Well I had hoped everything was going to be alright with the cart even though it has been sitting for eight years. I was covered and locked away in a special storage compartment my dad had made for me years ago. I was wrong.
I pulled it out and found it had four flat tires, which were to be expected, a little air and they were back in business. The thing had about an inch of dust all over it, sooo first things first I gave it a good cleaning.
Well the last time I pulled it out I remembered that the brakes weren't really working so I figured ahh, probably nothing. First problem was that the master cylinder was frozen, so channel locks and a rubber mallet and that was unfrozen, but still no go. It was then I realized that I was going to have to pull the caliper, which meant I was going to have to pull the axel as well. At this point part of me wanted to put everything back and call it a day. But I pulled the axel and pulled the caliper to find that the **** thing was stuck. So I tried to compress it in a vise, but then when we tried to put air to it, it didn't shoot the piston back out. So we tried air with a rubber mallet and still nothing. I knew now that I needed another set of eyes on the project and some different tools. I have a pretty extensive shop but not for things like this. So on to my buddy’s shop (diesel mechanic) at his shop we put it through a chemical bath and then tried putting air to it. Nothing! And we had it plumbed right into the compressor, around 150-200 PSI. Then we decided to try heat, so we fired up the torches and heated it up and then put some air to it, and it pushed the piston up about 1/4", finally some headway. We repeated this process one more time and it shot the piston up and out. Success!
I took all of the parts back home and chucked up the piston in the lathe and with some emery cloth cleaned it up just a hair and then honed out the cylinder walls, checked the seals and put it all back together. Success. Then we added some gas to it and within two pulls it fired up. Took a little caressing of the pedal when starting but she finally fired up. My lady and my dad even took a few spins around the block. Sure was a lot of work for 20 minutes of fun. And then back into her little storage space she went.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWvhDGtDWL0
