JaimeZX™

Okay guys, I would greatly appreciate any advice you can offer.
A little background:
I bought a '92 Nissan 300ZX 5 years ago and after being screwed by the service depts. at various dealers have since learned to work on it myself. That spun off into helping my family & friends with their cars since a lot of the basics are the same.

So my GF calls me last week and says her Brake idiot light is on, and can I fix it? I said I'd have a look.

Thursday I look at it; I inspect the lights, but they all seem to work. Plenty of fluid, so I think "Okay, well maybe the pads are low because some cars will have the light come on when the pads are low."
So I pull the rims & sure enough, the front left pads are worn way down. We go and buy new pads.
A thunderstorm approaches.
I pull the pads from the front driver's side. I spray the new pads & shims with the blue-spray-brake-quiet-glue stuff and due to the impending storm I pull the right rim so I can get started on that.
It begins to sprinkle.
I notice that the right pads aren't hardly worn at all, so I decide to not put new pads there, and just have a spare set of pads.
It rains harder. In what I can only blame on the growing storm (which snuck up outta nowhere) I made an idiotic mistake and bled the passanger's side brake while the driver's side caliper was sitting nicely on the stone guard. Therefore the pistons were wayyyy out and fluid was leaking from one of them.
I push the pistons back in, fiddle with the seals, and decide to see how it works. I'm thinking "Well, if the seal is blown then it'll probably leak fluid and the pedal will be really mushy." I put the new pads in, install everything, put the rim back on, and drive the car around the block. Seems okay, brakes feel good, etc.
I go out with my GF that night, we drive the Lexus, everything seems fine.
In the AM we're going to breakfast when I smell brakes and at a stoplight I notice smoke coming up from the front left wheel. So I'm thinking "$#ˇ+. The caliper must be jacked and not retracting the pistons all the way or something." We go back to her place and take my car to breakfast.
I order a rebuilt caliper which arrived yesterday.

So I pick up the rebuilt caliper and take it home. I also pick up the brake bleeding kit and DOT 3 fluid.

This morning I get up at 6AM, load all the stuff in My Z, and drive down to her apartment, get her keys, go down & pop the hood & trunk.

1) I disconnect the negative battery terminal. (In case the "BRAKE" idiot light is in the ECU and it needs to be reset.)

2) I jack up the front of the car.

3) I remove the front left rim.

4) I remove the caliper

5) I install the new (rebuilt) caliper.

6) I tell my GF I'm ready for her help.

7) We bleed the brake.

8) We lower the car, & jack up the rear.

9) We bleed the rear right brake.

10) We bleed the left rear brake.

11) We bleed the front right brake.

12) I reconnect the battery and go wash my hands.

13) We jump in the car and drive up the street and back. Brakes feel GREAT! I'm thrilled. ABS worked fine, everything was swell. I park again, sniff the front left wheel to see if it's still sticking. Nope. I'm happy.

14) I go inside and take a quick 5 minute shower. Of course she doesn't have *soap*, she just has "Sensual Sunset body scrub." So I smell like a girl... at least I've exfoliated. 8P

15) I jump in My Z. and she jumps in her Lexus. I back up and begin to drive off. She pages me. I turn around. "What?"
"It won't move."
"What?"
"It won't move."
"Lemme see."
I get in her car. I put the car in reverse. It does not move. I pull the "Brake Release" lever. The car still does not move. I give it gas. I give it *lots* of gas. The car moves slightly. I belive my comment was
"$#ˇ+. Now what?"

16) I jack up the front of the car again. The front wheels will not turn.

17) I put the car in neutral and jack up the rear of the car. The rear wheels will not turn.

WTF is going on???

So now I'm thinking "WTF? The manual says 'DOT3 fluid', I used 'DOT3 fluid', is there like a special Lexus DOT3 fluid??" Because I'm trying to figure out what could possibly have happened...?

I called Lexus service earlier. I talked to the service foreman, Bob. He was cool. He was also as confused as I am. I asked if there was some "extra" procedure that I had to do on Lexus brakes, but he said "Nope. It's just like bleeding normal brakes." So we were confused.

His suggestion: Loosen the bleeder valves. If the car will move *then*, that means that the pressure in the line isn't being released. If that's the case he suggests that there might be a problem with the master cylinder. Especially if fluid "squirts" out upon bleeder-valve opening. I would tend to agree. Anyone have other suggestions/comments?

