Yes I've heard good things about CG - in my case I thought I would use a more local specialist. Maybe I should have set my sights further.sladey wrote:That’s why I like Centre Gravity. He won’t leave it until he has got it perfect.
My specialist suggested that the settings might just be out because I'd forgotten to tighten some of the suspension fixings.
Keen to prove that wrong I asked to have a look under the car whilst it was on the ramps.
As expected no sign of any loose bolts or fixings - however I did spot that a patch of paint was peeling off underneath the pedal box.
Now personally I would have mentioned noticing that on a freshly restored car - lucky I asked to look myself.
So clearly I had a brake fluid leak and a portion of the paintwork the size of your hand was loose under the car - great - oh well lucky I spotted it.
I got the car home and stripped out the pedal box - yet loose paint also under the pedal box on the inside of the car. Now the pedal box had been fully restored during the original restoration but was now looking much worse for wear.
Suspecting a master cylinder leak I ordered a new one from Heritage parts, and started to strip the pedal box down to repaint it and get it back to fresh.
Reinspecting the footwell area it was obvious that brake fluid was getting into the footwell, lifting the paint and then dribbling through the jigging point under the pedal box and through to the underside where it lifted more paint.
I had assumed it was leaking from the master cylinder shaft but there was no paint lift on the face that secures the master cylinder.
After much detective work it turned out to be leaking from the brake reservoir / flexible pipe union and following down the plastic piping until it eventually dripped into the footwell. It must have been a very small leak but one that had probably taken many many months to materialise.
When I had fit the plastic pipes from the master cylinder to the brake reservoir I had never been confident as to which pipe went where. I'd tried both options and neither seemed ideal. I always felt that the pipes strained on the rubber grommets as they left the master cylinder.
I waited for the new master cylinder to arrive ( although there was nothing wrong with the old one ) and then spent many hours trial fitting the pipes in different orientations. I finally got a fit that seemed much better than my first attempt.
Now to solve the main problem of the leak. So it turns out that the flexible brake piping I had used had a fractionally large inner diameter such that even with the hose clamps fully tightened there was a very slight weep.
New piping fitted and it was all snug and tight.
Annoyingly in diassembling my pedal box I broke one of the bronze bushings - so I had to order a new bushing kit again - more delays!
The next step was to repaint the pedal box area. The interior was an easy clean up and satin black. The exterior required reapplying body sealer around the pedal box plate, new textured underseal, followed by three coats of signal orange and a clear wax to match the previous state of the underside.
Having placed the car back on axle stands to rebleed all the brake systems again, I took the decision to change the brake pads over.
I'd originally gone for Borg and Beck standard pads, but always thought the braking could be better.
Now I've tried EBC greenstuff on the 912 and at best they are slightly better than stock pads.
This time I thought I would try the more costly redstuff pads
Of course I used the selection guide that incorrectly shows the incorrect large pads for the fronts.
My 2.7 has the same small pads front and rear - oh well it's only money More pads ordered.
The final funny thing was that when fitting the nsr brake pads I spotted something that didn't quite look right.
That's right the alignment specialist had left one of his tools wedged in a spot in my back suspension ( might explain the new clonking sound! )
So hopefully the leak is fixed, the pedal box refurbished and maybe the brakes are slightly upgraded - time will tell.