The Tank Chronicles Chapter 5: Breaking the Brakes

Looking back I realise now that I’ve not written about The Tank since 2014. About a year-and-a-half ago now. Which means she’s been with me that period of time too.

Quite a bit has happened since then of course and rather than write a whole bunch about it, here’s a brief recap.

Breaking the brakes

My daily commute is a 15km climb and descent through the hills that ring Balik Pulau. A very picturesque drive in parts, it can also be tough on a 2-tonne car. I must admit to being a little cavalier about braking, relying on the middle pedal rather than calling on engine braking to help slow The Tank. Some stretches can be very fast, with my speedo even nudging 100 (giving a true speed closer to 90 actually) and the demands on the brakes can be severe. 

One day, the Brake Failure light came on and I noticed the pedal sinking towards the floor when applied. Braking power was not dimished and a double tap on the pedal kept it high and the pressure consistent. I do hate to ignore warnings, though, especially when a discernible change in behaviour is noticed too. So rather than lose my brakes altogether, leaving the road at a fast bend and ending up airborne over the padi fields of Balik Pulau, I brought The Tank in to Ah Guan.

"Rather than lose my brakes... and leave the road and ending up airborne over the padi fields, I brought The Tank in."

Brake Master Cylinder leaking, he pronounced and after a day in the shop, she was right as rain. I was quite impressed that a 32-year old car would have a monitoring system capable of detecting a brake system leak. I wasn’t the only one surprised, as things would turn out much later.

While in the shop I decided to have the front brake pads changed too. The feel just wasn’t there and trying to stop even coming down my apartment’s carpark ramp required a great deal more pressure on the pedal than I was happy with. Turns out the pads were not worn, as I had thought. A change to Volvo pads gave me much more feel and a bit more stopping power.

6 months or so later, I drove The Tank down to KL to attend some events and very late one night after leaving a pub, I heard a terrible graunching and screeching from the front wheels. Brakes, Discs, Bearings all crossed my mind as possible ailing parts. Many years ago, I had a Lancia Dedra and a similar noise resulted in the some component coming away and the car stranded. I certainly didn’t relish that happening to The Tank. Luckily my friend Debbie, whom I was staying with, knew a mechanic who could look at the car on that weekend so we drove there one morning, the screeching now clearly audible, and let him have a look.

‘Worn brake pads’, he said. Right down to the metal, just about. I guess the weight of The Tank was the only thing preventing complete seizure as metal bonded to metal under the heat of braking. He spent the day working on the car and late that evening I collected her, fixed and ready for the journey back to Penang.

"'Worn brake pads', he said. Right down to the metal, just about."

Some months later I noticed a slight movement form the rear under heavy braking. Not a very serious swing but just a tiny little feeling in the butt when I hit the brakes coming into a corner. I didn’t think too much about it until coming down a very fast section on the way to the cafe one day. I had overtaken a car which was going a tad too slowly for my liking, and towards the end of a long straight, I was going rather rapidly so hit the brakes hard for the tight left. Now this left is just after a slight dip and there’s even a bit of the reverse camber about it so any car entering this corner fast,as I was, would be a little unsettled as The Tank was… I felt the left rear lock up, then the left front and The Tank ploughed straight on. No traffic on the other side, fortunately, and to be honest, I hadn’t gone too far into the next lane so lifting off on the brakes and a twist of the steering and she was back on track. 

By this time The Tank was being seen to by the mechanic at the end of the block. Lee was proving to be quite good with diagnosing and fixing the little issues that cropped up every now and then, and he was pleasantly cheaper than Ah Guan in town. I brought The Tank in staright away and they had a look and realised the rear brake pads were also completely worn. I left her overnight at the shop and they skimmed the rear discs as well, for good measure.

No more problems until about 2 months ago when the brake failure light came on again. Same symptoms as before. Lee was not familiar with this warning light and after checking things out and pronouncing the pads fine and the pump and master cylinder seemingly free of leaks, he suggested it might be an electrical fault in the lights. I told him about the previous issue and that puzzled him. He looked all around and could find no sensor that would yield a warnign light.  He said he needed a bit more time to check the system out so I continued driving The Tank, double-pumping the brake pedal a little worryingly.

"I continued driving... double-pumping the brake pedal a little worryingly."

