Bleeder Valve Nipple Covers

Good Morning to all my rabid readers!

Last night I was given the distinct privilege to assist a good friend of mine with working on his car. Now I always jump at the chance to use and improve my mechanical skills, and yesterday’s opportunity was especially exciting, because I got to work on a Porsche! Since there are only like 5 people who read this blog and they all know each other and all of them know only 1 person who owns a Porsche, I’ll just tell you now I was helping Bru.

So our task was a fairly simple one. Flush the brake system in preparation for Saturday’s Autocross race a Beaver Run. This process isn’t really difficult; it’s just tedious because all 4 wheels need to be removed which involves lifting the car on jack stands, ect. We got a bit of a late start on the whole process, on account of Bru having to run out to get a last minute gadget for our project, but by 6:30 we were ready to start.

Now Bru is an extremely meticulous person when it comes to doing ANYTHING with the 911, and with good reason. I mean the car is amazing. However he did make me laugh at times with how careful he was being. For example: It took him about 5 minutes to loosen the first lug nut. Not because it was on so tight that he couldn’t do it, but because it took him that long to work up the courage to actually use the force that was necessary to crack it loose. The preceding 4 minutes and 50 seconds we filled with little baby attempts. Once the first one was loose and he saw that no damage had come to his baby, we made excellent progress.

Ok, car raised, wheels off, and we’re ready to go. It was a scene straight out of West Virginia. Well… and affluent area of West Virginia (I doubt there are many 911s sitting in front yards on bricks, but w/e). So my job for this project was the “helper”, meaning I sat in the car and put pressure on the brake pedal to keep air from getting sucked back into the brake system when the bleeder valves were release. I also was teaching Bru how to do this process. Now I know some of you might say something like “How the hell does Dallas know anything about fixing cars?” Well remember, I’ve now owned oh, 8 of them. If I hadn’t learned how to fix some stuff myself, I would have been broke because with all the cars I bought, there wouldn’t be any money left over to fix them. Anyways, I’ve done a brake job or two in my years, as well as a lot of other stuff, so I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I’m doing. I did have one other job, which will explain the title of this blog. Each bleeder valve has a small rubber cap on it. Because Bru was wearing gloves he couldn’t remove this, so I was responsible to getting them off.

Anyways I was the helper and I sat in the car and pushed the brake pedal. This will probably be the only time I’m ever in the driver’s seat of the Porsche. Even sitting still, engine shut off, wheels removed, up on jack stands, this car is still fricking nice! We finished bleeding the brakes, put the wheels back on and lowered the car right around 9pm. Even though it took 2.5 hours, this was the easiest “do it yourself” mechanic project I’ve ever completed. After we finished we took it for a test drive. No fatal crashes so I guess what we did, we did correctly. Hooray!