Brake flushing adventures

[Chris Newbold <cnewbold@eznet.net>]

This weekend, in preparation for my excursion to Watkins Glen
on Wed. & Thu., I flushed the brake system on my '93 90CS.

I had stopped by the dealer ealier to get a formal track inspection
and talked to the mechanic about the job... There is no master
cylinder/proportion valve bleeder on these newer cars (w/ ABS), so
typical RR, LR, RF, LF is all that's needed. He said that it was
not necessary to do the clutch slave... He recommended Audi's OEM
brake fluid and claimed it had higher boiling points than BMW's or
Porsche's OEM fluid... (329 wet/ 500 dry).

So, fluid in hand, $1.19 syphon from Pep boys and off I went...
After emptying the reservior, refilling with fresh fluid, jacking
the RR and removing the wheel, I discovered that the tube supplied
with the syphon wasn't going to go onto the bleed nipple (it split
along the seam @%$^@!$**&). Karen, my wife (whom I talked into
doing the pumping for me), graciously volunteered to hike down to the 
local home improvement joint for some better tubing...

The two rears went easily. Things got hairy on the RF, though.
Jacked the car up (spare-tire jack), got the wheel off, bled the
caliper, put the wheel back... Oh !$&*#! The jack had started to sink
into the hot asphalt... Jack a little more... Double !^$&*! I'm at the
end of the jack's travel, car still isn't heigh enough to get the wheel
back on and I can *hear* the jack sinking further into the ground....

Our hasty solution was to grab the jack from Karen's VW (the family
ties are a life saver here) and try to get enough height to
get the wheel on. It took a couple of iterations of jacking and
moving the "free" jack towards the rear of the car to get it up
heigh enough long enough to get the wheel on... 

Needless to say, I moved the car before tackling the LF...

Otherwise, the job was a success! The pedal is nice and hard,
better than before I started!

-Chris (in dire need of some proper tools and facilities)