Meanwhile, I did a search on the internet and found that this old girl may be over 30 years old, but there was indeed a very clever sensor in the brake system. The lines go through something dubbed the Octopus - simply because all the brake lines connect up to this cigarette packet sized device. The device itself is nothing much more than a box with a ball-bearing in it. When the brakes are applied, if there is equal pressure in the system (front/rear and left-right I guess) the ball bearing is kept in the middle. If there is unequal pressure, say due to a leak, then the bal bearing moves and an electrical sensor is triggered and the warning light comes on. Simple, relatively failure-free and very clever indeed. 

I pointed it out to Lee and with the bit of information he found the problem a day later - old brake fluid. Flushing out the system, refilling it with fresh fluid, bleeding the system and The Tank was fault-free once again.

Since then the brakes have been relatively OK and with more judicious use of engine braking, the pads have lasted a bit longer too.

The Tank Chronicles Chapter 3

Blinded by the light. Not

It was a couple of days after I brought the Tank to Penang. I took her out to get my dinner late one evening. The roads around the apartment are a little chaotic with roadside stalls, bus stops, mechanic workshops and little side lanes all on or meeting the main road. The resulting pedestrian and motorised traffic movement is complex and though a little shy of Hanoi’s or Mumbai’s standards, still requires some degree of concentration at the wheel.

Remember I said I’d checked the lights? Well, I certainly checked that they came on and in the dim carpark at the apartment, I could verify this every time I moved The Tank in or out. So imagine my surprise that night when I drove out into the dark and found I couldn’t see too well. At one point on the main road, I couldn’t even pick out a pedestrian darting across and only saw him/her as a silhouette in the glare of oncoming cars.

Hmmm… a closer inspection back home revealed the beams were not too bad at the top, but virtually non-existent on the bottom. The reflectors were obviously perished and to prevent someone - maybe me! - joining them, I figured I’d better get them fixed.

Replacement reflectors seemed to be the brightest idea...

I trawled some of the spare parts dealers on the Volvo groups I’d joined on Facebook and picked out some headlamp replacements, then also sought Ah Guan’s advice. As usual, he provided some wise words of caution - essentially that replacements headlamp units may also have dodgy reflectors. He proposed a better solution which was that they had a source for some Taiwanese-made replacement reflectors and could change my tarnished ones. That seemed to be the brightest idea (ahem) and I gave the go ahead. While waiting for the parts to arrive, The Tank ventured out only during the day and on one night when I had a late meeting in town, the guys were kind enough to pick me up and send me back.

You can see the dullness in the headlamps in the picture at the top. Here's The Tank having her eyes taken out. The wheels were off because I also did a brake pad replacement at the same time.

A few days later, Ah Guan said he had the parts so The Tank had her free parking spot in their workshop while they sorted her eyes out. Just to explain - Lorong Macalister is a coupon-parking area and the residents/tenants who don’t have season parking tickets play a dodging game with the parking wardens who come infrequently and irregularly. When they do appear, someone usually gives a call out and doors come flying open and men and women scurry out with their car keys in hand to scratch out a new and valid couple before they got slapped with a RM50 fine. The Tank was safe in Ah Guan’s workshop for the day.

The headlamp unit on the floor, waiting for surgery.

You can see how dull the reflector is.

All cleaned up and waiting for the replacement reflector.

And don't her eyes look all sparkly again?

In the evening, I picked her up and she was all sparkly and shiny in the eyes and the trip home was drama-free. Cost? RM195 each without labour.

Ah Guan says the manufacturer has stopped producing these reflectors so I guess other owners will have tools for alternative sources or try their luck with old units.

The Tank Chronicles Chapter 1

Would you buy a car that reminds you of this?
(July 5, 2009 - Source: Hamish Blair/Getty Images Europe)

French cars: they’re meant to be stylish, temperamental, loaded with personality and - dare I say it? - je ne sais qoui, aren’t they? You kind of expect a french car to give you wow and worry in equal measure.

The Swedes, on the other hand have  a coolness about them, a calm, even temperament. Less overt but steady and reliable. And even if a Swedish car were to expire after many years of trustworthy service, you’d expect her to do so quietly, with dignity and with little fuss.

I guess if I were to use Tennis as an example, I would think of a French Car as Henri Leconte - talented, unpredictable, occasionally making you laugh. And the Swedes, well take your pick from Bjorn Borg, Stefan Edberg, Mats Wilander…generally steady and unflappable chaps who do very well and who rarely let you down.

So, when I was contemplating a replacement for the Honda Airwave I’d run happily for 8 years, I narrowed the list down to two estate candidates - a Nissan AD Resort and a Citroen ZX Wagon. The former would be no-frills, plasticky but generally easy to fix. The latter would be a little more striking and recognisable, and being the less complex model in Citroen’s lineup, probably easy to maintain too.

