Another nice day in the woods, step on the brakes to slow down for one reason and another and Nothing! Yes this happened recently to one of my friends while wheeling down in Oregon. Fortunately, no one got hurt and the rig was in a good spot.
A closer look at the rig showed us that the left rear wheel cylinder let go so there was no fluid in that part of the system.
But don’t panic just yet. Our wagons are made with a two sided system. This means the front and back are two seperate circuits. A leak in one will not bleed off the other side, the pedal goes away but you don’t lose fluid from the side that doesn’t have a leak. But this doesn’t mean you won’t have to add fluid so be sure to always carry extra fluid.
At first I tried to plug off that one wheel and bleed off the air but it just got too much air into it and this just wasn’t working. Then I remembered what had happened to Eric on a past run and how he fixed it to limp out of the woods. All he had to do after braking a front brake line was plug off the leaking side and keep driving. This is accomplished much easier than you might think.
Pull the bleeder from the wheel with the problem brake. Now pull the brake line off the master cylinder that controls that end of the brake system. The line on the front of the master is for the front and the one closet to the booster is for the rear brakes. Next just use the bleeder to block off the offending side of the system. It has the same threads so it just screws right in. You lose the side that was leaking but it just may get you out of the woods.
Lucky for us, on Doug’s rig it was the rear that was empty and in our wagons the rear drums do almost none of the braking. Once we had things closed back up and tested, Doug was more than comfortable letting his son Ben drive the rig back to camp.
And remember this is only a temporary fix and will be far less effective if its the front brakes with a problem and I reccomend that you properly fix the rig at the very first opportunity.
