Leaky brake bottles

[tim wood]

This is a bit of a rant so sorry for that up front! I have just discovered that the brake bottle that feeds the front brakes on my series 1 is leaking. This isn't very old and is supposed to be a quality item. Last year I had to replace the rear bottle due to the same thing, a slight leak at the base. I fitted these carefully with the filter and the metal spigot that supports the outlet. Needless to say I now have some paint repairs to do. Why can't we have quality items particularly when good money is spent.

Apologies and rant over !

Tim

[abowie]

Not at all.

I had both bottles fail within a week of each other recently. I noticed a pool of fluid under the car. On checking one bottle was empty. In the week it took to buy 2 replacement units the other one, which had been full, failed as well. Both were 18 months old and failed while the car was stored; it had not been driven for 3 months. Both bottles had become sufficiently distorted to crack at the pivot where the spigot meets the bottom of the bottle. On both bottles the distortion was in the same direction making me think that heat (it is summer here) was the cause. My view is that the plastic they are made out of is to blame. I have replaced them with the "upgrade" units with the metal reinforcement. It will be interesting to see if these last any better, although I see that yours failed. Fortunately I use silicone brake fluid so no paint damage ensued. I agree entirely that safety critical items, like brakes, should be expected to work.

[38E]

This sort of thing is inexcusable but unfortunately, not uncommon with aftermarket replacement parts, I found. Really, the seller of those sub-standard items ought to be liable for the resultant paint damage, IMO. I imagine the reason probably due to inept buyers getting original parts copied without a clue regarding proper material specifications or service requirements. It's best to restore the original Jaguar parts as much as possible, I think. BTW, my three 52-year-old plastic brake fluid bottles are still in good condition and don't leak yet.

[Series 1]

I posted about this in November 2012. I can't work out how to add a link to it but it's titled "Brake and Clutch Fluid Reservoirs (Again!)". I've had 3 new bottles split since my rebuild so I feel your pain! I had fitted my original metal inserts with filters from the original bottles into the new bottles as well. These replacements weren't cheap, fair enough for a limited production run, but the quality of the plastic was appalling.

David Jones (Heuer) kindly reproduced a short article from Julian Barratt and the bottles mentioned seemed like the best option. So far no leaks (14 months - fingers still crossed). If I'm honest, I think I probably was guilty of over tightening the clamps connecting the hoses to the bottles. My paranoia about leaks perhaps helping to create them! I used less force on the new bottles and maybe that's helped.

Cheers

Angus

[Heuer]

The thread is here: http://etypeuk.com/forum/viewtopic.php? ... reservoirs

NB: To add a link - go to the thread and highlight the address at the top of your browser, copy and paste it into your post. To use the Forum search facility try using this format of the key words: brake AND clutch AND reservoirs . The AND is an operator (you can use + instead) so the search engine will only list those threads, or posts if you so choose, which contain those three words. Copy and paste the address field (you can see the way it is in the above example) into your post. If you have done it correctly it will be underlined when you preview it.

[Series 1]

Thanks David,

Easy now I know how!