I trawled through Mudah.my and sought opinions on the Citroen and generally had my mind set on the French car. I even viewed one which looked good on the screen but turned out to need far too much work in real life. Peeling paint, torn interior, mechanical issues… I walked away. The price was good so I became quite confident I could find something I liked under RM10,000.

Visits to used car dealers didn’t yield much - an AD Resort that refused to start, and a ZX that looked good but needed minor work. I quite liked the latter and asked a mechanic contact to view the car and assess it so I could make an offer but 3 days of stormy weather were his excuse for not going so I never managed to get back to the dealer on that. Then one day in Selayang, I met a dealer who drove up in an old Volvo 240 GL. It looked good propped up high on large 18” wheels. The paint was rather distressed (which we thought was intentional) but the interior looked fine and the engine sounded smooth. It was his personal car and we chatted for almost an hour about cars. He showed me a couple of pictures of AD Resorts that had been done up - 300hp in a 25-year old Japanese tinbox? OK that one had Wow! - but were out of my budget.

I won't show pictures of the engine and interior, but must admit the owner had done a marvellous job with this car.  This particular one had no price but the one below was looking for a new owner at about RM14k.

Adry was enthusiastic though and over the next two days he continued to send me pictures of AD Resorts in varying states of repair. We narrowed the possibilities down to 2 models and I made arrangements to have a look at them.

In the meantime, I came across a ZX that looked beautiful on screen. A shiny blue (Subaru blue lah, not Barisan Nasional blue, as the owner eventually told me), it looked the part at just over RM10,000. I made an appointment to view the car.

About the same time, Adry sent me a picture that was to change my whole direction - an old Volvo 245 Wagon. A car that was pushing 30 years old - a good 12 more than the blue ZX - but which looked in good nick. So suddenly, I had a whole new option - the first Swedish car I’d ever considered owning.

The more I thought of the Swede the more I liked it. The car would not just be conveyance, it would also be the platform to advertise the new ‘thing’ we’d be doing in Balik Pulau in Penang and I figured the Volvo would have the recall factor and visibility.

I eventually did get to see and test-drive both cars. The ZX was really pay-and-drive as it needed no work whatsoever. It was a truly beautiful and beautifully kept example of the ZX. The owner was even going to change the front suspension bushes as he didn’t like the ride. The Volvo, on the other hand, had rough edges which needed work. Quite a bit of small and minor things - missing wipers, an aircon fan switch that didn’t work, a speedo that also didn’t operate, and so on.

This picture from Mudah really was how the car turned out to when I eventually saw it, as my pictures below show.

This was perhaps the most difficult decision I had to make and I agonised over it for a few days. I gave myself a final deadline, had two looks at each car, even went to the extent of measuring the boot floor-to-ceiling height to see if my bikes would fit inside.

The photo that started it all. Though this wasn't the actual car that became The Tank. This was an even older unit which was in very bad shape though the pictures didn't show it. I did like the rims in the picture but am very happy with the ones on The Tank.

The Tank on the morning I paid for her.

The comparison list was long but it ultimately could be summarised, most amazingly, thus:

“The French car would be the rational choice and the Swede would be the emotive one.”

Besides the image of the Volvo, I was also more confident she would get the right sort of attention because the workshop just across the road from Pedal Inn was a Volvo specialist. I’d sent my Honda there for some attention and they had done a decent job so I was not concerned about maintenance.

So, after not-sleeping on it (I really did spend a restless night or two) I finally opted for the Volvo. When I picked her up I found that none of the work had been done so we spent an afternoon at a workshop getting some things sorted out.

The next day I put new shoes on the old girl which I was now affectionately calling The Tank. Although the tyres on her still had ample tread, I always change the tyres on cars I buy as they’re the only contact patch with the road and you never know what damage may have been inflicted on them by the previous owner - kerbed wheels can be damaged internally and could blow out at speed.

Pian the mechanic at Gombak who fixed up a few things and did a wonderful job. Warm and kind-hearted bloke to boot. Let me know if you'd like to send your car to him in Gombak.

The guys at Soon Loong along Jalan Penchala in Petaling Jaya put new shoes on The Tank. They do a great job at a great price. 

So here I am now, the owner of a Swedish car for the first time in my life. Read more about her in the next few chapters. I’ll talk about the fan switch that didn’t work but wasn’t broken, the wipers that didn’t work but weren’t broken and the horn that didn’t work but wasn’t broken…