On the first day that I drove the Monte Carlo things went pretty good, supposedly. The brakes for all intents worked, there wasn't much of a spongy pedal but I knew there was still an issue. I kinda figured that the proportioning valve was still compromised and was keeping the rear brakes from functioning properly but since the brakes were functioning better, I figured I could pretty much ignore it until I got around to just getting another proportioning valve and just fixing everything completely at a later date. That was all good and well until the 2nd day of driving when I parked at the job. I noticed there was a little more sponginess in the brake pedal than it was yesterday. I also noticed that there was a small puddle right under where the proportioning valve was, or so I thought. After doing an inspection I found that the puddle was in line with the master cylinder. After pumping the pedal I noticed oil oozing from around the fitting holding the brake line in the chamber for the rear brakes on the master cylinder. I tried reseating the tube without completely removing the fitting but still had no luck. After bringing out a friend to check it out with me and give me a second opinion we took the line off and he was able to see the reverse flare inside the port was not perfectly conical, like it was distorted at some point prior to it being rebuilt. I wasn't sure how I was going to handle this as the MC was ordered online and having to return a defective unit is always a pain in the ass that ends up costing me money and would end up putting me in a position where I could've just ordered the shit from auto zone, paid a little more and if it was defective I'd have been able to just take it back without spending extra money. Another problem that has been surfacing on and off was the operation of the ole lady's vehicle, our beater Chevy Tracker. When this thing seems to get hot it'll have problems starting, sometimes needing a little more cranking than usual before it finally fires up. Sometimes leaving the key on a few seconds prior to cranking helps, sometimes just sitting and trying it again does the trick. One day when the ole lady came by the job to drop off some food I noticed some water leaking from under the engine bay. After doing a fast inspection we found that the water was coming from this tube that connects to a short port on the back of the engine that bridges the span between the radiator hose and the port for the water to enter the engine. It's a stupid design because the port could've been on the front of the engine block or cylinder head. Anyway, the tube has a large rubber o-ring that helps seal the tube where it pushes into the entry tube for the engine itself. The leak wasn't bad enough that the vehicle couldn't be used like normal, it was just a matter of keeping an eye on the temp level and periodically checking to see if the rad was low after the engine cooled down a bit. Also when I did some more troubleshooting on the vehicle at the house I came to realize just how aggravating this vehicle was. I couldn't even check the fuel pressure to see if there was a discrepancy i the fuel system since the engineers of the vehicle couldn't even work a damn shrader valve into the damn fuel rail to hook up a pressure tester. The only thing that I've got to work on is a couple of codes that I've pretty much had since we had the vehicle, one saying the system is reporting a lean condition and the catalytic converter is not operating properly. I can see the lean condition being caused by a bad cat that's been blown out enough to let extra exhaust to flow than usual. I guess for all intents I need to be making plans to replace the cats (yes there's two) before I can really continue troublehsooting.
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