You know, at first I started out feeling like an idiot, but now I feel less like an idiot and more like I'm having bad luck with her brakes. But again, it doesn't help that this is the FIRST time I've worked on her car and it's getting jacked up. 8P


I'm between classes at school right now so I don't have access to her car this minute, but I wanted to see if any of you have run accross something similar, and if so how did you go about fixing it?

I eagerly anticipate any replies! Thanks in advance.

Purplexed

My dad, now 80 yrs old, had probs with a toyota, took it to the mechanic, he diagnosis that the trans is burned cause you step on the gas and the car barely runs, and theres a burning smell.
The car felt like it was being held back when you stepped on the gas.
Anyway, a new trans and two mechanics later, we come to find out that someone("my dad") had used something other than brake fluid in the master cylinder (perhaps trans fluid or something.) because when the mechanic purged the system, he had two layers of different fluids in a bottle .

To make a short story long, the seals swelled, and the inner workings of the master cylinder were ruined. The brakes calipers stuck.
Did someone add fluid to the brake system ???

Good luck.

JaimeZX™

I'll cut-and-paste this from my post on www.twinturbo.net; except there's no HTML on this board I guess, so I'll have to just give you the URLs for the pix.
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So I'm sitting in the computer lab today and I get a page from Bob, the shop foreman at Lexus of Tucson. I call him back, of course.
"Hey Bob, what can I do ya for?"
"What kind of brake fluid did you put in Ms. Lin's car?"
"Just regular DOT3, why?"
"Nothing else?"
"No, of course not."
"You didn't pour it in some other container before the master cylinder?"
"Nope, straight out of a brand new bottle. Why?"
"Because the fluid is a wierd color and it's jellied up, and got weird floaties in it."
"Wow."
"It's possible that maybe you got a bad container of brake fluid, in which case there would probably be recompense from the fluid manufacturer."
I'm thinkin, "YEAH! I hope so." lol
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I drive to Lexus and meet Bob. Nice guy. Younger than I would've expected for a shop foreman though.
He shows me the fluid in Avy's master cylinder. It's sort of that color that fluid gets when it's old, except greener. Plus 2 days ago it was a perfect clear/honey color. He stirs it with a screwdriver. Weird floaties & sediment come up.
We decide to check out my fluid. He takes an empty water bottle, dries it out, and pours some of my fluid in. Looks good. Smells okay. We decide my fluid is okay. Darn! He pours it back.

He takes a turkey baster thing and sucks up some of the fluid in Avy's master cylinder and puts THAT in the water bottle to check it out. Note four things, the color, the weird bubbles & floaties, the opacity of the fluid, and the pink layer on top.
http://www.z32.org/unsorted/fluid.jpg

We then talk about various sources of possible contamination:
1) I suggest that it's *possible* that while cleaning her suspension during the brake work some Simple Green may have stayed on the bleeder nipple and worked its way into the caliper while bleeding. Bob and I agree that this is extremely unlikely since a) Things don't go IN the bleed nipple while bleeding. b) if it *did* go in, it'd come right back out, and c) it could never make it all the way up to the master cylinder anyway.

2) While having lunch with Avy and her best friend Mohammed yesterday, Mohammed indicated that he told Avy last week that if her brake light was on then the resovoir needed more oil. You read that right. Now I'm 95% sure Avy wouldn't have put oil in the resovoir considering that until 2 weeks ago when I showed her, she didn't know how to pop the hood. Mohammed owns a car dealership in UAE so he would probably know the difference between oil and brake fluid too; yet there is the *possibility* that due to their both not having perfect English there was a misunderstanding. I dunno. We also discounted this possibility, however.

Bob showed me the cap that goes on her master cylinder. He showed me where the seal was broken and he said he thought the reaction in the fluid had done it. I told him "No, it was like that on Friday when I first touched her car."

So... why I feel better:
1) If wierd master cylinder pressures broke the seal on the lid before I touched the car, then the problem was pre-existing.
2) If I put good brake fluid in the car then I didn't ****** up the master cylinder myself.

Bob thinks there was pre-existing contamination and when I bled the brakes it spread to all 4 wheels and jacked the system that way. So it's not really my *fault*, but my actions caused the system to seize, if that makes sense. I guess that's the good news, if there *is* any... the BAD news is that it's gonna cost Avy close to $1500 to fix; they're gonna replace/rebuild the calipers, all the brake lines, and the master cylinder. I'm sure that's something I could handle but she probably doesn't trust me anymore. lol

Finally, we looked at the fluid again after it had set for a few minutes.
http://www.z32.org/unsorted/fluid2.jpg

Weird, huh?
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Anyway, thanks for the reply!!