Thanks KITT, I Solved the Puzzle
KITT is in the shop! We dropped him off about an hour ago. In the process of getting all the way downtown to where the shop is, I came up with a solution to the strange “mystery smoke” and “burning odor” riddle that surfaced during my last couple of rides. The answer was veritably thrown in my face, in fact.
I’ve always known the brakes on the Formula were lousy, because the car would hurl itself to the right every time you stopped. In fact, the brakes were one of the three items I asked the shop to fix today. But I didn’t realize just how bad it had gotten. Originally I thought the car was burning oil, but then I realized it didn’t smell like oil, and the smoke seemed to be coming from below the front of the car. So then I guessed it was transmission fluid burning, which really frightened me. Thankfully, I discovered that it’s not the transmission at all.
The left front brake is roasting itself into oblivion!
I believe the problem is that this particular caliper simply isn’t functioning much at all—or, more specifically, how well it works changes each time you push the brake pedal. Sometimes, after you stop the car, the left front brake doesn’t disengage. As you drive, the brake remains partially locked and cooks itself. Then when you stop, the massive friction heat generates all the smoke and burning odor that I often smell. The problem got so bad today, I was able to discern it was the brake because the damn car was shimmying wildly and pulling to one side while I was driving, and then I noticed that sometimes the engine had to work pretty hard just to get up to speed. That’s because it’s trying to work against one of the brakes! Crazy shit. Anyway, the shop is gonna fix that, so it’ll all be good.
Now, it’s time to go have lunch, and then play the copy of Halo 2 that I picked up last night. We got home at around 1:15 in the morning (there was a bit of a snafu because my preorder was so old they misplaced their copy of the slip), so all I was able to do was read the manual before I fell asleep. Now, with today’s chores done, I’ve got the rest of the day to play the game. Rock on!
Categorized as Cars/Knight Project