help or at least wanted me to quit swearing because the brakes suddenly came back stronger than they had been in a few weeks. I stopped, calmly got out of the car got my double, double and left. All the way to Calgary I was gingerly touching my brakes wondering if it was going to do it again. I had a thought: My brakes had been dead quiet since I had taken my car in to Abbotsford. Was it possible that they backed the shoes off in order to keep them from contacting the drum and creating the noise? Or was my master cylinder acting up and ready to give up the ghost again at most likely a very inopportune time? Only one way to tell - pull the emergency brake. I found a pull out and slowly pulled the lever. YES!!!!!! It worked!!!!!! My idea of what happened is this: After the brakes were backed off (pure conjecture mind you) the shoes have continued to wear. as they wore it took more and more brake fluid to make the contact the drums. Because I had been going so easy on the brakes trying to get the most out of them I was not working the self adjusting mechanism - on older drum brakes you have to really use the brakes fairly hard in order to put the self adjusters into action. When I did my mad brake pedal dance it was enough to work them!!.
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> So, how's your day been?

The brakes have worked just fine thank you very much since that incident. I made it to camp in one piece and have sworn never to baby my rear drum brakes again. I'll have a complete brake job done in 24 days when I get a few days off (I'm working a 24 day on and 4 day off rotation of 12 hour shifts - hey at least I'll be able to buy what ever bike I really want come the spring time!!)

Dave

The ghost of BAART lives on in your brakes and he's pissed at being sold. Man i'm glad you weren't hurt. Also glad you didn't make the news Be careful up there in the middle of nowhere. Don't piss off the bears Be safe my friend. My day was boring. I'm attempting to scan my millions of photo's into my computer and i'm probably going to be dead before i get them all in.

Boy are you lucky- wiping out a Timmies is just about the only thing that can get you shot in Canada!